Making Peace in Drug Wars: Crackdowns and Cartels in Latin America

Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics

by Benjamin Lessing

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 Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil, 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. The politics of drug war, however, make conditional policies all too fragile.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Political Science

358 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Raúl Zepeda Gil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lessing makes a compelling and profound theory of drug wars drawing from the cases of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. Interestingly, the book is a very good case of a mixed methods approach to a complex subject and proposes new and exciting categories like conditional repression, conflict equilibrium and phases of conflict in drug wars. It must be a required book for anyone wanting to learn about violence in Latin America.

[Mills College Library]

364.1336 L639 2018