Abstract
In several Latin American countries, social violence has risen to warlike levels. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the extent of social violence and the new (informal) forms of governance generated by the so-called violent nonstate actors (VNSAs). Where a state’s forces fail to provide for the physical protection and social security of its citizens, some areas are governed by a mix of formal (vertical) and informal (horizontal) forms of governance, mixing state and nonstate actors. In these socially bounded spaces, nonstate actors produce and distribute public goods similarly as the state does. In this article, we explore how hybrid governance has appeared in the South American region, considering the operation of two regional VNSAs, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in Brazil and the Bandas Criminales (BACRIM) in Colombia. We show that such VNSAs are significant agents for security governance, as they challenge preconceived notions of state authority (legitimacy).
Highlights
Traditional studies in international security and peace studies have paid almost no attention to governance dynamics involving the extent of social violence and the new forms of governance generated by agents labelled as violent nonstate actors (VNSAs)
Scholars have contributed to the analysis of the forms of governance produced with the rise of VNSAs (e.g., Arjona 2016; and Villa and Souza 2019), we observe an empirical gap in the study of how VNSAs contribute to the formation of hybrid governance in some regions of the world, where state authority seems to govern but is sharing, ceding, or complementing the “governance” offered by VNSAs
Following previous efforts (Arjona 2016; Villa and Souza 2019; Villa, Chagas-Bastos, and Braga 2019; Ferreira 2020), we suggest that a parallel dynamic may be at play, where by nonstate armed actors engage in horizontal modes of governance over spaces and populations to the extent that they provide alternative forms of welfare, employment, and meaning, by operating as the functional equivalents of states wherever formal state governance is perceived as weak or contested
Summary
In several Latin American countries, social violence has risen to warlike levels. little attention has been paid to the extent of social violence and the new (informal) forms of governance generated by the so-called violent nonstate actors (VNSAs). Where a state’s forces fail to provide for the physical protection and social security of its citizens, some areas are governed by a mix of formal (vertical) and informal (horizontal) forms of governance, mixing state and nonstate actors. We explore how hybrid governance has appeared in the South American region, considering the operation of two regional VNSAs, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in Brazil and the Bandas Criminales (BACRIM) in Colombia. We show that such VNSAs are significant agents for security governance, as they challenge preconceived notions of state authority (legitimacy). Mostramos que tais VNSAs são agentes significativos para compreender a governança securitária na região, visto que desafiam noções preconcebidas sobre a autoridade estatal (legitimidade)
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