Causes of a weak state
The Economist report on lawlessness in Mexico offers some insight into the inability of the government to maintain a rule of law or law and order.If your students made a catalog of limitations on state power in Mexico based on this article, what would the list look like?
Mexico: State of siege
"In this country of just over 100m inhabitants, there were 1,600 murders in 2005 linked to organised crime, 2,200 in 2006 and more than 1,200 so far this year. When he took office on December 1st, Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderón, vowed to make the fight against organised crime his top priority. The army was promptly sent in to the worst trouble spots where the local police were either too few, too ineffectual or too corrupt to cope. Plans were also announced to restructure the less venal, but also ineffectual, federal police...
"However, a full reorganisation awaits enabling legislation. In March Mr Calderón sent a legislative package, including the proposed merger, to Congress, but it has stalled. Until it is passed, no real improvement in policing can be expected.
"César Camacho Quiroz, a deputy from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and chairman of the lower house's justice committee, objects that the package “seems dangerous” because it does not provide adequate checks and balances—and these are sorely needed in Mexico. Its National Commission on Human Rights is the “most expensive and inefficient in the world”, says Sergio Aguayo, a political commentator. The human-rights ombudsman's office is highly politicised and incapable of standing up to what Amnesty International describes as the systemic “arbitrary detention, torture, unfair trials and impunity” in the country.
"Trying to reform a justice system that cannot cope with disorganised crime, let alone the organised variety, is a Herculean task...
"Co-operation with the United States is necessary because Mexico's drug problem is ultimately America's too...
"According to America's Drug Enforcement Administration, Mexican cartels are now the dominant force in wholesale cocaine distribution in the United States. The 2007 national drug-threat assessment reports that, since 2003, Mexico's methamphetamine production has also risen sharply...
"But the real problems of Mexico's law-enforcement apparatus are systemic. Federal police account for only 6% of the country's security personnel, notes Mr Medina Mora. And however grave the problems at federal level, they are worse at state level, and even more dire locally. Samuel González Ruiz, former head of the attorney-general's organised crime unit, says that, without electoral reform, any attempt to improve policing is doomed to failure. Elections, even at the local level, are so expensive that drug money inevitably finds a way in. Unless elections are made cheaper, drug lords will always find local protectors, he says.
"Until America substantively changes its drug policy, Mexico's policymakers, capable though they may be, seem doomed to fight a losing battle. Government officials have grown fond of saying that things may have to get worse before they get better. But it is hard not to wonder whether they might not just be getting worse before they get still worse."
Labels: concepts, Mexico, state
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:33 AM
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