Suchergebnisse

The negotiated state and policing in Mexico -- The contemporary Mexico City police -- Policing and capital city politics -- The transnationalization of policing in Mexico City -- Neighborhood images: policing in Coyoacán and Iztapalapa -- Looking beyond Mexico

AbstractThis article offers an analysis of the transnational discursive construction processes informing Latin American security governance in the aftermath of 9/11. It demonstrates that the Global War on Terror provided an opportunity for external and aligned local knowledge producers in the security establishments throughout the Americas to reframe Latin America's security problems through the promotion of a militarised security epistemology, and derived policies, centred on the region's 'convergent threats'. In tracing the discursive repercussions of this epistemic reframing, the article shows that, by tapping into these discourses, military bureaucracies throughout the Americas were able to overcome their previous institutional marginalisation vis-à-vis civilian agencies. This development contributed to the renaissance of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism discourses and policies in the region, allowing countries such as Colombia and Brazil to reposition themselves globally by exporting their military expertise for confronting post-9/11 threats beyond the region.

Through the lens of Bourdieusian field theory, this article examines the transnationalization of the urban security field in contemporary Mexico City. It demonstrates that while the local bureaucratic field has held a monopoly over the definition of security issues, previously marginalized actors situated outside of the local security field used the political opportunity created by the intersection of the democratization of local politics, the neoliberalization of the Mexican economy and rising crime rates since the mid-1990s to deploy "internationalization strategies" to confront the bureaucratic field's definitional authority over urban security. While the resulting struggles within the urban security field undermined the dominance of the bureaucratic field and contributed to a growing transnationalization of urban security governance, the analysis shows how, because of the "two-tiered" nature of the transnational urban security field, these processes did not improve the overall security situation in the city.

This paper applies Loïc Wacquant's work on penal statecraft to analyze the growing punitiveness of urban politics in contemporary Mexico City. It demonstrates that the intersection of the urbanization of neoliberalism and the democratization of local politics contributed to the emergence of a punitive regime of governing urban marginality in the city. This indicates the consolidation of a punitive urban democracy in which despite the formal legal empowerment of the city's residents during the last two decades, those at the urban margins face a reverse process of punitive exclusion that takes the form of a criminalization of poverty. In taking a closer look at the situation within the local penal apparatus, the paper furthermore shows that these exclusionary tendencies are reinforced by informal institutional practices inside the local law enforcement bureaucracies.

Notwithstanding the democratization processes that have taken place since the 1980s, clientelism continues to be an important political practice throughout contemporary Latin America. By offering an analysis of the changing patterns of patron–client exchanges in Mexico City, this article demonstrates how the repercussions of the local democratization process expanded clientelist practices to the realm of public security provision. This expansion, it is argued, is related to efforts of the local government to regain previous levels of political control over the local police forces that had been undermined by the fragmentation of long-standing national patron–client structures under authoritarian rule. Additionally, it is demonstrated that in an increasingly insecure urban environment, local politicians and brokers realized the political gains to be derived from expanding clientelist exchanges to the realm of security provision.

AbstractThis article analyses citizen–police relations in the marginalised Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa. It demonstrates that despite predominantly negative perceptions about and experiences with the police, local residents do not abandon state institutions as security providers. The article claims that as formal and informal access to the legal and coercive powers of the police provides an important resource for local residents needing to resolve individual or collective security problems and conflicts in their favour, local police forces continue to be addressed and imagined by residents as relevant security actors.

Die Polizei spielt in der gegenwärtigen Weltpolitik eine gewachsene Rolle. Die wachsende Zentralität urbaner Räume in internationalen Interventionen führt zu einem Umdenken in militärischen Strategien und Einsatzprotokollen, das sich in einer zunehmenden operativen Annäherung des Militärs an die Polizei niederschlägt. Der Verfasser nimmt eine allgemeine Bestimmung des Begriffs "Polizei" vor. Er geht im Folgenden auf Spezifika der Beziehung zwischen Polizei und (post-)kolonialem Regieren ein. In einem zweiten Teil wird ein Überblick über die Beiträge des Heftes gegeben. (ICE2)