Making Peace in Drug Wars
Crackdowns and Cartels in Latin America

State crackdowns on drug cartels often backfire, producing entrenched 'cartel-state conflict'; deterrence approaches have curbed violence but proven fragile. This book explains why.

Benjamin Lessing (Author)

9781316648964, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 December 2017

354 pages, 41 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.49 kg

'This book indeed hits the nail on the head on how violence is produced by the incentives of the drug wars and prohibition laws and how this violence is greatly amplified by state actions and policies.' Miguel A. Cabañas, Rutgers

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.

1. Introduction
Part I. A Theory of Cartel-State Conflict: 2. What is cartel-state conflict?
3. Logics of violence in cartel-state conflict
4. Modeling violent corruption and lobbying
Part II. Case Studies: 5. Colombia: conditionality to contain a killer
6. Rio de Janeiro: conditionality, one favela at a time
7. Mexico: conditionality abandoned
Part III. Conditional Repression as Outcome: 8. The challenge of implementing conditionality
9. Explaining reform efforts' success: key factors and alternative hypotheses
10. The challenge of sustaining conditionality
11. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Human rights [JPVH], Central government [JPQ], Comparative politics [JPB], Drugs trade / drug trafficking [JKVG], Sociology [JHB]