The Local Dimensions of Criminal Governance in Brazil

• In Event: From Tech to Informality: Challenges to Traditional Urban Governance

Abstract

The study of criminal governance has focused largely on a handful of cases in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Although these studies have made major theoretical and empirical contributions, this emphasis on a small selection of important cases, primarily Rio de Janeiro and sometimes São Paulo in Brazil, imposes limitations on inferences regarding spatial diffusion of criminal governance or effects of urban geography on distinct types of governance and violence. This project aims to systematically explore a broader selection of urban agglomerations and rural areas in Brazil. It is well established that criminal and parastatal groups have been spreading their presence across the country, establishing control over large portions of territory, exporting modes of governance, and maintaining relations of political hierarchy between center and periphery of their areas of territorial influence – not entirely distinct from core-periphery relations in traditional nation-states and empires or rebel groups and other violent transnational non-state actors. This project draws together scholarship on state formation, criminal governance, and rebel governance to explore local forms of criminal governance and the geographic factors affecting patterns of criminal and political violence in Brazilian cities and derive theoretical insights that may be extended to other cases beyond Brazil.

Authors

• Daniel Rio Tinto, Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV)

• Eduardo Mello, FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas)