Dark Governance

Javier Auyero - University of Texas - Austin
Dark Governance

Abstract
Drawing on previous literature and on six illustrative cases from the Americas, this paper proposes “dark governance” as an analytic construct created to serve a three-fold purpose: empirical description, hermeneutic interpretation, and causal explanation. States engage in dark governance when they exert power over people and/or places (i.e. they govern) through clandestine relationships with criminal groups and/or “violence specialists” on the edge of legality. This paper demonstrates that operating out of the shadows of the state this form of governance effectively regulates citizens’ behaviors in the political field, in the market of criminalized drugs, in urban space, and in rural territories. The concept of dark governance permits us to re-think a common assumption that still dominates many a study of contemporary politics: that the political order works in opposition to (more or less organized) criminal activity and/or collective violence.