Project description
Welfare and criminal governance in Latin America
Criminal organisations such as gangs and cartels can undermine democracy in strong welfare states by exerting control through criminal governance. Current theories fail to explain their presence in these environments. The ERC-funded CRIMLATAM project aims to develop a new theory and conduct empirical analysis to show how a state’s welfare capacity constrains criminal governance. It argues that a strong welfare system allows residents to rely on state services, reducing their dependence on criminal groups and limiting criminal organisations’ influence. The project will study unusual cases in Puerto Limón (Costa Rica), Rosario (Argentina), and Santiago (Chile), using surveys and qualitative fieldwork to reach hard-to-access populations affected by criminal governance.
Objective
The impact of criminal organisations—gangs, mafias, drug cartels—in otherwise democratic societies can be severe. With the goal of profiting from illicit markets, they can control communities’ lives through criminal governance. As a result, they affect the quality of democracy by exacerbating vulnerabilities and forging anti-democratic preferences. Yet, we have a limited understanding of how criminal governance operates in these settings.
CRIMLATAM breaks new ground in political science by developing a new theory and empirical analysis to show how states’ capacity to provide welfare constrains criminal governance. Current theories, devised for weak, absent, or repressive states, cannot explain why criminal organizations operate in states with high capacity for welfare provision, nor can they make predictions about the nature of criminal governance in these unexpected places. This project posits that when there is an expansive welfare state, residents rely on its services and can also manage everyday life without resorting to criminal groups. Expansive welfare constrains criminal organizations’ actions limiting the scope of criminal governance.
Methodologically pioneering, the project relies on the systematic in-depth analysis of three unexpected cases: the cities of Puerto Limón in Costa Rica, Rosario in Argentina, and Santiago in Chile. It combines qualitative fieldwork with network-scale-up methods and list experiments embedded in a survey. It focuses on accessing hard-to-reach populations who experience criminal governance but whose voices and perspectives are largely missing from research, resulting in limited validity, reliability and impact of current knowledge.
The project will significantly improve our understanding of one of the most serious and persistent challenges for democracies today by demonstrating that governments can make choices, largely related to social welfare and security policy, that reduce the societal impact of criminal organisations.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology governance
- social sciences political sciences government systems democracy
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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4 Dublin
Ireland
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