| Grant number: | 19/14105-5 |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral |
| Start date: | September 01, 2019 |
| End date: | August 31, 2021 |
| Field of knowledge: | Humanities - Political Science - State and Government |
| Principal Investigator: | Eduardo Cesar Leão Marques |
| Grantee: | Cecilia Pe Lero |
| Host Institution: | Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil |
| Associated research grant: | 13/07616-7 - CEM - Center for Metropolitan Studies, AP.CEPID |
Abstract When states are unwilling or unable to effectively provide for the basic needs of their citizens, including health, education, economic activity, and especially security and justice, they create vacuums of power and influence. Sometimes, these vacuums are filled by local political bosses or coroneis that claim some formal allegiance to the central state, but essentially govern the societies and economies of the territories under their control according to their own interests and visions. While these bosses may claim to be legal functionaries of the central state, the direct control they exercise in their respective territories means that social and economic actors often hold more loyalty to the boss and his machine than to the central state. As a result, the boss acts as an intermediary between the population and the central state, using the resources and legitimacy he is able to extract from the population to negotiate further resources and legitimacy from the central state, and vice-versa. Other times, these vacuums are filled by groups that do not pretend to be subsidiaries of the state, but rather act outside the realm of what is recognized and permitted by the central state, such as criminal organizations. These groups seem to be naturally at odds with the state as they engage in illegal markets and compete with the state for the monopoly of legitimate violence. On the other hand, however, they may act in parallel with or complementarily to the state, providing basic services and general control over communities in a way that is more effective and efficient than state forces. Particularly, using Mann's concept of infrastructural power as the capacity to "actually penetrate civil society and implement its actions across territories" (2008), when the criminal organization has substantially more infrastructural power than the state, state authorities may choose to cut their losses and take a hands-off approach to exercising power over the territory. Thus, instead of directly confronting the criminal organization, they acquiesce, and sometimes participate, to the organization being primary regulator of a particular market, provider of a particular service, or legitimate controller of violence in a given territory. The aim of this research is to test hypotheses about the relationship between criminal organizations, access to state-provided basic services, violence, and economic activity. The hypotheses that are to be tested have been suggested in previous studies investigating the Primeiro Commando do Capital (PCC), particularly Feltran (2018, 2012, and 2010). (AU) | |
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