Criminal Governance and Ecosystems of Local Violence
 

Explain how OCGs, often in collusion with state authorities, establish subnational criminal governance regimes to control local governments, populations, economies, and territories. Assess how OCGs use targeted lethal attacks against social, economic, and political leaders to develop local controls. Document, map, explain and predict the occurrence of these high-profile attacks and explore how they may contribute to establishing different types of local criminal orders.

• Trejo, Guillermo, and Sandra Ley. Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, Studies in Comparative Politics Series, forthcoming, summer 2020)
   
• Trejo, Guillermo and Sandra Ley. “High-Profile Criminal Violence: Why Drug Cartels Murder Government Officials and Party Candidates in Mexico.” British Journal of Political Science. Cambridge University Press, 1–27 (2019)
   
• Ley, Sandra, Shannan Mattice and Guillermo Trejo. “Indigenous Resistance to Criminal Governance in Mexico: Why Regional Ethnic Autonomy Institutions Protect Communities from Narco Rule,” Latin American Research Review 54(1) (2019)
   
• ​​​​​​Trejo, Guillermo, Natán Skigin and Carla Burgos-Morón. “Silencing the Press: Why State-Criminal Structures Murder Journalists in Mexico’s Drug Wars”. In progress.
   
• Nieto-Matiz, Camilo. “Dismantling from Below: How Criminal Coalitions hinder State Expansion. Evidence from paramilitary politics in Colombia”. In progress.
   
• Nieto-Matiz, Camilo. “When peripheries become important: Oil palm boom, violent actors and state expansion in Colombia”. In Progress.
   
• Turner, Jacob. “Democracy All the Way Down: Electoral Contestation and Violent Crime in Salvadoran Municipalities”. In Progress.