The Governance of Organised Crime in Chile 1990-2014

The redemocratisation of Chile set an important landmark for the governing of the country’s security. Despite the initial effort undertaken by the democratically elected authorities to ensure the rule of law, the passing of time soon exposed the state’s limited capacity for confronting the pressing risks that came along with more openness in the country. The perilous evidence of organised crime swarming in the country caught many of the country’s public security actors unaware and thus confused regarding their response. A series of factors undermining an encompassing response to complex criminality were evident. Public security institutions lacked the knowledge, skills, and resources and, what is more, they were highly divorced from one another due to their previous experiences in delivering security within a dictatorship. However, and almost 25 years later, the governance of organised crime had been transformed into a complex engagement of policy dissimilar to that of early redemocratisation. Multiple public institutions, demonstrating a set of highly interconnected relationships, were able to engage in policy networks to put forth a series of security policy plans. This thesis aims to explore the scholarly relevance of such governance evolution by asking the following research question: how can we explain the governing relationships that Chile’s public institutions have put up to confront organised crime since redemocratisation? This research project explains therefore how public security actors have been able to move away from inward and hierarchical patterns of policy action and develop instead horizontal relations that favour an inter-institutional style of policy-making. Through its empirical research, this thesis argues that Chile’s state bureaucracies have been able to steer the governance of organised crime; however, not within the realms of a central unified authority, but through a set of self-governing institutions that, since the 1990 return to democracy, have gradually adopted norms, practices, and beliefs.