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Abstract
After nearly seven years of ever-escalating violence related to the Mexican ‘war on drugs’, in 2013 Mexico entered the International Crisis Group’s (icg) ‘observatory’ of countries facing a violent crisis. In this article we critically interrogate this ‘Mexican turn’ of the icg, as well as its accompanying forms of crisis knowledge production. By applying analytical insights from critical policy analysis and postcolonial security studies, we highlight the Western-centrism embedded in the icg’s perspective on Mexico’s security crisis. In analysing this perspective on questions of drug trafficking, statehood and indigenous justice, we demonstrate how this Western-centrism produces a de-politicising and overly technocratic crisis narrative. The article concludes that, through its Western-centric ‘Mexican turn’, the icg has been able to reaffirm its standing as a uniquely influential and internationally recognised crisis expert by showcasing its awareness of newly emerging crisis situations, as well as its possession of the necessary crisis-solving expertise.
Acknowledgements
Research for this article was carried out within the context of the Collaborative Research Center (sfb) 700 – Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood, located at the Freie Universität Berlin and funded by the German Research Foundation (dfg). We thank Birte Keller for her invaluable research assistance.
Notes
1. Fox, “The Difficult Transition,” 154.
2. Padilla, Rural Resistance.
3. Pansters, “Zones of State-making,” 32.
4. Snyder and Durán Martínez, “Drugs, Violence,” 64. See also Pimentel, “The Nexus of Organized Crime”; and Kenny and Serrano, “The Mexican State.”
5. Müller, Public Security; Snyder and Durán Martíenz, “Drugs, Violence,” 73–77; and Watt and Zepeda, Drug War Mexico, 140–178.
6. Snyder and Durán Martíenz, “Drugs, Violence,” 79.
7. Koonings, “New Violence.”
8. Brister, Forget al-Quaeda.
9. Abrahamsen, “African Studies,” 198.
10. Seth, “Introduction,” 1.
11. Said, Orientalism.
12. Mignolo, The Dark Side of Western Modernity, 205 (emphasis added).
13. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 36 (emphasis in the original).
14. Stepputat, “Knowledge Production,” 440.
15. Hönke and Müller, “Governing (In)Security.”
16. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception, 139.
17. Ibid. See also Barkawi and Laffey, “The Postcolonial Moment.”
18. Hobson, “The Other Side of the Westphalian Frontier,” 32.
19. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception, 325.
20. Howarth and Griggs, “Poststructuralist Policy Analysis,” 310.
21. Li, The Will to Improve.
22. Ibid., 10.
23. Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine, 21.
24. This notion has been borrowed from Burnham, “New Labour.”
25. Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 183.
26. Mosse, “Politics and Ethics,” 61.
27. See Dezalay and Garth, The Internationalization of Palace Wars.
28. Greene, “Framing and Escaping,” 49.
29. Woodside-Jiron, “Language, Power and Participation,” 177.
30. icg, Colombia and its Neighbours.
31. icg, War and Drugs, 3.
32. icg, Latin American Drugs I; and icg, Latin American Drugs II.
33. icg, Latin American Drugs I. See also icg, War and Drugs, 27.
34. icg, War and Drugs, 27, fn. 219.
35. Andreas and Nadelmann, Policing the Globe, 45.
36. Feldman, “Securocratic Wars,” 336.
37. icg, Latin American Drugs I, 1.
38. Ibid., 23–26.
39. Ibid., 27.
40. Ibid., 23.
41. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 5.
42. icg, War and Drugs, 27.
43. See Watt and Zepeda, Drug War Mexico, 93–95; and Scott, “Drugs.”
44. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 15.
45. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla.
46. Gurman, “Introduction,” 4.
47. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 36.
48. Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, 43.
49. Williams, “Counterinsurgency and Community Policing,” 90.
50. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 35.
51. Ibid., 36.
52. Ibid.
53. Davis, “Zero-tolerance Policing”; and Becker and Müller, “The Securitization of Urban Space.”
54. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 2.
55. Kenny and Serrano, “Introduction,” 9.
56. Hill, “Beyond the Other?”, 148.
57. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 2.
58. Rotberg, When States Fail, 7.
59. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 2–3.
60. icg, Guatemala, i.
61. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 2–3, 31.
62. Ghani and Lockhart, Fixing Failed States, 20, 24 (emphasis added).
63. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 44.
64. Müller, “De-monopolizing the Bureaucratic Field.”
65. icg, Justice at the Barrel of a Gun, 8.
66. Hill, “Beyond the Other,” 148 (emphasis added).
67. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception, 11.
68. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 31.
69. Manwaring, “Security, Stability and Sovereignty,” 166.
70. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 7.
71. Ibid., 34.
72. Morton, “The War on Drugs,” 1635.
73. Chandler, Empire in Denial, 89.
74. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 34.
75. Ibid., 39.
76. Ibid., 25.
77. Call, “The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State’,” 1500.
78. Reiner, The Politics of the Police, 34.
79. Hills, Policing Post-conflict Cities.
80. Haberfeld and Gideon, “Introduction.” 8.
81. Brogden and Ellison, Policing in an Age of Austerity, 9–13.
82. Müller, Public Security. On the over-politicisation of Mexican policing, see also Sabet, Police Reform in Mexico; Bergman, Seguridad pública; and Davis, “Policing and Regime Change.”
83. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 38.
84. On this issue, see Debiel and Lambach, “How State-building Strategies.”
85. Call, “The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State’,” 1496.
86. Aguiar, “The Ambivalent Relation,” 111.
87. Morton, “The War on Drugs,” 1642.
88. Goldstein, “In Our Own Hands”; Handy, “Chicken Thieves”; Huggins, Vigilantism and the State; and Snodgrass Godoy, Popular Injustice.
89. icg, Peña Nieto’s Challenge, 28.
90. icg, Justice at the Barrel of a Gun, 2.
91. Ibid., 3.
92. Ibid., 9.
93. Ibid., 15, 16.
94. Ibid., 15.
95. Ibid., 1.
96. Gledhill, “Violence and Reconstitution,” 243.
97. icg, Justice at the Barrel of a Gun, 16.
98. Hale, “Neoliberal Multiculturalism.”
99. Gledhill, “Violence and Reconstitution,” 243, 247.
100. Johnson, “When the Poor Police Themselves,” 280.
101. See Alonso, “Territorializing the Nation.”
102. icg, Justice at the Barrel of a Gun, 8–9.
103. Johnson, “When the Poor Police Themselves,” 172.
104. Ibid.
105. Doyle, “La guerra sucia.”
106. Sierra, “Indigenous Justice,” 34.
107. Ibid., 38.
108. icg, Justice at the Barrel of a Gun, 9, 2.
109. Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 329.
110. icg, Justice at the Barrel of a Gun, 2.
111. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception, 6.
112. Dezalay and Garth, “Hegemonic Battles”, 280.
113. Dezalay and Garth, The Internationalization of Palace Wars, 249–250.