Flom’s book manuscript (available at Cambridge University Press), The informal regulation of criminal markets in Latin America, analyzes how and why police tolerate, protect or prey upon drug dealers and control drug-related violence. The book focuses on an often-neglected actor, the police, and how its relationship with political authorities shapes illicit markets in metropolitan areas.
Flom argues that political turnover and fragmentation determine police autonomy, and how police employ corruption and violence to regulate drug trafficking in metropolitan areas. Regulatory arrangements in turn affect levels of criminal violence.
With low turnover, politicians can reduce police autonomy; low fragmentation allows politicians to appropriate police rents from crime while high fragmentation entices them to restrain the force’s rent extraction. In the ensuing regimes, police protect or tolerate drug dealers, exercise lower violence, and reduce homicide rates.
By contrast, with high turnover (regardless of fragmentation), police autonomy increases. Police regulation of drug trafficking features greater violence and rampant corruption and yields higher violence by criminals.
The book illustrates this argument through a sub-national, within-case comparison of four cities in Latin America since the 1980s: Buenos Aires and Rosario, in Argentina, and São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, in which the author conducted extensive fieldwork, including 180 interviews.
Read Introduction chapter here.
Hernán Flom 