Carlos Solar - Government and Governance of Security: The Politics of Organised Crime in Chile

At a time when Latin America is experiencing societal unrest from human rights violations, corruption and weak institutions Government and Governance of Security offers an insightful understanding for the modern steering of crime policies. Using Chile as a case study, the book delivers an untold account of the trade-offs between political, judicial and policing institutions put in practice to confront organised crime since the countrys redemocratisation.

In an effort to encompass the academic fields of political science, public policy and criminology, Carlos Solar challenges the current orthodoxies for understanding security and the promotion of the rule of law in developing states. His research aptly illuminates the practicalities of present-day governance and investigates how networks of institutions are formed and sustained across time and, subsequently, how these actors deal with issues of policy consensus and cooperation. To unveil the uniqueness of this on-the-ground action, the analysis is based on an extensive revision of public documents, legislation, media accounts and interviews conducted by the author with the key policy makers and officials dealing with crimes including drug-trafficking, money laundering and human smuggling.

Government and Governance of Security will be of interest to scholars of Latin American studies, security and governance and development.

Carlos Solar is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Latin American Centre in the University of Oxford. He has published in the Journal of Strategic Studies, International Politics, Global Crime, Latin American Policy, Democracy and Security and Mexican Studies.

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Government and Governance of Security
The Politics of Organised Crime in Chile
Carlos Solar

First published 2018

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ISBN: 978-1-138-06484-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-16015-3 (ebk)

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Since the return to democracy in March 1990, Chiles elected authorities have been challenged by security threats that put to test the policy-making capabilities of many different institutions of the state apparatus. Against this idea, at least three arguments found in the academic literature seem appropriate to emphasise:

Key political landmarks, such as redemocratisation, expose the strengths and weakness of states trying to confront security issues.

Public security actors are most of the time unaware of the perils associated with novel security threats and tend to assess them in very ad-hoc ways.

State and non-state agencies deal with policy challenges through inter-connected ways; however, so far we know very little about how these governance structures have come to be.

This book argues on these issues to explore how developing states have transitioned from authoritarian eras of inward and hierarchical patterns of security governance, to more horizontal and interactive policy networks for security purposes. Through the case study of Chile, the book gives a detailed historical account on how different state bureaucracies have steered the governance of modern crime since 1990. It focuses on what public institutions have come to understand as the phenomenon of organised crime. In the policy world, this loosely-understood criminal occurrence incorporates issues such as drug trafficking, money laundering and human smuggling. The books main contribution to the bulk of the literature is to tell the unknown story of how modern policy developments have been set up to deal with such vices and what future they might have in a changing political, economic and societal environment.

I am thankful to Adam White and Martin Smith for giving me the so much needed academic inspiration to push governance studies forward. Fiona Macaulay and Patricio Silva offered me critical input and raised many points to improve the manuscript, for which I am very grateful. I owe a special thanks to Rosie Abbots, Neil Carter, Nina Caspersen, Liam Clegg, Louise Haagh, Tony Heron, Liz OBrien and Lisa Webster for their kind support during my graduate and postdoctoral days at the University of York. For the research and writing of this project I was a visiting fellow at the Universit de Montral, and at the University of California, Los Angeles; thanks to the support of Carlo Morselli, Benot Dupont and Hugo Hopenhayn. I need to single out Andreas Feldmann at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who has been extremely helpful to me since my Masters degree at Universidad Catlica in Chile. I am also grateful for the assistance given toward the publication of this book at the Latin American Centre in Oxford, especially, Lucy Driver, Simn Escoffier, Leigh Payne and Diego Snchez-Ancochea. I would also like to express my appreciation to Natalja Mortensen, Mara Landschoot at the Routledge office in New York, and Lyn Taylor, for their invaluable contribution to make this project happen, and to the anonymous reviewer who offered thoughtful ideas on previous versions of the text. The manuscript, however, is my sole responsibility and any shortcomings are mine alone. Finally, I am indebted to my parents, Carlos and Marietta for their infinite love and encouragement; my brother, Jos and his family; and, to my wife, Josefina, to whom I dedicate this book.