Eduardo Moncada

Barnard College-Columbia University · Political Science

Criminal extortion is an understudied, but widespread and severe problem in Latin America. In states that cannot or choose not to uphold the rule of law, victims are often seen as helpless in the face of powerful criminals. However, even under such difficult circumstances, victims resist criminal extortion in surprisingly different ways. Drawing on...

This chapter argues that civilian resistance to criminal victimization is a gap in the growing literature on the politics of crime. It contends that much of the existing research on crime focuses on drug-related violence. But most people in Latin America experience organized crime not through spectacular acts of drug violence, but instead through t...

This chapter traces two pathways to everyday resistance to criminal victimization. The first pathway takes place when criminal actors have long time horizons. The first part of the chapter illustrates this pathway by comparing four empirical cases across El Salvador and Mexico where victims favored everyday resistance because the criminal actors en...

In this chapter I develop my argument to explain variation in the processes and mechanisms that lead to distinct strategies of resistance to criminal extortion. I first define the core concepts that readers will encounter throughout the book. Next I explain the logic of the argument to show how the intersection between the time horizons of criminal...

Criminal extortion is an understudied, but widespread and severe problem in Latin America. In states that cannot or choose not to uphold the rule of law, victims are often seen as helpless in the face of powerful criminals. However, even under such difficult circumstances, victims resist criminal extortion in surprisingly different ways. Drawing on...

Criminal extortion is an understudied, but widespread and severe problem in Latin America. In states that cannot or choose not to uphold the rule of law, victims are often seen as helpless in the face of powerful criminals. However, even under such difficult circumstances, victims resist criminal extortion in surprisingly different ways. Drawing on...

Criminal extortion is an understudied, but widespread and severe problem in Latin America. In states that cannot or choose not to uphold the rule of law, victims are often seen as helpless in the face of powerful criminals. However, even under such difficult circumstances, victims resist criminal extortion in surprisingly different ways. Drawing on...

This concluding chapter first briefly summarizes the argument to explain variation in the processes and mechanisms that lead victims to pursue distinct strategies of resistance to criminal extortion. It then identifies the broader implications that follow from the book’s core findings, including the need to bring victims more squarely into our rese...

This chapter analyzes cases of piecemeal vigilantism in El Salvador to show why victims resist extortion through ad hoc and sporadic acts of extralegal violence against criminals in coordination with individual police. I first situate criminal extortion within gang politics in El Salvador before turning to the cases of gang-led extortion of small-s...

This chapter continues the comparative analysis of the two municipalities in Michoacán by leveraging within-case shifts in the availability of police as allies for victims’ resistance efforts. In both cases the variants of collective vigilantism produced “bottom-up” purges of the local police who had been captured by criminal actors. Victims respon...

This chapter analyzes two cases of collective vigilantism in Michoacán, Mexico, to show why and how variation in the local political economies in which victims operate influences their strategies of resistance to criminal extortion. I first examine a case of resistance in the avocado sector where victims operated in an encompassing political econom...

Why do COVID-19 social distancing policies vary so widely across states in federal countries? This mixed-methods study of Brazil, Mexico, and the United States finds that state-level variation in the stringency of social distancing policies is driven not by the epidemiological, demographic, or socioeconomic factors commonly emphasized in previous r...

Context: Reductions in population mobility can mitigate virus transmission and, in turn, disease-related mortality. But do social distancing policies in response to COVID-19 actually change population behavior and, if so, what political, socioeconomic, and epidemiological factors condition this policy effect? Methods: We leverage subnational variat...

Subnational research (SNR) plays an increasingly prominent and important role in Comparative Politics. This article assesses the theoretical and methodological contributions of SNR. In particular it demonstrates the capacity of SNR to strengthen theory building by mitigating the problem of “theory stretching” and shows its comparative advantage for...

Deborah J. Yashar, Homicidal Ecologies: Illicit Economies and Complicit States in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Maps, figures, tables, abbreviations, appendix, bibliography, index, 438 pp.; hardcover $89.99, paperback $34.99, ebook $28. - Volume 62 Issue 1 - Eduardo Moncada

Within the growing research on the politics of crime victims are seen as resigned to their fates at the hands of powerful criminal actors. But the conventional approach to criminal victimization as a traumatic but one-time act obscures from view a layer of contentious and dynamic politics between victims and criminal actors that we have yet to anal...

Sarah Zukerman Daly, Organized Violence After Civil War: The Geography of Recruitment in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Figures, tables, maps, appendixes, bibliography, index, 344 pp.; hardcover $99.99; paperback $31.99. - Volume 60 Issue 2 - Eduardo Moncada

The state occupies a central place in the study of a range of political, economic, and social outcomes. This article brings into dialogue literature on the state and emerging research on criminal politics through a study of protection rackets. Conceiving of criminal protection rackets as institutional arrangements of extraction and domination, I de...

The practice of vigilantism raises a number of broader provocative questions regarding state–society relations. But before pursuing these questions, we must first ask a critical conceptual question: what is vigilantism? In this article, I offer a conceptual analysis of vigilantism to identify and analyse the points of conceptual discord that make v...

What shapes the ways in which major developing world cities respond to the challenge of urban violence? This books shows why and how the political projects that cities launch to confront urban violence are shaped by the interaction between urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control. It introduces business as a pivotal actor...

This chapter argues that three inter-related factors explain the historical resilience of exclusionary political order in Colombia. The first is traditional elite party control over state institutions and resources as part of a closed party system. Second is the institutionalization of clientelism as a dominant linkage between citizens and the stat...

This chapter provides a within-case analysis of contrasting outcomes in the politics of urban violence in Medellin. In the early 1990s disengaged relations between local government and business coupled with fragmented armed territorial control derailed the city’s first participatory political project in response to urban violence. A decade collabor...

This chapter shows that Bogota’s first participatory project in response to urban violence emerged out of the surprise electoral victory of Antanas Mockus to the mayor’s office. Strong support from the city’s business community coupled with the atomized nature of armed territorial control with low lethal violence and limited coordination in crimina...

This chapter outlines the challenges that urban violence poses for development and establishes why existing analytical approaches to this area of study offer limited leverage for explaining the politics of urban violence. To develop a stronger analytic approach the chapter develops a framework in response to three overarching questions: (1) What sh...

This chapter develops cross-case analyses of the politics of urban violence in Colombia to highlight how the variables and mechanisms identified in the analytic framework yield insights into the nature and trajectory of political projects in response to violence across cities. The chapter explores the generalizability of the framework’s core dimens...

Urban violence is an emerging challenge to development and democracy across Latin America. How do cities negotiate this challenge alongside pressures to compete in global markets and enable greater political participation? This paper analyzes the politics of urban violence in the intriguing case of Medellin, Colombia, which international donors and...

What explains variation in local government policy responses to urban violence? Existing research on the politics of urban violence overlooks the pivotal role that private sector interests play in shaping the public provision of security in major developing world cities faced with conditions of intense violence. I argue that business is a pivotal p...

At the start of the twenty-first century, urban violence represents one of the most significant challenges for development across much of the Global South. This essay introduces a new framework for analyzing the politics of urban violence that combines a subnational comparative perspective with multi-method and multi-level approaches. The empirical...

Mark Ungar, Policing Democracy: Overcoming Obstacles to Citizen Security in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Tables, figures, maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 389 pp.; hardcover $60, paperback $30. - Volume 55 Issue 1 - Eduardo Moncada

How do internationally informed, technology-driven efforts to democratize the police and citizen security policies in developing countries intersect with pre-existing racial dynamics and discourses? This question is relevant to scholars of both race and security in developing countries, given the current global diffusion of US policing reforms into...

The accountability of state institutions and rulers is a defining feature of democracy. The police form a key state institution that is targeted for reforms to improve its accountability. The surprising case of increased police accountability in Bogotá, Colombia demonstrates the importance of the political strategy of lateral reform, which successf...

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