Introduction -- Violence in third wave democracies -- Appendix to chapter -- Engaging the theoretical debate and alternative arguments -- Appendix to chapter -- The argument about homicidal ecologies -- Illicit economies and territorial enclaves: -- The transnational context and domestic footprint -- State capacity and organizational competition: -- Strategic calculations about territory and violence -- Appendix to chapter -- Divergent trajectories in Central America: -- Post-Civil War cases -- Preface -- High violence in post-Civil-War Guatemala -- Appendix to chapter -- High violence in post-Civil War El Salvador -- Appendix to chapter -- Circumscribing violence in post-civil war Nicaragua -- Appendix to chapter -- Looking backwards and forwards -- Concluding with states
Summary
Why has violence spiked in Latin America's contemporary democracies? What explains its temporal and spatial variation? Analyzing the region's uneven homicide levels, this book maps out a theoretical agenda focusing on three intersecting factors: the changing geography of transnational illicit political economies; the varied capacity and complicity of state institutions tasked with providing law and order; and organizational competition to control illicit territorial enclaves. These three factors inform the emergence of 'homicidal ecologies' (subnational regions most susceptible to violence) in Latin America. After focusing on the contemporary causes of homicidal violence, the book analyzes the comparative historical origins of weak and complicit public security forces and the rare moments in which successful institutional reform takes place. Regional trends in Latin America are evaluated, followed by original case studies of Central America, which claims among the highest homicide rates in the world
