Global Journal of Human Social Science, F: Political Science, Volume 23 Issue 6

this author, even progressive governments, which once challenged conservative elites, end up adopting similar practices and, when in power, also engage in the task of undermining democratic institutions. Waldmann (2006) points out that dictators in Latin America, regardless of their ideological affinities, have historically sought to weaken legal foundations and informal social norms; these changes help them impose their agendas more freely. Even with the wave of re- democratization in the 1980s, many Latin American countries were unable to establish solid democratic orders (Ibarra, 2011; Martins, 2015). Job (1992) and Santos (2014) argue that governments often fail to provide essential services for their people, thus creating a context conducive to instability and vulnerable to authoritarian take over. In search of some degree of governability, state institutions become bargaining chips and are manipulated by those who wish to extract advantages from those in power. According to Ellis (2017), widespread corruption, a lack of transparency, and the absence of accountability generate widespread distrust (Jiménez, 2012; Lavalle and Vera, 2011; Willis, 2017). This, in turn, undermines government legitimacy and fuels political polarization (Murillo, 2019; Power and Jamison, 2005). In this context, opponents are persecuted obsessively and systematically; attempts are also made to limit independence and interfere with the division of powers (Vitullo, 2001). According to Briceño-León (2012), institutional weakness and corruption lead people to resort not to justice, but to violence. The absence or inefficiency of justice encourages ordinary people, and even public officials, to take the law into their own hands. In this context, widespread transgression of the law is the most common response; at the same time, the state becomes complicit in illegalities due to its inability to carry out its function (Cruz, 2011; Weber, 2021). According to Osorio (2013), security institutions are in a particularly delicate position because they are directly subordinate to the executive branch of government, making them susceptible to political and budgetary interference. This accentuates inefficiency, which leads to an increase in crime rates, in general, and homicide rates in particular. Opportunistic politicians take advantage of this context, using state weakness as a campaign platform. They propose themselves as saviors by mobilizing popular dissatisfaction, promising to solve problems with simplistic solutions. These solutions usually involve making democratic and legal parameters more flexible; sometimes these parameters are even eliminated, which, among other consequences, aims to legitimize an increase in police brutality. In this context, responsible public agents are not punished and may even be offered impunity (Blumstein, 2007, Lafree and Tseloni, 2006; Malone, 2013). As the state loses its capacity to respond to the public, and state institutions fail to provide essential public services, faith in the democratic system and its legitimacy weakens (Magalon and Kricheli, 2010). In Latin America, ineffective law enforcement, widespread corruption and slow responses to crucial issues, such as the increase in violence and the strengthening of criminal organizations, create a highly unstable atmosphere conducive to the emergence of punitive non-state control (Elkins, Ginsburg and Melton, 2009; González Zempoalteca, 2023). To avoid assuming their institutional failure for good, Latin American states do take action, but in an extremely selective way. As a result, law enforcement is often poorly founded and precariously executed. The police are the closest and most visible state institutions to ordinary citizens and are the first to experience the effects of public distrust; thus, they are seen in the region as a thermometer for the quality of democracy. In the region, police institutions are historically conservative and have had difficulty adopting democratic values; they act with “selectivity,” which harms the poorest segments of the population. Attempts to investigate excess use of power against selective groups fails in the face of a corporatism, operating with a “self-preservation” instinct. In addition, these public agents deal with the lack of objective delimitation of their role as police in a democratic society (Reiss Jr., 1992; Yüksel, 2015). Yet, the increase in violence and homicides in Latin American countries returning to democracy after decades of authoritarian regimes is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. These issues cannot be entirely explained by the quality of democratic institutions. In some countries in the region, democratization did not signify profound reforms in the institutions. This, thus, allowed criminal organizations to grow stronger and occupy spaces of power where the state had limited presence (Berg and Carranza, 2018; Cruz, 2019; Pérez, 2013). Gallo (2014), discussing the legacy of dictatorships in Latin America, argues that the transition to democracy in many countries in the region was marked by "amnesty" agreements that guaranteed impunity for perpetrators of human rights abuses during authoritarian regimes. This weakened the state's ability to maintain control and order. As a more recent component of this equation, we must consider the COVID-19 pandemic, whose impact has further exacerbated social tensions in the region, which may have contributed to the escalation of violence in general (Gomes and Carvalho, 2021). In this sense, the increase in homicides following the return to democratic normality in Latin America can be attributed to a combination of factors, of which the quality of democracy is just one component. © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue VI Version I 30 Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 ( ) F Homicide Rates in Fragile Democracies: Reflections on the Paradoxes of Latin America