Crime and violence in development : a literature review of Latin America and the Caribbean

The authors review the recent literature on crime and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean and present a broad overview of the main ideas and empirical findings. They provide estimates of the magnitude of the problem, trends, and the manifestations of crime and violence in Latin America. They also discuss the ways in which violence affects development, the root causes of violence, and the empirical evidence on the determinants of crime. The authors conclude by stressing that preventive measures and innovative social policies are efficient and underutilized strategies to address the problem and call for both more research and operational experimentation.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Adolescent Health,Youth and Governance,Children and Youth,Social Cohesion

Sanctions, Benefits, and Rights: Three Faces of Accountability

As countries throughout the world democratize and decentralize, citizen participation in public life should increase. In this paper, I suggest that democratic participation in local government is enhanced when citizens can reply affirmatively to at least three questions about their ability to hold local officials accountable for their actions: Can citizens use the vote effectively to reward and punish the general or specific performance of local public officials and/or the parties they represent? Can citizens generate response to their collective needs from local governments? Can citizens be ensured of fair and equitable treatment from public agencies at local levels? The findings of a study of 30 randomly selected municipalities in Mexico indicate that, over the course of a decade and a half, voters were able to enforce alternation in power and the circulation of elites, but not necessarily to transmit unambiguous messages to public officials or parties about performance concerns. More definitively, citizens were able to build successfully on prior political experiences to extract benefits from local governments. At the same time, the ability to demand good performance of local government as a right of citizenship lagged behind other forms of accountability.

Defining a US defence diplomacy for Brazil at the beginning of the century

At the beginning of the 1990s, the US military was apparently considered to be a significant threat by the Brazilian Armed Forces. Other military establishments in the Hemisphere likewise expressed a lack of confidence, and even a sense of fear, regarding the North Americans. After an ‘opening’ in military relations between Brazil and the United States, directed by General Barry McAfree, commander-in-chief of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in the mid 1990s, Brazilian military sentiment regarding the US marginally improved. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1990s and the beginning of this Century, the Brazilian Armed Forces again felt threatened by the unilateralism of the US military. This work examines the the concept of ‘defense diplomacy’ and the process by which the Clinton Administration initiated an experiment in conjunction with the National Defense University (Fort Leslie McNair, Washington, DC), at the request of the Deputy Assitant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, that established between 1999 and 2001 a broader understanding of possible US defense diplomacy for the subsequent seven years. I was an invited participant in this experiment, along with more than two dozen North American and Latin American academics, including Brazilians, the aim of which was to complete a proposal under contract with the Defense Department. Although it was ended soon after the Bush Administration began, this experiment, and the broader concept of ‘defense diplomacy,’ may well have represented an important option for future hemispheric military relations

The legacy of Westphalia and the emergence of post-westphalianism in South American security

El presente artículo discute el legado de Westfalia y la emergencia de una realidad postwestfaliana en los primeros años del siglo XXI; ello con el propósito de aproximarse a los estudios de la seguridad regional vigente en América del Sur. Con base en acontecimientos históricos, sociales, políticos y económicos, se constata que las naciones sudamericanas aún están construyendo sus respectivos estados westfalianos fundamentados en instituciones nacionales modernas. Al mismo tiempo esas naciones deben hacer frente a ciertas transformaciones de naturaleza postwestfaliana, como el crimen transnacional. Nuestro argumento es que para entender la evolución de la seguridad regional, se hace necesario observar simultáneamente los paradigmas westfaliano y postwestfaliano. Los estados nacionales actúan de acuerdo a los principios de Westfalia, aunque también buscan coordinar acciones colectivas y regionales con el propósito de encarar las transformaciones de naturaleza regional y global que han sido colocadas por los desafíos y preocupaciones de seguridad eminentemente postwestfalianosThis article discusses Westphalia legacy and the emergence of a post-Westphalia reality in the 21st century debate about South American security. Due to historic issues, such as social exclusion, South American nations are still building a Westphalia state anchored in modern national institutions. At the same time these nations have been facing the challenges from threats of post-Westphalian nature, such as transnational crime. The argument here is that in order to understand developments in regional security in the region, one has to regard Westphalian and post-Westphalian paradigms as complementary. National states act according to the principles of Westphalia but also seek collective and regional action in order to deal with changes at the regional and global level that have brought post-Westphalian issues to the center of security concern