Undermining the State from Within: The Institutional Legacies of Civil War in Central America

Description

Undermining the State from Within pulls back the curtain on the counterinsurgent state to better understand how conflict dynamics affect state institutions and continue to shape political and economic development in the postwar period. Drawing on unique archival and interview data from war and postwar Central America, this book illuminates how counterinsurgent actors, under the pretext of combatting an insurgent threat, introduce alternative rules within state institutions, which undermine core activities like tax collection, public security provision, and property administration. Moreover, it uncovers how the counterinsurgent elite outmaneuvers governance reforms during democratic transition and peacebuilding to preserve the predatory wartime status quo. In so doing, this book rethinks the relationship between war and state formation, challenges existing scholarly and policy approaches to peacebuilding and post-conflict institutional reform and contributes a new understanding of what civil war leaves behind in an institutional sense. Copyright_page Contents Figures Tables Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations PART I FOUNDATIONS 1 Introduction: Undermining the State in Civil War 2 Theorizing Wartime Institutional Change and Survival PART II INSTITUTIONAL ORIGINS 3 Civil War in Central America 4 The Wartime Institutionalization of Customs Fraud in Guatemala 5 Ordering Police Violence 6 Land and Counterinsurgency PART III INSTITUTIONAL PERSISTENCE 7 Transition, Peace, and Postwar Power in Central America 8 Guatemala: The Persistence of Customs Fraud 9 Guatemala: The Persistence of Extrajudicial Killing 10 Nicaragua: Chronic Instability in Postwar Institutions 11 Conclusion: The Institutional Legacies of Civil War Appendix: List of Interviews and Archival Collections Bibliography Index