Publications
Book
Making Peace in Drug Wars: Crackdowns and Cartels in Latin America, New York: Cambridge University Press, Studies in Comparative Politics Series, December 2017.
Over the past thirty years, a new form of conflict has ravaged Latin America's largest countries, with well-armed drug cartels fighting not only one another but the state itself. In Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, leaders cracked down on cartels in hopes of restoring the rule of law and the state's monopoly on force. Instead, cartels fought back - with bullets and bribes - driving spirals of violence and corruption that make mockeries of leaders' state-building aims. Fortunately, some policy reforms quickly curtailed cartel-state conflict, but they proved tragically difficult to sustain. Why do cartels fight states, if not to topple or secede from them? Why do some state crackdowns trigger and exacerbate cartel-state conflict, while others curb it? This study argues that brute-force repression generates incentives for cartels to fight back, while policies that condition repression on cartel violence can effectively deter cartel-state conflict. Unfortunately, the politics of drug war--revealed through dozens of interviews with reformers and decisionmakers--make conditional policies all too fragile.
"Combining sophisticated analysis with captivating, on-the-ground research, Making Peace in Drug Wars sets the agenda in a new and highly relevant area of inquiry. This is easily the best book I have read this year, a great achievement." --Stathis N. Kalyvas, Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science, Yale University
"Everywhere you look in Latin America you see struggles between drug gangs and the state. This brilliant book shows how it can be brought within the corpus of comparative politics. A new direction for the field." -- James A. Robinson, Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and University Professor, University of Chicago
Selected by CHOICE as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2018.
Reviews of Making Peace in Drug Wars in: Perspectives on Politics Latin American Politics and Society Foreign Affairs Journal of Peace Studies
Peer-Reviewed Publications
"Gang rule: Understanding and Countering Criminal Governance" (with Chris Blattman, Gustavo Duncan, and Santiago Tobón) , The Review of Economic Studies, Accepted for publication, Dec 2023.
Abstract: Criminal groups govern millions worldwide. Even in strong states, gangs resolve disputes and provide security. Why do these duopolies of violence emerge? In many cases, gangs fill vacuums of official order. If so, increasing state presence should crowd out criminal governance. In this paper, however, we show that state and gang rule are sometimes complements. In particular, gangs can deter state predation by keeping neighborhoods orderly and loyal. If true, increasing state presence could increase gang rule. We investigate in Medellín, Colombia. Criminal leaders told us they rule mainly to protect drug rents. We test gang responses to state presence using a geographic discontinuity. Internal border changes in 1987 assigned some blocks to be exogenously closer to state security for three decades. Gangs responded to closer state presence by increasing governance services, but primarily in neighborhoods with the greatest potential drug rents. This suggests new strategies for countering criminal governance.
"Conceptualizing Criminal Governance", Perspectives on Politics, 19(3): 854–73. July 2020.
Abstract: In informal urban areas throughout the developing world, and even in some US and UK neighborhoods, tens if not hundreds of millions of people live under some form of criminal governance. For them, states’ claims of a monopoly on the use of force ring hollow; for many issues, a local criminal organization is the relevant authority. Yet the state is far from absent: residents may pay taxes, vote, and even inform on gangs as punishment for abusive behavior. Criminal governance flourishes in pockets of low state presence, but ones that states can generally enter at will, if not always without violence. It thus differs from state, corporate, and rebel governance because it is embedded within larger domains of state power. I develop a conceptual framework centered around the who, what, and how of criminal governance, organizing extant research and proposing a novel dimension: charismatic versus rational-bureaucratic forms of criminal authority. I then delineate the logics that may drive criminal organizations to provide governance for non-members, establishing building blocks for future theory-building and -testing. Finally, I explore how criminal governance intersects with the state, refining the concept of crime–state “symbiosis” and distinguishing it from neighboring concepts in organized-crime and drug-violence scholarship.
“Legitimacy in Criminal Governance: Managing a Drug Empire from Behind Bars” (with Graham Denyer Willis), American Political Science Review, Vol. 113, No. 2, May 2019, pp584-606.
Abstract: States, rebels, and mafias all provide governance beyond their core membership; increasingly, so do prison gangs. U.S. prison gangs leverage control over inmate life to govern street-level drug markets from behind bars. Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) gang goes further, orchestrating paralyzing attacks on urban targets, while imposing a social order throughout the slums that vastly reduces homicides. We analyze seized PCC documents detailing its drug business and internal disciplinary system. Three descriptive findings stand out: a decentralized, consignment-based trafficking operation whose profits provide welfare for members’ families; elaborate bureaucratic procedures and recordkeeping; and overwhelmingly nonviolent punishments for debt-nonpayment and misconduct. These features, we argue, reflect a deliberate strategy of creating rational-bureaucratic legitimacy in criminal governance. The PCC’s collectivist norms, fair procedures, and meticulous "criminal criminal records" facilitate community stigmatization of infractors, giving mild sanctions punitive heft and inducing widespread voluntary compliance without excessive coercion. This has aided the PCC’s rapid expansion across Brazil.
“Counterproductive Punishment: How Prison Gangs Undermine State Authority”, Rationality and Society, Vol. 29, No. 3, August 2017, pp257-297.
Abstract: States’ efforts to provide law and order can be counterproductive: mass incarceration policies, while incapacitating and deterring individual criminals, can simultaneously strengthen collective criminal networks. Prison gangs, by promising rewards and punishments inside prison to those who anticipate incarceration, can control criminal activity on the street. A formal model reveals that common crime-reduction policies, by making incarceration more likely and sentences harsher, can increase prison gangs’ power over street-level actors. Leading cases from across the Americas corroborate these predictions: periods of sharply rising incarceration, partly driven by anti-gang laws, preceded qualitative leaps in prison-gang projection of power onto the street. Prison gangs use their capacity to project power not only for criminal governance, but to orchestrate violence---or intentionally curtail---providing them critical leverage over the state. Thus, even if increased incarceration reduces crime rates, it may do so by strengthening prison-gang power at the expense of state authority.
“Logics of Violence in Criminal War” Journal of Conflict Resolution. Vol. 59, No. 8, November 2015, pp1486-1516.
Abstract: What kind of war is Mexico’s drug war? The prominent ‘criminal insurgency’ approach helpfully focuses attention on cartel-state conflict, but unnecessarily redefines insurgency as ‘state-weakening’, eliding critical differences in rebels’ and cartels’ aims. Whereas rebels fight states, and cartels fight one another, to conquer mutually prized territory and resources, cartels fight states ‘merely’ to constrain their behavior and influence policy outcomes. This distinction yields a typology with theoretical consequences: decisive victory plays an important role in most models of civil war, but is impossible or undesirable in wars of constraint. Theories of criminal war must therefore explain how ongoing coercive violence can be preferable to pacific strategies. I then distinguish two such coercive logics of cartel-state conflict: violent lobbying and violent corruption. Lobbying’s more universalistic benefits elicit free riding, so turf war among cartels should make it rarer than violent corruption. This prediction accords with qualitative and quantitative evidence from Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil.
“When Business Gets Bloody: State Policy and Drug Violence” in Small Arms Survey 2012: Moving Targets. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Abstract: This chapter reviews recent trends and theoretical explanations of drug violence in Latin America, with a focus on armed violence between organized actors—particularly cartels and prison-based syndicates—and state forces in Mexico, the Northern Triangle of Central America, and Brazil. It finds that the economic aspects of the drug market—demand, supply, and price—seem less related to outbreaks of cartel–state violence than changes in state policy. The legal status of drug consumption, sale, and trafficking; official policies on sentencing, surveillance, and extradition; the institutional structure and capacity of police and other state forces; and operational decisions such as where and when to apply repressive force all fundamentally shape the incentives and, ultimately, the actions of drug traffickers.
“Tres mitos sobre la guerra contra el narcotráfico [Three misconceptions about the war on drugs]”, Perspectivas Sobre el Desarollo, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2011.
Abstract: Three fundamentally misguided conceptions about the relationship between state policy, drug trafficking, and trafficking-related violence plague policymakers: 1. The notion that the drug trade is inherently violent, when in fact trafficking-related violence is not tightly correlated with drug flows. 2. The claim that anti-state violence on the part of cartels is an indication that they are 'desperate' and about to be permanently eradicated. Finally, 3. The idea that the only alternative to an all-out war on drug cartels is 'surrender'. In fact, the state does not need to openly negotiate or 'pact' with cartels in order to create incentives that will lead cartels to reduce their use of violence.
“The Danger of Dungeons: Prison Gangs and Incarcerated Militant Groups” in Small Arms Survey 2010: Gangs, Groups, and Guns. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Abstract: Although prison gangs have long been recognized as a central factor structuring life behind bars and as a challenge for penitentiary administration, they have rarely been analysed as a threat to overall public security. Yet as worldwide inmate populations have grown, prison gangs have expanded in size and reach; in some places they now constitute major criminal organizations, capable of instigating significant episodes of armed violence outside, as well as inside, prisons. This chapter examines a variety of cases from around the world, with a focus on Brazil’s powerful prison gangs. It proposes a comparative framework that focuses on how gangs (1) consolidate control within prison units, propagate throughout prison systems, and project power beyond the prison walls; and (2) the implications for armed violence and public security in general.
“As Facções Cariocas em Perspectiva Comparativa [Rio de Janeiro’s Drug Syndicates in Comparative Perspective].” CEBRAP Novos Estudos 80, 2008. (In Portuguese. English Translation here.)
Abstract: Conventional wisdom has it that Rio de Janeiro’s drug war is unique within Brazil: while drugs, violence, and corruption can be observed in most Brazilian cities, nothing like Rio’s facções (syndicates) exists elsewhere. This is not accurate: drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) that in many respects resemble Rio’s syndicates do exist in other urban contexts. What differentiates them is less the ability to establish a local monopoly on drug retailing than the resilience of their internal structure, and consequently the extent and duration of their existence and domination. During field research in nine peripheral communities in three cities, I observed not only high variation in the degree of concentration among local drug markets, but also over time within single communities. Based on interviews with traffickers, favela residents, and police and government officials, I present a framework for conceptualizing and measuring the degree of concentration of local drug markets based on drug trafficking organizations’ internal structure and observable behavior. This framework brings to light two opposing sets of forces: those that drive the agglomeration, expansion, and consolidation of drug firms, and those that lead to fragmentation of local markets. The stability of Rio’s highly concentrated drug markets, I argue, should be understood as an equilibrium in which the fragmentary forces at work in other cities are neutralized by specific traits of Rio’s syndicates—in particular, their prison-gang origin and continued domination of the carceral system.
Working Papers
"Inside out: The challenge of prison-based criminal organizations” Reconstituting Local Orders Working Papers #3, Brookings, Washington D.C., November 2016.
Abstract: In Central America, Brazil, and even the United States, prison gangs have evolved from small predatory groups to sophisticated criminal organizations with the capacity to organize street-level crime, radically alter patterns of criminal violence, and, in the extreme, hold governments hostage to debilitating, orchestrated violence and corruption. Prison gangs present three distinct problems for policymakers. First, many typical responses to prison-gang activity have unintended and deeply counterproductive consequences. Second, it is unclear that reducing incarceration rates or improving prison conditions would neutralize the authority that prison gangs have accumulated as a result of mass-incarceration policies. And, finally, it is not clear that reducing prison-gang authority would produce positive outcomes.
“The Logic of Violence in Drug Wars: Cartel-State Conflict in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.” CISAC Working Paper #145, Stanford University, 2013.
Abstract: Why have militarized interventions to curtail violence by drug cartels had wildly divergent results? In the past six years, state crackdowns drove a nine-fold increase in cartel-state violence in Mexico, versus a two-thirds decrease in Brazil. Prevailing analyses of drug wars as a criminal subtype of insurgency provide little traction, because they elide differences in rebels' and cartels' aims. Cartels, I argue, fight states not to conquer territory or political control, but to coerce state actors and influence policy outcomes. The empirically predominant channel is violent corruption—threatening enforcers while negotiating bribes. A formal model reveals that greater state repression raises bribe prices, leading cartels to fight back whenever (a) corruption is sufficiently rampant, and (b) repression is insufficiently conditional on cartels' use of violence. Variation in conditionality helps explain observed outcomes: switching to conditional repression pushed Brazilian cartels into nonviolent strategies, while Mexico's war "without distinctions" inadvertently made fighting advantageous.
“A Hole At the Center of the State: Prison Gangs and the Limits to Punitive Power.” CDDRL Working Paper #149, Stanford University, 2013.
Abstract: The state’s central function is to establish authority through its monopoly on violence; the very attempt, however, can be counterproductive. Punishment incapacitates and deters individuals, but can empower collective anti-state forces. Prison gangs, their ranks swelled by mass incarceration policies, transform the core of the coercive apparatus into a ‘stateless’ area and headquarters for organizing criminal activity on the streets and supplanting state authority in communities. Drawing on a formal model, qualitative fieldwork and case studies from the US and Latin America, I show how gangs use control over prison life, plus the state-provided threat of incarceration, to project power beyond prison, organizing and taxing drug markets and coordinating armed violence. The model reveals that common state responses–crackdowns and harsher sentencing–can actually strengthen prison gangs’ leverage over outside actors. These countervailing effects can have increasing returns, implying a point beyond which additional incarceration erodes state authority.
Selected Non-Refereed Publications:
“Targeted Strategy Can Work Where All-Out Drug War Fails.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 13, 2013.
After Alemão: The Future of (Rio’s) Drug War. Summary of Presentation Given at ISSDP Annual Conference, Utrecht, May 2011.
“Depois da queda do Alemão: o futuro da guerra do tráficos [After the Fall of Alemão: The Future of Rio’s Drug War].” (in Portuguese) O Globo Online: Favela Livre, December 16, 2010.
“Ciudad de Dios: ¿Un ejemplo para México?” (in Spanish) Nexos, November 2010.
“Is the End in Sight for the War on Drugs?” Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Spring 2009.
“Demand for Firearms in Brazil’s Urban Periphery: a Comparative Study”, and “The Brazilian Small Arms Industry” (coauthored), in Small Arms in Rio de Janeiro. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2008.
“Paramilitaries at the Polls” Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Fall 2007.
“Brazil Votes ‘No’”, Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Fall 2005.
Chapters “The Brazilian Small Arms Industry”, and “The Demand for Firearms in Rio de Janeiro” in Brazil: The Arms and the Victims, Fernandes, R. ed., Rio de Janeiro: ISER/7 Letras, May 2005.
“Fraude Facilitada” (in Portuguese), Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), October 20, 2004.
Chapter “Uruguay” in Small Arms Control in Mercosur, Godnick, W., ed., London: International Alert, 2003.
Op-Eds for The American Prospect, June 2002 - July, 2003.
In Collaboration: Front Line Brazil: Murders, Death Threats and Other Forms of Intimidation of Human Rights Defenders, 1997-2001, Cavallaro, J., ed., Geneva: Frontline/Global Justice, 2002.
Dissertation:
The Logic of Violence in Criminal War: Cartel-State Conflict in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil