IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/gigawp/144.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Private Security in Guatemala: The Pathway to Its Proliferation

Author

Listed:
  • Argueta, Otto

Abstract

It has become commonplace to explain the proliferation of private security services as causally determined by crime rates and institutional weakness. By contrast, this paper ar-gues that another explanatory factor needs to be emphasized, especially for post-war so-cieties: continuity and change of social control mechanisms. The paper first presents the current situation with commercial and noncommercial private security services in Guate-mala (private security companies, as well as neighborhood security committees). Against this background, it reconstructs mechanisms and critical junctures by which the Guatema-lan state sourced out policing functions to the private sector during the war, and traces the reinforcement of these mechanisms in the post-war society. It argues that the proliferation of private security services is an outcome of the overlapping of different political processes and sequences. The continuity of social control mechanisms thereby emerges as a stronger explanatory factor for this proliferation, rather than the common justification of high crime rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Argueta, Otto, 2010. "Private Security in Guatemala: The Pathway to Its Proliferation," GIGA Working Papers 144, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:gigawp:144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/47865/1/647492431.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lambach, Daniel, 2007. "Oligopolies of Violence in Post-Conflict Societies," GIGA Working Papers 62, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    2. Huhn, Sebastian & Oettler, Anika & Peetz, Peter, 2006. "Construyendo Inseguridades. Aproximaciones a la violencia en Centroamérica desde el análisis del discurso [Constructed insecurities. Discourse analysis and the understanding of violence in Central ," GIGA Working Papers 34, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    3. Godoy, Lorena & Arriagada, Irma, 2000. "Prevention or repression? The false dilemma of citizen security," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gregorio Giménez Esteban, 2007. "Violence and Growth in Latin America," Economic Analysis Working Papers (2002-2010). Atlantic Review of Economics (2011-2016), Colexio de Economistas de A Coruña, Spain and Fundación Una Galicia Moderna, vol. 6, pages 1-34, July.
    2. World Bank, 2010. "Crime and Violence in Central America : A Development Challenge - Executive Summary," World Bank Publications - Reports 2979, The World Bank Group.
    3. Thomas Vervisch & Kristof Titeca & Koen Vlassenroot & Johan Braeckman, 2013. "Social Capital and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Burundi: The Limits of Community-based Reconstruction," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 44(1), pages 147-174, January.
    4. Moser, Caroline O.N. & McIlwaine, Cathy, 2006. "Latin American Urban Violence as a Development Concern: Towards a Framework for Violence Reduction," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 89-112, January.
    5. Mehler, Andreas, 2008. "Breaking the "Insecurity Trap"? How Violence and Counter-violence are Perpetuated in Elite Power Struggles," GIGA Working Papers 87, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    6. Jana Morgan & Nathan J. Kelly, 2010. "Explaining Public Attitudes toward Fighting Inequality in Latin America," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2(3), pages 79-111, August.
    7. Cathy McIlwaine & Caroline Moser, 2003. "Poverty, violence and livelihood security in urban Colombia and Guatemala," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 3(2), pages 113-130, April.
    8. Peetz, Peter, 2008. "Discourses on Violence in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua: Laws and the Construction of Drug- and Gender-Related Violence," GIGA Working Papers 72, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    9. Oettler, Anika, 2008. "Do Qualitative Data Help in Addressing Central American Violence? Research Note on Data Collection," GIGA Working Papers 76, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:gigawp:144. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dueiide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.