Politics, Violence, Organized Crime: Global and Local Dimensions

The first decades of the century have seen several challenges to the idea of international law and society, as well as the general propositions of a liberal international order. The leading premise of this panel is to explore the causes, manifestations, and the idea of criminal governance, which is by no means complex, however, we consider that in a moment of stress in the contemporary political process, mainly in Latin America, the theme emerges with centrality. In contrast to other regions in the world where populist contestations and erosion of democracy have been taking place since the early 2010s, societal violence was already high in Latin America, e.g., among the 50 most violent cities in the world, 43 are in Latin America. This situation has led to a perfect storm to escalate violence combining structural inequalities, the weak rule of law, the emergence of populism, and embedded organized crime in several regions within countries. Latin America requires long-term policies, this section discusses how effective or not the current strategies of militarization, contestations to liberal economic policies and democracy, reduction of corruption, and strengthening the rule of law are to manage or reduce violence in the region.