How Does Leadership Decapitation Affect Violence? The Case of Drug Trafficking Organizations in Mexico

Phillips, Brian J.

doi:10.1086/680209

Cited by 139 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…There is tentative evidence showing that some components of the strategy had significant costs. Homicides may have increased due to the use of the army to combat drug traffickers (Guerrero 2013), the nonselective attacks on criminal organizations (Lessing 2013;Osorio 2013), and the decapitation of criminal organizations (Dickenson 2014), although Phillips (2015) finds no general effect of military interventions.…”

Section: The Mexican Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Presidential Approval and Public Security in Mexico's War on Crime

Romero¹,

Magaloni

Díaz-Cayeros

2016

Lat. Am. polit. soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To fight criminal organizations effectively, governments require support from significant segments of society. Citizen support provides important leverage for executives, allowing them to continue their policies. Yet winning citizens' hearts and minds is not easy. Public security is a deeply complex issue. Responsibility is shared among different levels of government; information is highly mediated by mass media and individual acquaintances; and security has a strong effect on peoples' emotions, since it threatens to affect their most valuable assets-life and property. How do citizens translate their assessments of public security into presidential approval? To answer this question, this study develops explicit theoretical insights into the conditions under which different dimensions of public security affect presidential approval. The arguments are tested using Mexico as a case study.T his study analyzes the impact that citizens' assessments of security issues have on presidential approval. Specifically, it delves into the specific conditions that prompt citizens to punish or reward the chief executive. Little is known about the impact public security issues have on presidential approval. The bulk of the literature has focused on analyzing the impact of the economy and foreign affairs on an executive's job approval. 1 The relationship between crime and performance evaluations has usually been the domain of local politics. However, due to the significant increase in crime and violence in many countries around the globe, the responsibility for public security has partially shifted away from local governments toward the national sphere of government.

show abstract

Section: The Mexican Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Presidential Approval and Public Security in Mexico's War on Crime

Romero¹,

Magaloni

Díaz-Cayeros

2016

Lat. Am. polit. soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…More recently, some studies have turned to media reports of vigilante organizations (e.g., Osorio, Weintraub, and Schubiger 2016;Phillips 2015). However, not all anti-crime organization attempts crystalize into formal and stable organizations.…”

Section: The Origins Of Anti-crime Organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting Crime by Ourselves: Trust in Neighbors, Trust in Authorities, and Anti-Crime Organization

Zizumbo-Colunga

2019

Lat. American Res. Rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent years, citizen-run anti-crime organizations have brought important challenges to Mexico and other Latin American countries. Under what circumstances are citizens more likely to seek out their neighbors to confront crime directly? I argue that when citizens do not trust state authorities, their perception of the trustworthiness of their community can increase their likelihood of engaging in anti-crime organization attempts. I analyze data from Mexico and find that an average citizen's perception of the trustworthiness of his/her neighbors correlates with his/her likelihood of engaging in an anti-crime organization attempt. Further, consistent with the main argument of this paper, I find this link to be stronger among those who distrust the police. These findings contribute by bringing back citizens' relation to the state as an important moderating force in society, and helping us understand when social trust can translate into controversial forms of state substitution.En los últimos años organizaciones anti-criminales han generado importantes desafíos para México y otros países latinoamericanos. ¿Bajo qué circunstancias buscan los ciudadanos unirse a su comunidad para enfrentar al crimen directamente? En este artículo propongo que, en contextos en los que los ciudadanos desconfían de sus autoridades de procuración de justicia, su confianza interpersonal se traduce en una mayor disposición a buscar defenderse directamente del crimen de forma colectiva. Para poner esta idea a prueba analizo datos de México. Encuentro que, en efecto, la confianza interpersonal se correlaciona positivamente con la probabilidad de un ciudadano promedio busque asociarse con sus vecinos para defenderse del crimen. Más aún, en línea con el argumento principal de este texto, encuentro que el vínculo entre estas dos variables es más fuerte entre quienes desconfían de la policía. Estos hallazgos contribuyen trayendo de vuelta al estado como una fuerza moderadora en la sociedad. En efecto, una fuerza que determina cuando la confianza social puede traducirse en formas controversiales de sustitución estatal.Over the last ten years, Mexico and other countries in Latin America have gone through a deep crisis of insecurity (Bisogno et al. 2014). To cope with this crisis, some individuals have reached out to their neighbors in attempts to form stable or ephemeral organizations to address their concerns about crime. 1 Although not all of these attempts have been successful, the ones that have pose a threat to the rights, lives, and livelihoods of alleged criminals, innocent bystanders, and vigilantes themselves (Bates, Greif, and Singh 2002;Hine 1998). Just months before this piece was written, for example, two surveyors working for a polling firm were confused for kidnappers and burned alive by citizens of a small town in Puebla (central Mexico). 1 In the pages that follow, I will call this type of behavior an anti-crime organization attempt.

show abstract

“…Our research therefore modernizes archival research by processing a treasure trove of information and rendering it more accessible for quantitative 11 Organizational structure should play an important role in determining whether organized movements and militant organizations collapse when critically important members are eliminated (e.g. Phillips, 2015;Davenport, 2015).…”

Section: Empiricsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disappearing dissent? Repression and state consolidation in Mexico

Osorio

Schubiger

Weintraub

2018

Journal of Peace Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Does violent repression strengthen the state? In this paper we explore the legacies of repression by the Mexican government on subsequent state consolidation. We investigate how a particular form of state repression, forced disappearances of alleged leftist dissidents, during the 1960s and 1970s in Mexico had path-dependent consequences for different dimensions of state capacity nearly fifty years later. To do so, we rely on data gathered from suppressed Mexican human rights reports of forced disappearances which, to our knowledge, have not been analyzed by social scientists before. Controlling for a rich set of pre-disappearances covariates, we find that forced disappearances are positively correlated with contemporary measures of fiscal and bureaucratic capacity. However, historical forced disappearances do not help the state to provide security, to consolidate its monopoly over the use of force, or to provide welfare-related public goods in the long run. Moreover, disappearances are negatively correlated with various measures of trust in the government.

show abstract

How Does Leadership Decapitation Affect Violence? The Case of Drug Trafficking Organizations in Mexico

Cited by 139 publications

References 28 publications

Presidential Approval and Public Security in Mexico's War on Crime

Presidential Approval and Public Security in Mexico's War on Crime

Confronting Crime by Ourselves: Trust in Neighbors, Trust in Authorities, and Anti-Crime Organization

Disappearing dissent? Repression and state consolidation in Mexico

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About