Democracy and Violence

Client: University, Centro de Investigación y Docencias Económicas (CIDE), 2014

»Democracia y Violencia« within the research project »Ciudadania y violencia organizada en México« coordinated by Andreas Schedler, Department for Political Studies, CIDE.
Graphic design and technique: Stefan Gassner

Founded in 2014, Democracy and Violence is currently hosted at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico City.

In a democracy, societal violence concerns all citizens. Even when it claims its victims from some groups only. The international research network Democracy and Violence is a worldwide forum of social scientists who study societal violence in democracies. Its forms and patterns, its social and institutional bases, its causes and consequences.

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Picture credits © Hermann Nitsch and Shaul Schwarz (Narcoculture)

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Journal article by Andreas Schedler

Threats to the integrity of electoral democracy are manifold. The comparative literature has focused on “vertical” threats: the manipulation of elections by central governments. This article, by contrast, draws attention to “horizontal” threats: the societal subversion of democratic elections by criminal violence. It analyzes the so-called drug war in Mexico to illustrate the chilling effects private organized violence has on electoral democracy. After tracing the origins of Mexico’s new internal war, the article documents the damages it bears on the democratic integrity of elections as well as on surrounding rights and liberties.

Link to the full text: http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/criminal-subversion-mexican-democracy

Agora: Photos by Shaul Schwarz Reportage by Getty Images for National Geographic

TIJUANA, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MX – JUNE 10 , 2009: Junkies with a tattoos, some of La Santa Muerte, hanging out on the ridge of the Rio Grande River basin on the the Tijuana side of the San Diego border region. It is common to see junkies in “picaderos,” or shooting galleries, shooting heroin along the border separating Mexico and the U.S., uninterrupted by nearby border patrol agents or Mexican police. Tijuana, a city of 1.3 million, has the highest prevalence of drug use in Mexico. The more than 2,000 mile border separating Mexico and the U.S forms the most extensive land frontier separating a developed and developing country.

JUAREZ, MEXICO: DEC. 17, 2008 – Inside the car where a man and a woman were gunned down by assassins. The death industry is booming in the city of Juarez. Since Mexican President Felipi Calderon launched a ‘war on drugs’ at the start of 2007 Mexico has seen nothing but bloodshed — the number of murders has quadrupled in Juarez and doubled across the country — With approx. 1,600 deaths in 2008, Jaurez is now the deadliest city in the world, per capita.