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High-Profile Criminal Violence: Why Drug Cartels Murder Government Officials and Party Candidates in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2019

Guillermo Trejo Open the ORCID record for Guillermo Trejo [Opens in a new window]  and
Sandra Ley Open the ORCID record for Sandra Ley [Opens in a new window]
Guillermo Trejo*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame
Sandra Ley
Affiliation:
Division of Political Studies, CIDE, Mexico City
*
*Corresponding author. Email: gtrejo@nd.edu
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Abstract

This article explains a surprising wave of lethal attacks by drug cartels against hundreds of local elected officials and party candidates in Mexico, 2007–2012. These attacks are puzzling because criminal organizations tend to prefer the secrecy of bribery over the publicity of political murder. Scholars suggest that war drives armed actors to attack state authorities in search of protection or rents. Using original data on high-profile attacks in Mexico, the authors show that war need arguments underexplain violence. Focusing on political opportunities, they suggest that cartels use attacks to establish criminal governance regimes and conquer local governments, populations and territories. The study presents quantitative and qualitative evidence showing that cartels took advantage of Mexico's political polarization and targeted subnational authorities who were unprotected by their federal partisan rivals. Cartels intensified attacks during subnational election cycles to capture incoming governments and targeted geographically adjacent municipalities to establish control over large territories. The findings reveal how cartels take cues from the political environment to develop their own de facto political domains through high-profile violence. These results question the widely shared assumption that organized criminal groups are apolitical actors.

Keywords

drug cartelshigh-profile criminal attacksintergovernmental partisan conflictelection cyclesmayorsparty candidatescriminal governance
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 203 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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