Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Logic of Armed Violence in Drug Wars

自2006年总统费利佩·卡尔德龙(Felipe Calderón)引入军队打击墨西哥的贩毒活动以来，已有1万多人死于一波武装暴力浪潮，目前这波暴力有可能越过边境蔓延到美国。总的来说，贩毒组织(DTO)对国家军队的持续攻击是罕见的。与革命叛乱和其他激进组织不同，DTO不寻求推翻国家、强制进行重大改革或宣扬分离主义主张。相反，他们寻求利润最大化，他们的运作方式，甚至直到最近在墨西哥，都是使用匿名、贿赂、威胁和其他类型的杠杆，以最大限度地减少与国家力量的对抗。墨西哥卡特尔突然转向暴力战略，自然会让人将其与哥伦比亚相提并论：正是因为巴勃罗·埃斯科瓦尔在20世纪90年代初对哥伦比亚政府的攻击和恐吓，才让他统治的哥伦比亚臭名昭著。一个不那么明显但同样重要的比较案例是巴西里约热内卢正在进行的毒品战争。那里的DTO已经控制了20多年的重要领土，并经常攻击国家军队，尽管(或因为？)一项军事化的警察镇压政策，每年杀害数千名平民。在所有这三个案例中，DTO对国家的厚颜无耻的攻击都造成了与内战一样的社会混乱。这就提出了一个难题：贩毒集团从反国家暴力中获得了什么？贩毒集团发动袭击是因为他们绝望了，就像卡尔德龙总统所说的那样，还是因为他们强大，知道他们可以恐吓国家行为者？腐败是降低了暴力的吸引力(通过为贿赂提供便利)，还是增加了吸引力(因为腐败国家不能进行强有力的反击)？这项研究询问在什么条件下贩毒集团的攻击是有意义的，为什么。特别是，它侧重于国家安全机构的结构以及他们对最终形成DO动机的政策反应的条件。这项研究将创建并传播关于DTO与墨西哥和巴西国家军队之间暴力对抗的第一个全面数据集，以哥伦比亚现有的数据集为模型。数据将从覆盖4-8年的报纸报道中收集，将包括辛迪加的反国家袭击、国家军队的袭击以及辛迪加之间的冲突。在影响方面，这个项目的见解可能会帮助各州减少暴力，改善法治，并最终拯救生命。此外，该项目将为墨西哥和巴西的研究人员提供关于武装暴力关键事件的可靠数据，弥补我们经验知识中的一个重大差距，并允许对三个国家的冲突事件进行新的跨国比较。最后，研究具有“纯粹”利益动机的贩毒集团的反国家暴力将有助于我们理解重要的“混合”案件，即日益依赖毒品利润为其行动提供资金的哥伦比亚革命武装力量和塔利班等恐怖和叛乱组织。

Since 2006, when President Felipe Calderón brought in the army to combat drug trafficking in Mexico, more than 10,000 people have died in a wave of armed violence that now threatens to spill over the border into the U.S. In general, sustained attacks on state forces by drug trafficking organizations (DTO) are rare. Unlike revolutionary insurgencies and other radical groups, DTOs do not seek to overthrow the state, force major reforms, or stake secessionist claims. Rather, they seek to maximize profit, and their modus operandi, even in Mexico until recently, is to use anonymity, bribes, threats, and other types of leverage to minimize confrontations with state forces. The abrupt switch by Mexico's cartels to a strategy of violence leads naturally to a comparison with Colombia: it was precisely Pablo Escobar's attacks on and attempts to intimidate the Colombian state in the early 1990s that made his reign of 'narcoterror' infamous. A less obvious but equally important case for comparison is the ongoing drug war in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. DTOs there have held significant territory for more than two decades and frequently attacked state forces despite (or because of?) a policy of militarized police repression that kills thousands of civilians every year. In all three cases, DTOs' brazen attacks on the state contribute to social disruption on par with that of civil wars. This poses a puzzle: what do drug syndicates gain from anti-state violence? Do drug cartels attack because they are desperate, as President Calderón would have it, or because they are strong, and know they can intimidate state actors? Does corruption make violence less attractive (by facilitating bribes) or more so (since a corrupt state cannot strike back forcefully)? This study asks under what conditions it makes sense for drug syndicates to attack, and why. In particular, it focuses on the structure of state security institutions and the way they condition those policy responses that ultimately shape the incentives of DTOs.This study will create and disseminate the first comprehensive datasets on violent confrontations between DTOs and state forces in Mexico and Brazil, modeled after an existing dataset for Colombia. Data will be collected from newspaper reports that cover a 4-8 year period, and will include anti-state attacks by syndicates, attacks by state forces, and clashes among syndicates. In terms of impact, the insights from this project may help states reduce violence, improve the rule of law, and ultimately save lives. In addition, this project will provide researchers in Mexico and Brazil with reliable data on key episodes of armed violence, addressing a major gap in our empirical knowledge and permitting new cross-national comparisons of conflict events in three countries. Finally, studying anti-state violence by drug syndicates with "pure" profit motives will help us understand important 'mixed' cases, i.e. terrorist and insurgent groups like Colombia's FARC and the Taliban that increasingly rely on drug profits to fund their actions.