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 3030229394,  9783030229399

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The Latin American Studies Book Series

Daniel S. Leon

Violence in the Barrios of Caracas Social Capital and the Political Economy of Venezuela

The Latin American Studies Book Series Series Editors Eustógio W. Correia Dantas, Universidade Federal do Ceara, Departamento de Geografia, Centro de Ciências, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil Jorge Rabassa, Laboratorio de Geomorfología y Cuaternario, CADIC-CONICET, Ushuaia, Tierra de Fuego, Argentina Andrew Sluyter, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

The Latin American Studies Book Series promotes quality scientific research focusing on Latin American countries. The series accepts disciplinary and interdisciplinary titles related to geographical, environmental, cultural, economic, political and urban research dedicated to Latin America. The series publishes comprehensive monographs, edited volumes and textbooks refereed by a region or country expert specialized in Latin American studies. The series aims to raise the profile of Latin American studies, showcasing important works developed focusing on the region. It is aimed at researchers, students, and everyone interested in Latin American topics. Submit a proposal: Proposals for the series will be considered by the Series Advisory Board. A book proposal form can be obtained from the Publisher, Juliana Pitanguy ([email protected]).

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15104

Daniel S. Leon

Violence in the Barrios of Caracas Social Capital and the Political Economy of Venezuela

123

Daniel S. Leon Global Studies University of Leipzig Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

ISSN 2366-3421 ISSN 2366-343X (electronic) The Latin American Studies Book Series ISBN 978-3-030-22939-9 ISBN 978-3-030-22940-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Prologue and Acknowledgements

The idea for this project stems from my time at The American University in Cairo. When I was completing my master’s thesis in political science at this university, I remember asking my then supervisor, Prof. Dan Tschirgi, about Cairo’s surprisingly low violence or homicide rate. Why did such a poverty-stricken, ultra-dense megacity be mostly free of deadly social violence? After visiting some barrios or slums in Cairo, the Venezuelan in me was struck not by the poverty, but by the peaceful coexistence, even if socioeconomic conditions were straining. Prof. Tschirgi replied to this question by saying something to the effect that, “Cairo is a fascinating place!” Although I do not dispute the veracity of such a statement, my experience of the barrios in Cairo allowed me to reflect on the causes of high violence rates in Caracas. This city is less impoverished and smaller than Cairo, but with social violence rates that are higher by a factor of about 100. Therefore, Caracas provides an ideal place to offer a possible explanation of high urban violence rates, which is a social outcome that has shattered too many families and has been one of Venezuela’s major development obstacles. I am deeply indebted to many people, who helped me in big and small ways to complete my doctoral dissertation in Global Studies at the University of Leipzig, which formed the basis of this present book. First and foremost, I warmly thank my former supervisor Prof. Heidrun Zinecker (University of Leipzig). Her comments and critiques were always constructive; even when some of my drafts rightly deserved unequivocal destruction. I am deeply indebted to Heidrun for the considerable amount of time and effort that she took to read my many convoluted drafts, and for her patience and support throughout the 3 years that we worked together. Our discussions, both in her office and in colloquia, were always academically enriching. Heidrun deserves much credit for this project’s virtues. However, all errors of fact, interpretation, or research design are my own. Her support came not only in the form of constructive critiques of my writing or research design but many letters of recommendation, the possibility to teach at the Institute of Political Science, and encouraging me to speak German early at her colloquium. She has been a true mentor.

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Prologue and Acknowledgements

The financial support for this project came from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which I am incredibly grateful for being awarded the three-and-a-half-year Graduate School Scholarship. Additionally, the Graduate School of Global and Area Studies of the University of Leipzig provided me with the possibility to apply for this scholarship and for additional financial and institutional support to attend supper schools and conferences outside of Germany. It also provided me with a stimulating academic environment and lasting friendships. In this institution, I am very grateful to Dr. Martina Keilbach for her work as the graduate school’s academic coordinator, who kindly helped me circumvent many administrative hurdles. I warmly thank Prof. Ulf Engel (University of Leipzig) for taking on supervision of my project at a late stage and for welcoming me in his colloquium. His guidance allowed my work to become much more readable and to better frame the scope and contributions of my study. I also thank Prof. Alejandro Velasco (New York University), who was kind enough to read my doctoral dissertation and provide a thorough, critical, and constructive review of it. He went above and beyond the call of duty of a reviewer, thus helping me to accentuate the strengths and amend the weaknesses of my book. In addition, Prof. Ursula Rao (University of Leipzig) and Prof. Helena Flam (University of Leipzig) let me join and benefit from their colloquia and gave me constructive comments on several draft chapters of mine, and I thank them for that. I appreciate the effort of my fellow doctoral candidates who kindly read my many drafts and provided helpful comments in several colloquia and winter schools of the Graduate School. I want to especially thank the members of Prof. Zinecker’s colloquium: Steffanie Dreiack, Sebastian Hoppe, Wolfgang Günther, Thomas Plötze, Patricia Rendón, and Dr. Hannes Warnecker-Berger. They provided in-depth and constructive feedback in both formal and informal gatherings. I apologize for not mentioning every colleague who contributed to my work by name. Nevertheless, be assured of my sincere appreciation. In the last stages of this project, Lukas Kob and Ricarda Theobald kindly read parts of it and provided valuable comments. Dr. Antonella Regueiro (Lynn University) also contributed significantly to help increase the readability of my arguments, to which I am very grateful. My field research in Caracas from April to the end of June of 2016 was essential for this research. I would not have been able to gather all necessary data without the kind help of many people, which helped a middle-class guy from the mountains of Mérida to get a good look inside the barrios of Caracas. I am immensely indebted to my host family in Caracas. Marisela Ramirez, Sergio Flores, Soley Flores, and their dog Mario. They heartily welcomed me into their home, and their kind hospitality in hectic Caracas made my field research possible. My parents Daniel and Maria Eugenia supported me immensely during my stay in Venezuela as they always have. Other lifesavers in Caracas were the Alarcon Family, Natasha Diaz, Yobany Guillen, Desirée Noack, and Adriana Quintiliani. I immensely appreciate their help: I also thank the 58 interviewed partners who sacrificed some of their time to sit down and talk with me. Their sincere effort made this project possible.

Prologue and Acknowledgements

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Finally, a big thank you goes to my partner Hanna Bethcke. Her patience, German-language correction, support, and love were critical for me to finish this project. To Hanna, Heidrun, my family, Prof. Engel, all my professors, my friends and colleagues who lend their helping hand in the making of this book, ¡Gracias!

Contents

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1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 The Puzzle of Urban Violence in the Barrios of Caracas . . . . . 1.2 A Political Economy Approach to Analyzing Urban Violence . 1.2.1 Disentangling Macro and Substructural Variables . . . . 1.2.2 Theoretical Framework: Social Capital and Urban Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Urban Violence and the Political Economy of Venezuela . . . . 1.3.1 Rent-Cum-Marginality: A Theoretical Model to Analyze Susceptibility to Urban Violence . . . . . . . . 1.3.2 Barrels, Arepas, and Urban Growth: Explaining Low Susceptibility to Urban Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.1 Case Selection and Sources of Violence Rates in the Barrios of Caracas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.2 Operationalizing Social Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Structure of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Theory of Social Capital as a Moderator of Urban Violence 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Defining Urban Violence: The Instrumentality of Homicides and the Social Versus Political Classification of Urban Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Shortcomings of (Post-) Structural Theories Explaining Urban Violence Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Rentierism, Impunity, and the Political Order: The Ambivalent Link Between Oil-Rents and Urban Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Economic Deprivation: The Low Explanatory Power of Poverty, Inequality, and Urban Exclusion . . . . . . .

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2.3.3 Reconciling the “Paradox of Caracas”: Post-structural Explanations of Urban Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.4 Filling the Gap: The Intervening Role of Social Capital . 2.4 Social Capital’s Moderating Effect of Urban Violence: The Role of Social Network Density and Collective Efficacy . . 2.4.1 The Concept of Social Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.2 The Role of Social Network Density and Collective Efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.3 Social Network Density: The Importance of Weak Ties . 2.4.4 Collective Efficacy: The Role of Social Disorganization and Collective Action Within the Institutional Context . . 2.5 A Nonlinear Theoretical Model of Social Capital and Urban Violence and Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 High-Connectedness in Three Barrios of Caracas: Empirical Findings on Social Network Density . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 A Brief History of Catia, Petare, and Baruta . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Weak Tie Presence in Catia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Weak Tie Presence in Petare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Weak Tie Presence in Baruta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Explaining High Social Network Density in Catia, Petare, and Baruta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings on Collective Efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Social Disorganization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Catia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 Petare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.3 Baruta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.4 Findings on Social Disorganization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Collective Action Within the Institutional Context . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Catia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Petare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 Baruta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.4 Findings on Collective Action Within the Institutional Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4.4 Conclusions on Collective Efficacy in Catia, Petare, and Baruta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 4.5 Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 5 Urban Security Policies and Their Effects on Collective Efficacy . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 The Political Economy of Urban Security Policies in Venezuela from the 1960s Until 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Unsuccessful Attempts to Demilitarize Urban Security Since 1969 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 Centering Urban Security Policies Around the “War on Drugs” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.3 Findings on the Political Economy of Urban Security Policies in Venezuela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Urban Security Policies and State-Barrio Relations . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 Catia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.2 Petare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.3 Baruta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.4 Findings on State-Barrio Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Conclusions: Urban Security Policies and Transaction Costs on Collective Efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusions: Perverse Social Capital as a Cause of High Violence in the Barrios of Caracas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Explaining the Puzzle of Violence in the Barrios of Caracas . 6.2 Contributions to the Literature and Policy Implications . . . . . 6.3 Calls for Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Analyzing Urban Violence After Venezuela’s Economic Collapse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4

Annual homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants in Venezuela and Caracas from 1940 to 2016. Source Table created by author with homicide data from: Ministerio de Sanidad y Asistencia Social (various years, 1970–1996), Ministerio de Salud y Desarrollo Social (various years, 2000–2004), Ministerio de Salud (various years, 2005–2006), Ministerio del Podar Popular para la Salud (various years, 2007–2014), Cedeño (2013, 3), Pachico (2015), Kronick (2016), and Seguridad, Justicia y Paz (2017). Homicide rates calculated by the author with population information from: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (2014a, 12; b, 9; c, 10), De Lisio (2001, 218), and World Bank (2017a, b). Note The following years were omitted due to lack of complete data: 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985, and 1988 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Disaggregated Venezuelan real annual GDP growth percentages from 1998 to 2012 (constant 1997 prices) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The contribution of oil rents to the Venezuelan revenues from 1998 to 2012. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Venezuela’s demographic and urban growth rates from 1891 to 2011. Source Graph created by author with data from: Baptista (2006, 927–930, 935), Instituto Nacional de Estadística (2014a, 12; 2016a, b), and World Bank 2016d (The World Bank (2016d) source was used to gather data on urban population for the years from 2001 to 2011. The World Bank classifies urban centers in Venezuela as agglomerations of 1,000 inhabitants or more (World Bank 2016e, Table 6). Therefore, this source estimates the rate of urban population considerable higher than Baptista’s (2006), which was used for data on this indicator from 1891 to 2001). *Only including the following population centers: Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, Ciudad Bolivar, Puerto Cabello, Barquisimeto, Coro, Cumaná, and Carúpano. (1) Urban centers with populations over 2,500 inhabitants. (2) Urban

3 17 19

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Fig. 1.5

Fig. 1.6

Fig. 1.7 Fig. 1.8 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 5.1

List of Figures

centers with populations over 3,500 inhabitants. (3) Urban centers with populations over 5,000 inhabitants. (4) Urban centers with populations over 10,000 inhabitants. (5) Urban centers with populations over 1,000 inhabitants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Public and private sector net investment (gross fixed capital formation) as a percentage of GDP from 1970 to 2010. Source Figure created by the author with own calculations using data for years 1970–1996: Banco Central de Venezuela (2002, 126, 175); for years 1997–2010: World Bank (2016a, b). Note Investment to GDP ratios calculated in Bolivares with 1968 constant prices. For the 1970–1984 series, constant prices of 1984 for the 1985–1996 series, and constant prices of 1997 for the 1997–2010 series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Percentages of household poverty in Venezuela from 1997 to 2012 in Caracas (note that the data provided by the Venezuela’s Instituto Nacional de Estdística (INE) was not disaggregated enough to calculate the exact values of poverty and inequality for the Caracas Metropolitan Area (CMA). Therefore, the values presented are an average of those reported for the Capital District and Miranda state. One-third of Miranda state, according to INE population data (2016c), belongs to the CMA. This makes the values presented in the above table representative of Caracas to a large extent but they might overestimate the city’s population size) from 2002 to 2012. Source Figure created by the author with data from: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (2016c) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Gini coefficients as a measure of inequality in Venezuela from 1997 to 2012 in Caracas from 2002 to 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Map of Caracas, Venezuela with the location of Catia/23 de Enero, Petare and Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta barrios. . . . 28 A nonlinear political economy model of urban violence in Venezuela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Annual drug charges and prison incarceration rates per 100,000 inhabitants in Venezuela from 2001 to 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

List of Tables

Table Table Table Table Table Table Table

3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

Table 4.5 Table 4.6 Table Table Table Table

5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1

Social network density indicators in Catia . . . . . . . . . . Social network density indicators in Petare . . . . . . . . . Social network density indicators in Baruta . . . . . . . . . Indicators of social disorganization in Catia . . . . . . . . . Indicators of social disorganization in Petare . . . . . . . . Indicators of social disorganization in Baruta . . . . . . . . Indicators of institutional context and community organization in Catia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indicators of institutional context and community organization in Petare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indicators of institutional context and community organization in Baruta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indicators of state-barrio relations in Catia . . . . . . . . . . Indicators of state-barrio relations in Petare . . . . . . . . . Indicators of state-barrio relations in Baruta . . . . . . . . . Findings of social capital’s qualitative comparative analysis in three barrios of Caracas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract High urban violence rates have been one of the leading development challenges in Caracas, Venezuela, as its homicide rates have been higher than most other Latin American cities. However, most violence occurs in its barrios or socioeconomically marginalized urban neighborhoods. This book aims to examine the structural causes of high violence rates in the barrios of Caracas while socioeconomic indicators improved through qualitative comparative analysis and a political economy approach. The outcome of high violence rates under improving socioeconomic conditions counters the established literature on urban violence, which shows the significance of this book. The introductory chapter discusses the structural parameter under which violence in the barrios of Caracas took place, which also frames the study’s qualitative comparative analysis. It discusses Venezuela’s dependence on oil exports since the 1920s, which generated economic rent, reduced the productivity of non-oil sectors, and increased the urbanization rate. However, the chapter shows that in the early twenty-first century, socioeconomic indicators improved, thus reducing marginality or economic deprivation. A reduction of marginality should have theoretically also led to lower urban violence rates, as lower marginality should reduce the incentives of committing homicide to achieve economic and cultural goals such as accumulating economic resources. This book forwards social capital as a possible intervening substructural variable that can explain the politico-economic structural conditions—or “causes of causes”—for high violence rates in the barrios of Caracas to occur. The analysis of social capital’s intervening role can explain the theoretical puzzle of increased violence rates under improving socioeconomic conditions. Keywords Social capital · Political economy · Violence rates · Barrios · Caracas · Venezuela

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. S. Leon, Violence in the Barrios of Caracas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5_1

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1 Introduction

1.1 The Puzzle of Urban Violence in the Barrios of Caracas 15 millones de armas ilegales hay actualmente en el país. 72% de los asesinados son jóvenes de entre 15 y 29 años de edad, generalmente de sexo masculino. 63% de las víctimas de armas de fuego reciben más de cinco tiros. —Front-page of El Nacional, 13 August 20101

The text above was the front-page headline of one of Venezuela’s oldest and most renowned newspapers. Accompanying it was a large-size and gruesome image of Caracas’ central morgue. This image, which covered most of El Nacional’s frontpage was a response to the Hugo Chavez administration’s (1999–2013) repeated denial of Venezuela’s violence problem (Acosta 2011, 85–86). The image showed the morgue overflowing with the naked and lifeless bodies of young and middle-aged male adults lying on stretchers and even on the floor because the institution could not process their high inflow fast enough. Official data on homicides back the statistics presented in this front-page edition, as over 91% of homicides in Venezuela occurred through firearms (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 82; Zubillaga et al. 2008, 763). Venezuela has not experienced any significant armed conflict since the nineteenth century. No major interstate conflict has occurred in South America since the Chaco War of the 1930s (Martin 2006, 173–176). Yet the front-page of El Nacional cited above illustrated the problem of high urban violence rates that has plagued Venezuela and particularly its capital since the late 1980s. In this book, I equate the term violence rates with annual homicide rates per 100,000 inhabitants for the sake of measurement. Homicides provide objective evidence for the use of violence, which is why this book employs the latter term instead of the former. As illustrated in Fig. 1.1, violence rates became a major socioeconomic problem in Caracas and Venezuela only since after the late 1980s. Urban violence is a significant problem for socioeconomic development, as it hurts productivity, which exacerbates poverty and inequality (Fox and Hoelscher 2012, 432; Moncada 2016, 4). It is a social outcome that tears families apart and severely hinders possibilities of upward social mobility of impoverished urban communities. Caracas’ urban violence rates reached and even surpassed those of other high violence cities around the world, which evidenced the existence of this socioeconomic problem in the Venezuelan capital. The average violence rates from 2005 to 2012 of other high violence cities around the world were 21 in Bogota, 59 in Cape Town, 80 in Kingston, 71 in San Salvador, and 83 in Tegucigalpa, while Caracas’ average was of about 114 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2013). In comparison to other high violence cities in Venezuela, violence rates in Caracas almost doubled the average violence rates from 2011 to 2014 of Barquisimeto and Guyana City, the 1 In

English: “15 million illegal firearms in the country. 72% of homicide victims are from 15 to 29 years of age and primarily male. 63% of firearm victims suffer over five gunshots” (El Nacional 13 August 2010, accessed on 19 October 2017, http://kiosko.net/ve/2010-08-13/np/ve_nacional. html). This and other translations in this book are the author’s own.

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160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20

1940 1942 1944 1946 1948 1950 1952 1954 1956 1958 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015

0

Venezuela

Caracas

Fig. 1.1 Annual homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants in Venezuela and Caracas from 1940 to 2016. Source Table created by author with homicide data from: Ministerio de Sanidad y Asistencia Social (various years, 1970–1996), Ministerio de Salud y Desarrollo Social (various years, 2000–2004), Ministerio de Salud (various years, 2005–2006), Ministerio del Podar Popular para la Salud (various years, 2007–2014), Cedeño (2013, 3), Pachico (2015), Kronick (2016), and Seguridad, Justicia y Paz (2017). Homicide rates calculated by the author with population information from: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (2014a, 12; b, 9; c, 10), De Lisio (2001, 218), and World Bank (2017a, b). Note The following years were omitted due to lack of complete data: 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985, and 1988

country’s second and third most violent cities, which exhibited averages of 60 and 58 yearly homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively (Pachico 2015). Therefore, high violence rates in Venezuela’s capital has been one of its main socioeconomic problems in the last decades. This present book contributes to the urban violence literature in the following manner: It focuses the analysis on Caracas’ barrios, which are the urban spaces exhibiting the highest concentration of violence rates. The urban spaces that are barrios are parts of a city that concentrate its socioeconomically marginalized inhabitants that often live in informal neighborhoods built in such spaces (Zayerz Moitalta 2013, 110; Camacho 2015, 53–55; Bolivar 2015, 62–63).2 In economic terms, barrio 2 Early modernization theory attempted to explain the phenomenon of barrios by arguing that it was

the first step toward the social mobility of the rural-to-urban migrant, and that secular economic growth would increase barrio-dweller savings rate, and thus investment in capital that lifts them out of poverty (Frankenhoff 1967, 29; Pachner 1977, 18). However, in many developing countries of the contemporary world the stability of informal settlements has been resilient (Marx et al. 2013, 188–189). Furthermore, evidence shows that barrio-eradication programs worsen the problem, because they do not eradicate the structural conditions creating these marginal urban spaces (Bettencourt and West 2010, 912).

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inhabitants are socioeconomically marginalized because their economic productivity is less than what they need for subsistence consumption (Elsenhans 1994, 396). In addition, one may use several terms to refer to barrios, such as slums, shantytowns, or ranchos, but these are pejorative descriptions of these spaces and their inhabitants (Deffner 2011, 111–112; Perlman 2010, 152–156). This book chooses the term barrios to minimize carrying over social prejudices of these urban spaces and their inhabitants. Barrios are the urban spaces bearing the brunt of the significant socioeconomic problem that is urban violence. The perception of urban violence and insecurity tends to spread somewhat evenly among a city’s population, but actual urban violence overwhelmingly occurs in barrios. Data from 2010 shows that about 80% of homicide victims in Venezuela came from marginalized urban areas (Zubillaga 2013, 108). Violence in barrios overwhelmingly involves young males as perpetrators and victims (Imbusch 2010, 22–24, 31–35; Auyero and Kilanski 2015, 189–191; Zubillaga et al. 2015, 227–239). It is also important to note that barrio growth, youth bulges, or economic deprivation like poverty and inequality cannot explain high violence rates in Caracas and Venezuela since the 1990s. The reason is that longitudinal empirical evidence contradicts such often-mentioned explanations. As elaborated in this chapter’s third section, higher violence rates occurred while socioeconomic indicators were comparatively favorable, which means that to explain high violence in the barrios of Caracas it becomes vital to examine substructural variables that can intervene between macroeconomic conditions and urban violence rates. What makes high violence rates in Caracas puzzling is that they occurred while socioeconomic conditions improved due to high oil windfalls in the twenty-first century. By 2012 socioeconomic indicators like inequality (measured through the Gini coefficient) in Caracas and Venezuela decreased to about 0.4, while urban and national violence rates were among the highest in Latin America (Instituto Nacional de Estadística 2016c; Zubillaga 2013, 108–109). The behavior of violence rates in Caracas poses a theoretical puzzle to the academic literature on urban violence, which mainly posits increased violence rates after economic downturns. Similarly, improved socioeconomic conditions induced by economic upturns should prevent violence rates from increasing (Cook and Zarkin 1985; Bushway et al. 2013; Florence and Barnett 2013, 307–309; Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 1–6; Rosenfeld et al. 2013, 2–3; Zubillaga 2013, 108–109). In economic terms, urban violence should have behaved counter-cyclically. That is, homicide rates should have decreased if the business cycle, or overall economic productivity, increased. However, examining the evolution of violence rates in Caracas up to 2011, the year where I was able to collect suburban data on violence, shows that they behaved pro-cyclically. In other words, violence rates increased while the business cycle, or overall economic productivity, increased. Moreover, not all barrios in Caracas experience the same violence rates. There are significant variations of violence rates in different barrios, even if on average they are higher than in middle-class neighborhoods. How can one account for interbarrio variations of violence rates while Caracas-wide violence rates behaved procyclically? What factors contribute to variations in urban violence rates between

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barrios? The behavior of violence rates in the barrios of Caracas creates a theoretical puzzle that the literature, to the knowledge of the author, has not yet explored. Comparing Caracas with other cities around the world such as Managua, Nicaragua, and Cairo, Egypt, which experienced the high presence of barrios and high poverty, as well as low violence rates, exemplifies the theoretical puzzle addressed by this book. Nicaragua is among the poorest countries in Latin America. However, in comparison to other countries in the region, especially in Central America, it showed yearly violence rates under 14 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants from 1998 to 2012 (Zinecker 2014, 36, 467–468; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2013). Cairo, on the other hand, saw worsening socioeconomic conditions after the International Monetary Fund-sponsored structural adjustment programs in the 1990s that reduced state welfare services while high fertility rates had swelled the urban population, thus giving way to giant barrios (Deboulet 2011, 202, 209, 228; Harrigan and El-Said, 2009, 78). Nonetheless, annual violence rates in Cairo were less than one homicide per 100,000 inhabitants yearly from 2003 to 2009 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2013). The fact that urban violence rates in Caracas have been high while socioeconomic indicators improved, and that other cities like Managua and Cairo show low violence rates under poor socioeconomic conditions, further counters the argument blaming high urban violence rates on the presence of barrios and detrimental socioeconomic conditions. This book’s objective is to approach an explanation of the theoretical puzzle of persistently high violence under improving socioeconomic conditions. Specifically, this book analyzes why politico-economic structures affected the ability of Caracas’ working-age and adult barrio inhabitants to organize effectively to reduce violence while socioeconomic conditions improved. Analyzing effective organization to reduce violence serves to examine the ability of these barrio inhabitants to create formal and informal organizations of social control. In the analysis of public goods like security (Chaffe 1992, 4–5, 141; Olson 1971, 99–100), this book draws from the lenses of political economy—the combined use of “state-of-the-art economics and political science” (Elsenhans 1996, 15)—and not the discipline of Marxist dogmatism (Moore 1989, 584–586). The political economy approach followed in this book accommodates analytical “shortcuts” (Anderson 1972, 396) provided by other relevant disciplines like urban sociology and criminology. This book offers a cross-sectional qualitative comparative analysis of community organization in three barrios of Caracas to explain the puzzle of violence rates in the barrios of Caracas through a political economy perspective. The three analyzed barrios were barrios are Catia/23 de Enero (henceforth Catia), Petare, and Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta (henceforth, Baruta). In line with the research goals, the analysis of community organization focuses on ways that barrios inhabitants can effectively impart informal social control to prevent or reduce individuals to use violence as a tool to achieve their objectives. Cross-sectional analyses, however, do not eliminate considering the historical context. Comparing cases among a set point in time allows capturing accumulated historical effects (Rosenfeld et al. 2013, 3). The main finding was that informal social control was not effective in some barrios because of high transaction costs. Transaction costs are inherent costs of achieving

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actionable goals, such as information costs (Coase 1998). Furthermore, elements of the institutional context found in the barrios of Caracas contributed to the creation of high transaction costs such as community organizations created and funded by the national government and urban security policies that repressively enforced the law on some crimes. Furthermore, specific low-scale organizational arrangements increased the incentives for using violence as a tool to predate on economic resources, even under improving socioeconomic conditions. I reached the above conclusion after testing the intervening role of social capital between Caracas’ politico-economic structures and high violence rates in the three barrios studied. The concept of social capital refers to the norms and rules binding social networks and propitiating trust and cooperation in a community, whose members repeatedly interact with each other (Fukuyama 2001, 7, 14; Lin 2001, 19; Putnam et al. 1993, 81–82). The new institutional economics perspective sheds light into the mechanisms that explain why social capital leads to organizational arrangements allowing for groups of people repeatedly interacting with each other to effectively achieve goals through collective action. Namely, the presence of social capital lowers transaction costs to pull local and extra-local resources to achieve collective goals like imparting informal social control. By lowering transaction costs to impart informal social control, an urban neighborhood is more able to prevent or act against violent individuals and groups, and thus lower urban violence rates (Coase 1937; Morenoff et al. 2001, 519–521; Sampson et al. 1997, 919; Stiglitz 1999, 60–62; Uphoff 1999, 218). Due to the focus on politico-economic structures elaborated in this book, the analytical contribution rests on examining the structural macro-determinants or “causes of causes” of high urban violence rates in the barrios of Caracas (Moore 1966; Parker 2008, 2–8, 110–120; Paoli 2013, 11, 22–23; Zinecker 2007b, 119). As explained in the coming chapters, social capital can lead to organizational arrangements preventing and producing high urban violence rates depending on the effects of the institutional context (Rubio 1997, 815; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968; Portes 1998, 18). The evolution of context-specific institutions, which are the social “rules of the game” (North 2005, 1–2), affects transaction costs, which places conditions on organizational arrangements in an urban neighborhood such as the ability to pull collective resource to achieve common goals like preventing or acting against violent agents. I build and test through causal process tracing (Bennett and Checkel 2015; Collier 2011) a qualitative theoretical model where social capital intervenes in the causal relationship between macrostructural conditions and urban violence. Hence, the causal process tracing provided by this present book runs from politico-economic macro-conditions to the intervening mesostructure of social capital. Analyzing the “causes of causes” of violence in the barrios of Caracas refers to the analysis of how structures or collective behavior lead to certain outcomes. Structural analyses as the one performed in this book originate from the work of Émile Durkheim. He proposes that the compositions of social structures lead to social

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outcomes.3 This approach leaves aside the analysis of violence’s agency. In other words, this book focuses on collective action at the local level of the barrio and does not examine the behavior of violent individuals or violent acts. Agent-level studies of urban violence aid in explaining the risk factors of violence and victimization. However, they do not “fully explain why rates of violence change over time or why some communities have persistently higher rates of violence than others” (Emphasis in original, Rosenfeld et al. 2013, 13–14). The aim here is not to argue that analyzing agency or individual behavior is irrelevant since agency is often critical in explaining variations between cases with similar structural compositions (Fukuyama 2014, 31). Instead, the purpose is to highlight that violence rates are structural variables, which require structural explanations. This introductory chapter continues in Sect. 1.2 with a brief explanation of how this present book analyzes high violence rates in the barrios of Caracas through a political economy conceptual framework. This book’s conceptual framework aims to avoid linear explanations by differentiating politico-economic macrostructures making a case susceptible, but not necessarily leading, to violence and intervening politico-economic mesostructures helping trace the structural conditions, or “causes of causes,” leading to high urban violence rates. Section 1.3 discusses the politico-economic condition making Venezuela susceptible to urban violence, which concisely explores the evolution of Venezuela’s political economy since major oil exploitation began in 1922. In addition, Sect. 1.3 shows how Venezuela’s political economy created a structural condition in the decade before 2011 that should have led to reduced violence rates in Caracas and nationally. Section 1.4 further elaborates on this book’s research design and methodology. Finally, Sect. 1.5 describes the organization of the forthcoming five chapters and their individual findings.

1.2 A Political Economy Approach to Analyzing Urban Violence To justify a literature review of violent crime from an economic perspective, criminologists Richard Rosenfeld and Steven Messner use the metaphor of “Sutton’s Law.” It comes from the (mostly) legend of Willie Sutton, an American bank robber who, when captured by U.S. federal agents, reportedly said that he robbed banks simply because, “that’s where the money was” (Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 1). In 3 Durkheim

provides an illustrative example by explaining that suicide, a seemingly individual action, has its causes in the structural constitution of a society, like religious cultural structures (Durkheim 1897, 8, 335–336; Durkheim 1893, 356, 360). In his example, social structures created by Protestantism appear to lead to more suicides than those created by Catholicism (Durkheim 1897, 8, 335–336). Structures arise and reproduce social outcomes because individuals require information to assess whether their recursive actions will keep on having desirable payoffs (North 1991, 97–98; North et al. 2009, 16). They channel information in recursive human actions, which delineates individual choices affecting attempts by groups to organize toward achieving community goals (Giddens 1984, 2; Collins 2004, 5–6).

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the tradition of political economy, the so-called “Sutton’s Law” hints to structural conditions that create powerful incentives for the use of violence by individuals to take advantage of economic opportunities (Merton 1938, 672). For example, conditions of severe poverty and lack of economic opportunities can create powerful incentives for individuals to use violence as a tool to gain economic resources. Such theoretical argument has strong empirical and conceptual backing in the urban violence literature, as there is a clear negative correlation between structural economic conditions and violence (Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 3–6; Rosenfeld et al. 1999, 495–497, 512–514; Sampson et al. 2002, 443–445). Hence, the literature points to neighborhood disadvantage and economic downturns as the causes of high violence rates. Following such theoretical logic, the literature on urban violence, emanating mainly from the United States, identified a counter-cyclical relationship between economic structures and increased violence (Brown and Osterman 2012, 220; Cook and Zarkin 1985; Moncada 2016, 5, 8). In addition, the literature on violence rates in Venezuela, and of other cases, has blamed its cause on the high opportunities provided by structural economic conditions like economic rent windfalls from high oil exports (Briceño-Leon 2006, 2012; España 1993). As explained below in more detail, economic rent means excess income not used to compensate labor, like high oil exports (Buchanan 1980, 3; Elsenhans 2004, 89). However, disentangling politicoeconomic structures becomes imperative to properly trace the causal factors creating opportunities and incentives leading certain urban agents to resort to violence as an economic resource accumulation tool.

1.2.1 Disentangling Macro and Substructural Variables The theoretical shortcoming of arguments in favor of a counter-cyclical relationship between structural economic conditions and urban violence is that they are often either ambivalent in their process tracing or provide supply-side explanations. In other words, many established theories on urban violence tend to offer linear explanations of this outcome. Ambivalent theories providing linear causal relationships tend to arise when theoretical models ignore the embeddedness (Granovetter 1985) of different social structures like political and economic ones (Przeworski 2003; Rodrik 2007; Shirley 2009). Ambivalent or linear theories often lead to fallacious causal statements. Furthermore, supply-side empiricism is common among theories highlighting the importance of economic resources that one can loot, as they establish the causes of urban violence solely on higher opportunities over its costs (Medina 2008, 45–47; Cramer 2002, 1846–1847). Banks certainly provided Willie Sutton with high opportunities for armed robbery because, “that’s where the money was,” but he and other armed bank robbers were not committing such crime as an end in itself, but as a means to meet a structurally induced demand. Bank robbers or homicide perpetrators commit their crimes as a means to achieve culturally valued goals like fulfilling the “American Dream” (Messner and Rosenfeld 1994). Importantly, globalizing processes lead individuals to aspire toward achieving economic

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goals, especially in Latin America, and not just in the United States. A conceptual framework seeking to approximate a theoretical model tracing the process of the macro-determinants of high urban violence rates in the barrios of Caracas must disentangle the hierarchy of structural variables inducing the use of urban violence. Ranking variables as either macrostructural or substructural aid significantly to disentangle the hierarchy of structural variables. It is crucial to consider the structural difference between Gewaltanfälligkeit—or susceptibility to violence—and Gewaltwirklichkeit—or actuality of violence to develop a conceptual framework for the study of violence in the barrios of Caracas (Zinecker 2014, 42–43). Susceptibility to violence occurs in cases where the macrostructure tends to produce the outcome of high urban violence rates. The actuality of violence occurs in a subset of cases that are susceptible to violence, but where substructural variables lead to high urban violence rates. For example, Managua or Cairo are cities displaying susceptibility to high violence, due to the high concentration of poverty, but their violence rates are actually low. On the other hand, San Salvador or Tegucigalpa are cities displaying both susceptibility and actuality of violence, since they exhibit a high concentration of poverty and high violence rates. Tracing the causal process leading to actual urban violence helps explain why such an outcome appears only in some cases and not in others with similar structural conditions. This conceptual framework helps to avoid “black-box” explanations, as one can engage in process tracing at the structural level.4 In doing so, one meets the methodological completeness standard of establishing a theoretical correspondence between conditions and outcomes by disaggregating substructural variables from the larger dominating structures (Waldner 2015, 128). The larger structures remain constant and become the substructural variables’ parameter (Lijphart 1971, 683). In turn, substructural variables become the independent variables linking the causal process between the structural parameter and the independent variable. Approximating a theoretical causal model tracing the mechanism linking this study’s macrostructural parameters to high violence rates in Caracas up to 2011 requires the analysis of substructural variables.

1.2.2 Theoretical Framework: Social Capital and Urban Violence Briefly stated, this study’s theoretical framework is that the structural composition of social capital acts as the substructural variable. Social capital’s structural composition either allows or prevents adult and working-age inhabitants of Caracas’ barrios from 4 Checkel

(2006, 362) illustrates the point behind “black box” explanations through the example of the international relations thesis “that democracies do not fight other democracies.” Empirical evidence seems to back such thesis, but that there is little theoretical explanation for how the mechanics of that process work. Meaning, there is little process tracing between foreign policy in democratic countries and lack of war between democracies.

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organizing toward the goal of preventing or acting against motivated violent agents. Social capital can achieve reductions in urban violence by allowing urban neighborhoods like barrios to impart informal social control (Rosenfeld et al. 2001, 286–287; Messner et al. 2004, 884; Messner and Rosenfeld 1994; Messner and Rosenfeld 1997, 1396; Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 61–62, 64). As explained further in the next section, the motivation to use violence by agents may arise from the structural parameter of institutional-anomie induced by the country’s politico-economic macrostructure. Briefly, institutional-anomie refers to the structural condition when economic norms become the dominant institution in society (Rosenfeld and Messner 1997, 213–214, 2013, 61–62, 64). However, Venezuela’s political economy and its evolution over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries created a macrostructural condition where susceptibility to urban violence declined in the decade leading up to 2011. This theoretical framework helps achieve a nonlinear process tracing between Venezuela’s politico-economic structural conditions and urban violence rates by analyzing the intervening effect of the substructural variable that is social capital. The literature has extensively discussed the concepts of social capital and urban violence, but there is still limited theoretical conceptualization on their relationship (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 966). This study follows sociologist Nan Lin (2001, 19) in defining social capital as the investment in social relations with the expectation of future returns, which allows for trust and cooperation in a given community. This definition is consistent with that of the major theorists of the concept, such as sociologists James Coleman (1988) and Bourdieu (1977), as well as political scientists Robert Putnam et al. (1993) and Francis Fukuyama (2001). These theorists depart from the Marxian premise that there is capital in repeated social relations when there are “investments with expected returns in the marketplace” (Lin 2001, 3). However, a lingering problem has been very flexible applicability of the concept; leading it to become a sort of “social string theory” or a “social theory of everything.” Social scientists have relied on social capital to explain various social phenomena ranging from the quality of democratic institutions (Putnam et al. 1993, 83–86, 164–167),5 and of education (Coleman 1988, S109–S110), to the basis for economic growth (Collier 1998, 2), the prevalence of corruption (Fukuyama 2001, 9; Warren 2004), the social integration of people with disabilities (Condeluci and Fromknecht 2014), and, of course, urban violence. 5 Putnam

et al. (1993, 83–86, 164–167) examined the widely differing performances of the Italian regional governments. Although the different regional governments were constituted under a similar institutional framework and endowed with similar economic resources, socioeconomic performance between them was highly inequitable. Putnam’s conclusion was that some Italian regions developed civic networks of cooperation or social capital. Social capital like any capital generates positive-sum growth because it solves dilemmas of collective action, such as the prisoner’s dilemma, without the need of third-party contractual enforcement. Moreover, De Tocqueville’s (1841, 452–445) observation of how nineteenth-century Americans regularly engaged in political and civil associations is noteworthy because—he argued that this was a major factor in keeping this young nation “civilized” and to promote progress and democratic stability. Tocqueville’s work was an important source for the development of Putnam’s conceptualization social capital.

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The conceptualization of social capital concerning urban violence stresses the process of institutional-anomie leading to the rise of violence as an instrumental tool or crucial means of resource predation. Institutional-anomie explains that an increase of urban violence rates may occur when the overarching politico-economic structure leads economic norms to become the dominant institution in a society (Hagedorn 2014, 347–349; Rosenfeld and Messner 1997, 213–214, 2013, 61–62, 64). Institutional-anomie does not refer to normlessness—Durkheim’s (1893, 356, 360) classical definition of anomie—but the dominance of economic norms in a society (Rosenfeld and Messner 1997, 212). As mentioned above, institutions refer to the social “rules of the game,” and one finds different institutions—political, economic, and cultural—embedded in social structures (Granovetter 1985; North 2005, 1–2). Despite the embeddedness of different institutions their social integration tends to be problematic. For example, “being a ‘good parent’ comes at the expense of being a ‘good employee,’ and vice versa” (Rosenfeld and Messner 1997, 213). When the economic structure wins this balance of power, it establishes the “rules of the game” or institutional norms, and thus achieving economic goals becomes more valuable than any other. If the economic structure does not provide formal or legal ways for agents—especially youth—to achieve such goals (Merton 1938, 674), institutional-anomie becomes a conduct of increased urban violence rates by making its instrumental use a mechanism of resource predation or market access a viable norm among certain individuals and groups (Messner and Rosenfeld 1997, 1396). The structuration of social capital, meaning the structure-agency interplay leading to the formation or continuation of social structures (Giddens 1984), helps reduce urban violence rates by creating informal institutions that foment social control. This structuration occurs as social networks become significantly “dense” (Mitchell 1969, 15, 17–18; Borgatti and Halgin 2011, 1171; Goyal 2007, 64), which transaction costs of achieving collective efficacy—sustainable organization toward specific goals like imparting informal social control (Messner and Rosenfeld 1997; Rosenfeld et al. 2001). Nonetheless, high social network density is necessary, but not sufficient for a certain structuration of social capital, which lowers violence rates in an urban neighborhood (Morenoff et al. 2001, 547–548). The reduction of transaction costs allowing for collective efficacy is the result of social capital’s positive by-products like trust and cooperation. However, social capital can produce negative externalities or unintended consequences to third parties resulting from social interactions. Social capital produces unintended negative consequences or negative externalities, as collective efficacy allows certain groups to pull resources together to efficiently predate on economic resources through violence (Field 2008, 98; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 981; Rubio 1997; Warren 2004). Therefore, the structuration of social capital can produce both positive externalities in marginalized neighborhoods like barrios. It can produce positive externalities like increasing trust and cooperation in a barrio to prevent youth from joining violent street gangs. Under a different structuration, however, social capital can produce negative externalities like allowing street gangs to use violence more effectively as a tool to accumulate economic resources. A problem with the early conceptualization of social capital, forwarded by James Coleman, compounded the investment in social networks with the production of

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1 Introduction

socially desirable outcomes through the enrichment of human capital (Coleman 1988. See: Fukuyama 2001, 8; Field 2008, 93). The presence of social capital does not always lead to positive outcomes since it can produce undesirable consequences or effects to third parties, such as is the case with criminal gangs, mafia families, and corrupt rent-seeking networks. In these examples, social capital within the network cluster could be relatively high, but it may produce net negative externalities; it can produce socially undesirable outcomes, such as urban violence (Browning et al. 2004, 504–505; Browning 2009, 1559–1561; Rubio 1997, 815; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968; Portes 1998, 18; Venkatesh 1997, 97–101). As explained at length in chapter two, social capital can increase the ability of barrios to organize and impart informal social control, which contributes to keeping urban violence rates low (Bellair 2000, 150–152; Fang et al. 2013, 122; Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919; Wickes et al. 2013, 117; Zubillaga et al. 2015, 243–45). Some examples of informal social control in barrios are getting the state to open a police station in the barrio, replacing light bulbs in dark alleys, building rapport and trust with police agents, networks of family and nonfamily members making sure that children and teenagers attend school, and the spaces of socialization provided by religious or sport organizations. The presence or absence of formal and informal organizations may explain the causes of high violence in the barrios of Caracas. However, social capital can also prevent barrios from achieving this goal and further incentivize the use of violence by individual agents. Based on the brief discussion above of social capital and urban violence, the master research question guiding this study’s research design is: At what structural composition does social capital help cause high urban violence rates? The goal of this study is to build and test a structuralist politico-economic theoretical model of formal and informal organization in the barrios of Caracas, which contributes to the explanations of persistently high urban violence rates. The theoretical model of urban violence proposed by this present book has specific policy implications, but the contribution to development and security theories are of greater significance. The reason is that discourses promoted by policymakers view barrio inhabitants as either passive or antisocial collective agents because of their poor socioeconomic status (Marquez 1999, 4–6; Perlman 2010, 149–156). Economist Hernando de Soto (2003) for example argues that barrio inhabitants require only legal reform for them to accumulate capital as if they have not possessed any and have been only passive collective agents. These views on barrio inhabitants hide their organizational or social capital, which reflects the capability of its inhabitants to pull resources together using their social networks. Such capital can become crucial in allowing barrio inhabitants to cooperate, and thus prevent or act against violent individuals and groups. The theoretical model built and tested by this study attempts to explain why, or why not, barrio inhabitants in Caracas organize toward their collective goals of imparting informal social control. The model forward in this book may explain high urban violence rates as macroeconomic conditions improved in the twenty-first century.

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1.3 Urban Violence and the Political Economy of Venezuela On December 22, 1922, in the La Rosa oil field in the western Venezuelan state of Zulia, the oil well called Barroso II experienced an unprecedented eruption. The outof-control stream pumping oil upwards of Barroso II reached 40 meters in altitude, spilling 100,000 barrels per day for nine days until it became manageable (Rodriguez Sosa and Rodriguez Pardo 2013, 100). This event marked the start of Venezuela’s new oil era. It changed Venezuela’s political economy in qualitative and quantitative terms. Venezuela had exploited and exported oil since the early twentieth century, but such exports were marginal until the 1920s. In 1922, oil composed 2% of the Venezuelan gross domestic product (GDP) and 0% of fiscal revenues. By 1942, oil represented around 17% of overall GDP and 67% of fiscal revenues, which more than tripled the country’s economic growth (Rodriguez Sosa and Rodriguez Pardo 2013, 101; Karl 1987, 68). Even though Venezuela had been a rentier state since its independence because it has always specialized itself economically in the production and export of demand inelastic products (Elsenhans 1996, 46–47) like coffee by landed elites, the number of windfalls generated by agriculture was nowhere near that produced by oil exploitation after 1922. From 1900 to 1920, the average yearly GDP growth rate was only 1.8%, while from the subsequent period of 1920–1948 the average rate was 6.8% (Hausmann and Rodriguez 2014a, 1–2). In Venezuela, the influence of oil revenues has been almost omnipresent in all politico-economic conditions. The increased financial income produced by oil rents permitted the country to become a consolidated nation-state by building a national communication infrastructure, modernized the then-obsolete nineteenth-centurystyled army, and created economic distribution networks among the elite classes. This occurred because the ensuing Dutch disease6 eliminated the hacienda economy inherited from the Spanish Empire, which in turn eliminated the incentives of land-owning elites of engaging in political violence. The consolidation of the state removed the incentives of a powerful landowner gathering a peasant army and making his way to Caracas to rent-seek on agrarian exports such as coffee. There were governmental attempts to protect the coffee industry, but the comparative advantage of oil left agrarian products uncompetitive (Baptista 2008, 281–283). The omnipresent condition of oil—or petroleum—in Venezuela’s macrostructure is why the renowned Venezuelan writer and intellectual Arturo Uslar Pietri elaborated that, “Petroleum is the fundamental and basic fact of the Venezuelan destiny…It is like a Minotaur of ancient myths, in the depths of his labyrinth, ravenous and threatening… All issues lack meaning…[Everything is] conditioned, determined, created by petroleum” (Quoted in: Karl 1997, 73). However, one should not identify 6 The

Dutch disease refers to the effects of an overvalued currency and an overheated economy, due to a high multiplier effect, which are caused by artificially increasing aggregate demand due to the high hard currency inflow coming from natural resource exports. This makes importing goods cheaper that producing them domestically, which crowds out preexisting national industries—whose rent creation is not as high—resulting in the rapid contraction of labor-intensive industries leading to both greater unemployment and inflation (Auty 1993, 3–5; Gelb 1988, 321; Sid Ahmed 1987, 889–890).

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rentierism—the practice of distributing economic rent by a government—as the direct explanation of high urban violence rates in Caracas and Venezuela. The reason is that the country became an oil-based rentier state in the 1940s, but violence rates nationally and in Caracas do not become a significant and increasing problem until after the end of the 1980s—see Fig. 1.1. One is thus not able to attribute high violence rates to rentierism, as for over 40 years of high oil windfalls violence rates remained low in Caracas and Venezuela. There was a brief spike in violence rates from 1962 to 64 because of a relatively brief armed conflict with Cuban-inspired leftist guerrillas and the Venezuelan military (Velasco 2015, 120–121). During the rest of this fourdecade period violence rates remained mostly under a yearly rate of 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. This section finds that susceptibility to violence in Venezuela and Caracas did not increase in the decade leading up to 2011. I came to this conclusion based on the analysis of institutional-anomie created by Venezuela’s politico-economic macrostructures identified as rent-cum-marginality. The following three subsections explain first the theoretical framework behind the analysis of susceptibility to urban violence (Sect. 1.3.1). After that, Sect. 1.3.1 shows how in the face of reduced non-oil productivity after the 1970s, due to increased economic dependency on the oil sector, marginality decreased in the years leading to 2011. In the context of increased urban growth, political elites used oil rent distribution to invest in essential services and build political networks of patronage to both appease the high amount of surplus labor found in the barrios of cities like Caracas and to court their political support. Policymakers implemented such clientelistic rent distribution policies with electoral aims that were macroeconomically hurtful in the long term.7 However, they produced the positive side effect of reducing marginality rates—measured through poverty and inequality rates—as such socioeconomic indicator moved in the right direction at the national level, and especially in Caracas. Reductions in marginality rates allow inferring reduced susceptibility to violence in the barrios of Caracas. This structural condition, therefore, requires the intervention of substructural variables—like social capital—to explain high violence rates in the barrios of Caracas.

7 Clientelistic policies are macroeconomic hurtful in the long term, as they require inefficient invest-

ment that increases the willingness of population to become “clients” of the “patron” ruling elite. Rent distribution through clientelistic policies such as jobs in public employment, subsidies, or other forms of cash transfers must be conditional or discriminatory, which increases the willingsness of some to become “clients,” as not to miss the economic opportunities provided by such policies. Since the distribution of rent or other economic resource occurs as a result of political power and not market mechanisms, such policies tend to be macroeconomically inefficient. However, clientelistic policies resolve the “political-commitment problem” by increasing the rewards of rent-seeking (Robinson and Verdier 2013, 261–263).

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1.3.1 Rent-Cum-Marginality: A Theoretical Model to Analyze Susceptibility to Urban Violence Rent-cum-marginality is the politico-economic macrostructure likely contributing to institutional-anomie in Venezuela’s politico-economic macrostructure that is. Rentcum-marginality refers to the coexistence of economic rents alongside the socioeconomically deprived and densely populated urban spaces like barrios (Elsenhans 1994, 2004), which can lead to many social outcomes (Elsenhans 1994, 396; 1996, 16–17; Sid Ahmed 2000, 506–507). More specifically, marginality refers to “additional labor [that] consumes [for subsistence] more than it produces” (Elsenhans 1994, 396). In other words, marginality occurs when the supply of labor is higher than its demand (Elsenhans 2004, 88). On the other hand, rents refer to disposable income not used to compensate labor, making them the economic antonym of profits (Elsenhans 2004, 89). Venezuela’s massive oil revenues since the 1930s are not profits but rents. The term of (economic) rent better conceptualizes revenues coming from oil exports. The term rent dates to the eighteenth century, when Smith (1776, 399) defined it as, “the income of men who love to reap where they never sowed.” Twentieth-century economist Buchanan (1980, 3) refined this economic concept as, “part of the payment to an owner of resources over and above that which those resources could command in any alternative use. Rent is a receipt in excess of opportunity costs.” Rents are equity appropriated from scarce and non-reproducible resources (Keynes 1936, 376; Minsky 1985, 11). Petro-states like Venezuela accrue a high amount of rent due to global supply and demand factors that significantly increase the global value of oil exports and increasingly lower costs of production due to high investments in research and development in the oil industry. Therefore, petro-states become rentier states since the monetary resources for its expenditures are not significantly tied to the productive added-value of its overall labor, but to natural resource exports (Jenkins et al. 2011, 4–5; Karl 1997, 197; Mahdavy 1970). Importantly though, the state appropriates rent, thus becoming a rentier state, by using political power to create a monopoly over the income generated due to market imperfections (Elsenhans 2011, 24). The state, as a “landed-elite”, excludes non-state actors from owning the subsoil and investing capital resources into the extraction of oil or other minerals without permission, and payment of royalties or taxes to the state. In doing so, the state creates rent. This conceptualization of economic rent follows the Marxian tradition that premises exclusion of capital, hence the importance of political power, for a given revenue to become rent (Hausmann 1981, 19). The practice by rentier states like Venezuela that extracts and distributes rents is known as rentierism. The macrostructure of rent-cum-marginality can increase the importance of economic institutions over all others, which means that noneconomic social institutions lose relative importance. Rents mainly tend to produce adverse macroeconomic effects. They tend to reduce employment and the population’s purchasing power. Rents also tend to increase economic inequality. Rents tend to reduce the possibilities of increasing personal welfare or achieving positively valued cultural goals

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through formal means. Not being able to achieve culturally valued goals through formal means often produces social strain, which refers to a high level of socially induced frustration (Brezina and Agnew 2013, 146–47). Rentier states tend to develop socioeconomic structures inducting social strain by creating consumption instead of production economies. Consumption economies arise in rentier states as the Dutch disease significantly increases incentives to import consumer goods from abroad instead of producing them domestically (Elsenhans 1996; Karl 1997; Jenkins et al. 2011; Luciani and Beblawi 1987; Sid Ahmed 2000). Such macroeconomic condition reduces industrial employment opportunities that allow for labor empowerment (Elsenhans 1996, 30–32). Reduced industrial employment opportunities increase the levels of social anxiety and strain of achieving economic goals, which in turn increases incentives of using violence as a means of achieving valued economic goals (Messner and Rosenfeld 1997, 1396; Brezina and Agnew 2013, 146–47; Taylor 1999, 5–6; Zinecker 2007a, 9). The above process is what Rosenfeld and Messner (2013), termed as institutional-anomie, which occurs when economic norms such as economic resource accumulation dominate culturally valued goals. The significant presence of institutional-anomie makes the instrumental use of violence not an effect of normlessness or antisocial behavior per se, but a viable and acceptable norm of achieving culturally valued economic goals (Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 50–51, 61–62). However, due to a decrease in marginality rates from the end of the 1990s until the year 2011, I was able to infer that the rent-cum-marginality macrostructure did not increase susceptibility to higher urban violence rates. Rents and especially oil-rents remained high during this period because of Venezuela’s dependency on exports of this high yield commodity. Following classical theoretical traditions on violence, such as Becker’s theoretical framework, one would expect a reduction of urban violence rates, as improving economic conditions reduced opportunities, or rewards, of predating on resources (Becker 1968, 177–178; Ehrlich 1996, 80–81). A reduction of marginality should have reduced the susceptibility to violence in Caracas, and thus institutional-anomie. In other words, this should have reduced, or at least not increased, institutional pressures of achieving economic goals through alternative means like urban violence. However, this was not the case, as shown in Fig. 1.1, which is why violence’s behavior in Caracas was pro-cyclical.

1.3.2 Barrels, Arepas, and Urban Growth: Explaining Low Susceptibility to Urban Violence In the analysis of macroeconomic factors like rents and marginality, commonly used aggregate macroeconomic indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, are somewhat inappropriate. GDP is an inappropriate macroeconomic indicator for rentier countries because they exhibit structural heterogeneity, which refers to the macroeconomic condition of having a sector of the economy being responsi-

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20 15 10 5 0 -5

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

-10 -15 -20 Real Oil GDP Growth

Real Non-Oil GDP Growth

Fig. 1.2 Disaggregated Venezuelan real annual GDP growth percentages from 1998 to 2012 (constant 1997 prices)

ble for most economic output (Cordova 1973; Elsenhans 1996, 46). Therefore, the problem with aggregate indicators like GDP in a significant oil-exporting country like Venezuela is that it “literally mixes apples and oranges—or, more appropriately [to the Venezuelan case], barrels and arepas” (Hausmann and Rodriguez 2014b, 20). Barrels refer to the oil sector or industry and arepas—Venezuela’s most common food staple—refers to the non-oil sector of the economy. Figure 1.2 shows the disaggregated real—or inflation-adjusted—annual growth rate of both oil and non-oil GDP. As one can appreciate in this figure, real oil GDP behaved erratically from 1998 to 2012, in part because of the volatility of oil prices and internal struggles of the oil industry like the oil workers’ strike of 2002 and secularly low capital expenditure in the oil industry’s productive capacity (Rodriguez Sosa and Rodriguez Pardo 2013, 102–103, 109–110). Real non-oil GDP growth on the other hand, steadily declined after 2004; the steep upward spike in non-oil productivity between 2003 and 2004 was the result of the oil workers’ strike coming to an end and the global price boom of that year. Therefore, based on a disaggregated analysis of real productivity growth in Venezuela, urban violence rates behaved counter-cyclically; violence rates increased while non-oil economic productivity declined. However, a deeper analysis of Venezuela’s economic indicators from the early 2000s until the early 2010s shows that urban violence rates indeed behaved pro-cyclically. The analysis of the country running out of Arepas seems plausible since considering its economic collapse after 2014. However, this subsection shows that due to the economic history of Venezuela, under a context of high urban growth and increasing marginality, rent redistribution policies had a positive effect on people’s pockets, and primarily on the pockets of the marginalized population. Under a rent-cummarginality structural condition and in the context of high urban growth the political demands emanating from the marginal population are primarily the provision of basic services like healthcare and food security (Fox 2012, 289–294; Elnur 2013,

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131–132). Policymakers had to continually expand networks of patronage through clientelist policies To satisfy an ever-expanding political demand for basic services and prevent marginal sectors from becoming a source of political instability. However, policies creating political patronage proved disastrous in the long term, as they created financial strains to the political system, which requires a constant stream of high rent revenues that ended in around 2014. During high rent-windfall periods, however, these clientelistic policies produced the positive effect of reducing marginality rates at the national and urban level. Decreasing marginality rates explain why the country’s macrostructure produced lower susceptibility to high urban violence rates. Hence, exhibiting a pro-cyclical behavior of violence rates both in Venezuela and Caracas. The variables composing the oil and non-oil sector and the outcomes that they produce are different even if there is some overlap between them (Hausmann and Rodriguez 2014b, 20–21; Manzano 2014, 51–52). Although oil rents dominated the Venezuelan economy from 1998 to 2012 (see Fig. 1.3), oil production decreased relative to other major oil producers, mainly in the Middle East,8 after policymakers nationalized the industry in 1975 (Rodriguez Sosa and Rodriguez Pardo 2013, 102–103, 109–110)—a policy decision that stands until today. Venezuela has never extracted and exported oil at full potential, which has limited the revenues of the state accrued overtime (Manzano 2014, 53, 76). Moreover, comparing the indicators shown in Fig. 1.2 with Fig. 1.3 shows a curious outcome: as oil rents increased their dominance over the economy, non-oil GDP steadily declined. To explain this outcome, one could single out the Dutch disease, or the resource curse, but this would nonetheless be highly problematic based on a longitudinal analysis of the country’s political economy. From the 1930s to the 1970s oil rents dominated the Venezuelan economy, which was a time when the country had “a GDP per capita higher than Spain, Greece, and Israel and only 13% lower than that of the United Kingdom” (Hausmann and Rodriguez 2014a, 1–2). As such, the Dutch disease did not seem to have hindered Venezuela’s economic growth during the period mentioned above. The non-oil sector, the arepas, under the institutional condition of rentierism and high urban growth saw constrained growth during the second half of the twentieth century. The non-oil sector saw constrained growth because of incumbent politicians need of creating and maintaining a sizeable political clientele to assure electoral victory for their party in the elections that regularly took place in Venezuela. This analysis follows political scientist Terry Lynn Karl (1997, 5–6) by arguing that its poor performance was not the direct result of rent windfalls’ economic dynamics—as forwarded by the resource curse thesis (Auty 1993)—but a consequence of political decisions inducing negative socioeconomic. In other words, political decisions centered around the distribution of oil-rent windfalls created the adverse socioeconomic effects associated with the Dutch disease, such as reduced non-oil productivity. The 8 Oil

production in Venezuela increased in absolute terms but decreased in relative terms since the time of the industry’s nationalization and up to 2012. From 1975 to 2012, it increased from about two to over three barrels million batters per day. However, oil production in the major oil exporters of the Middle East increased in the same time-period from about 11 to about 28 million barrels per day (British Petroleum 2016). This shows Venezuela’s relative oil production decrease.

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100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Oil Exports (% of total exports) Oil Rents (% of GDP)

Fiscal Revenue from Oil (% of total revenue)

Fig. 1.3 The contribution of oil rents to the Venezuelan revenues from 1998 to 2012

Dutch disease or the resource curse is not inevitable or automatic consequences of high rent windfalls. The need to bring Venezuela’s swelling urban populations (see Fig. 1.4) into clientelistic patronage networks was a prime factor that limited the oil sector’s resources for capital expenditure from the 1960s onwards. The shift from an agrarian exporter to an oil exporter made big cities like Caracas the new spaces of expected employment opportunities (Seers 1964, 233–235). During the 1970s for example, Caracas saw an annual growth rate of 5% (Gonzalez 2005, 108). General population growth stabilized only at the end of the 1990s as shown in Fig. 1.4. Also shown is Venezuela’s urban growth, which increased steadily up to the 1990s as well. Noteworthy from this figure, however, is that during the second half of the twentieth century, urban populations in the country grew while the natural rate of increase declined. The demographic trends shown in the figure above evidence that urban growth was due primarily to rural-to-urban migration and secondarily to natural demographic growth.9 In addition, by the end of the 1990s, the growth of barrios also stabilized at 45% of the capital city’s area by 2010 (Bolívar 2015, 63).

9 However,

oil rent-induced rural-to-urban migration was not the only factor allowing for urban populations to increase. The near eradication of malaria through DDT fumigation from most of Venezuela, especially the country’s plains, and improvements in basic healthcare during the 1950s—pushed forward by the pioneering work of physician Arnoldo Gabaldon—allowed for a population boom, especially outside Caracas and the Andes. Before the 1950s, and Gabaldon’s work, most of Venezuela was virtually uninhabitable. Malaria was a greater cause of death than the influenza epidemic of the 1910s, its death rate about twice as high as the urban violence rate of the recent decades (Gonzalez 2005, 1698–1700; Yepes Colemenares 1995, 17–19). As explained by Fox (2012) improvements in health, which where a global phenomenon, allowed for populations to boom in most of the so-called developing world, which helps to explain increased rates of urbanization.

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100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1891*

1920(1)

1936(2)

1950(3)

1961(4)

1971(4)

1981(4)

1990(4)

2001(5)

2011(5)

% of popula on living in urban areas Natural rate of increase % of popula on increase between censuses

Fig. 1.4 Venezuela’s demographic and urban growth rates from 1891 to 2011. Source Graph created by author with data from: Baptista (2006, 927–930, 935), Instituto Nacional de Estadística (2014a, 12; 2016a, b), and World Bank 2016d (The World Bank (2016d) source was used to gather data on urban population for the years from 2001 to 2011. The World Bank classifies urban centers in Venezuela as agglomerations of 1,000 inhabitants or more (World Bank 2016e, Table 6). Therefore, this source estimates the rate of urban population considerable higher than Baptista’s (2006), which was used for data on this indicator from 1891 to 2001). *Only including the following population centers: Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, Ciudad Bolivar, Puerto Cabello, Barquisimeto, Coro, Cumaná, and Carúpano. (1) Urban centers with populations over 2,500 inhabitants. (2) Urban centers with populations over 3,500 inhabitants. (3) Urban centers with populations over 5,000 inhabitants. (4) Urban centers with populations over 10,000 inhabitants. (5) Urban centers with populations over 1,000 inhabitants

The wave of urban-to-rural migration in Venezuela around the mid-twentieth century created a new class of urban dwellers uninvolved with either agricultural or industrial production (Karl 1987, 65). The argument here is not that rents created marginality, as this marginal population existed before in the agricultural sector. What oil rents changed was the spatial location of the marginal population; they became the inhabitants of barrios in cities like Caracas. In the Venezuelan capital, therefore, rent distribution dominated the overarching urban and national macrostructure along with marginality. Under the policy paradigm called, Sembrando el Petróleo or “Sowing the Petroleum,” policymakers destined large parts of oil revenues to finance government expenditures in a downstream or derivative sector with little-to-no technological relation to the oil industry. This development strategy involved investing in non-oil labor-intensive heavy industries, like those in Guyana City, but with little success at diversifying the economy (DiJohn 2014, 330–333; Hausmann and Rodriguez 2014b, 34) and the geographical concentration of the population in the big cities (Gonzalez 2005, 155–157). Resulting from such policy paradigm was reduced investments in oil production, (DiJohn 2014, 321; Manzano 2014, 65; Rodriguez Sosa and Rodriguez

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Pardo 2013, 102–103). The nationalized oil industry, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., became part of the state’s financial system, and not just a revenue source. It had to participate in non-oil industries to cover state spending, and hence “Sow the Petroleum.” Public participation in aggregate production (GDP) exponentially increased from an average of less than 15% before nationalization, to an average of more than 40% after 1976 (Karl 1997, 141–142). Such high participation of the public sector remained well into the twenty-first century (Rodriguez Sosa and Rodriguez Pardo 2013, 96–97). The “sowing the petroleum” development strategy failed to diversify the economy and increase economic growth because of the embeddedness of political and economic structures that prevented investment in sustainable labor-intensive industries. It is important to note that rentier states do not process and resolve politicoeconomic strains through contestation of policies but through clientelistic networks of patronage that appease stakeholders (Elsenhans 1996, 47, 57–58; Naim 2001, 20–21; Peñafiel 2008, 304). In Venezuela, the governing elite since the 1970s gave priority to rent redistribution to appease segments of the urban population that could organize violence against the state (North et al. 2013, 3–5). The Punto Fijo regime (1958–1989) and later the Chavista regime (1999–present) stabilized their power by providing disincentives to powerful organizations like the armed forces, the church, and the new commercial elite against organizing to oppose these governments. In doing so, the distribution of rents became exclusionary of some sociopolitical groups like far-left parties and movements in the former regime and the middle class in the latter (Buxton 2006, 112–113, 115; Karl 1987, 64; Velasco 2015, 8–13). As one can appreciate in Fig. 1.5, the evolution of net investment in the non-oil sector within the context of urban growth, especially that of Caracas, saw private investment crowded out by public investment. The crowding out of private investment by public investment occurred as policymakers increasingly saw the need to implement employment patronage strategies due to a large marginal urban population that could pose a threat to the different elite coalitions that governed the country after the 1960s. The crowding out of private investment by public investment results in part because under significant rentier conditions like in Venezuela’s wage-drifts from the productive sectors of the economy, such as the oil industry, become impossible through market mechanisms. Wage-drifts do not occur in a rentier economy like Venezuela because real wages do not rise across the economy as a function of productivity (Elsenhans 1994, 394–395, 1996, 16–17).10 Nevertheless, the political power of the rentier state can enact public policies affecting relative consumer prices, 10 Since rentier states like Venezuela appropriate and monopolize rent windfalls through political power, then membership or access to the state class determines wage increments instead of labor productivity. Rent windfalls and their distribution determine employment—or unemployment—instead of the reinvestment of profits in capital and the skill of the labor force (Sid Ahmed 2000, 506–507). Therefore, under a rent-cum-marginality macrostructure microeconomic success becomes a function of personal connections to the rent accumulating elite instead of one’s own labor or entrepreneurial skills. Socioeconomic development takes place when a wage-laborer or entrepreneur can accumulate wealth without the need of contacts, connections, or prestige, except for his or her own productive skills (Elsenhans 1996, 58).

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50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Public Investment

Private Investment

Fig. 1.5 Public and private sector net investment (gross fixed capital formation) as a percentage of GDP from 1970 to 2010. Source Figure created by the author with own calculations using data for years 1970–1996: Banco Central de Venezuela (2002, 126, 175); for years 1997–2010: World Bank (2016a, b). Note Investment to GDP ratios calculated in Bolivares with 1968 constant prices. For the 1970–1984 series, constant prices of 1984 for the 1985–1996 series, and constant prices of 1997 for the 1997–2010 series

which impacts real wages (Elsenhans 2004, 94–95). Changes in relative prices can increase or reduce marginality in urban spaces, even if the supply of labor is higher than demand because changes in relative consumer prices affect the ability of surplus labor to consume above or below their relatively low productive capacity. The most crucial policy example of how policymakers created changes in relative consumer prices was through nontariff protectionist policies like foreign exchange (FX) controls. These were macroeconomically inefficient and politically fruitful tools of political patronage, which induced a monstrous Dutch disease explaining to a large extent the poor performance of the non-oil sector. Microeconomically, however, these policies produced positive short-term impacts by reducing marginality rates. Policies like FX controls changed relative consumer prices and—artificially—increased the population’s purchasing power. In Venezuela the official purposes of applying FX controls has ranged from taming inflation, preventing capital flight, and facilitating executive discretion over imports (Padron 1995, 158).11 When such regimes came into place, they became a significant source of corruption and rent-seeking. FX controls allowed the government to arbitrarily determine the rate at which economic actors can buy foreign hard currency, mainly U.S. dollars, using the national currency, 11 Venezuela

has experienced three different FX control regimes and they have operated through multiple tiers of FX rates; all of them since the 1980s. The first one took place between 1983 and 1989, the second one from 1994 and 1996, and the third one began in 2003 and has been in place up to the writing of the present book (Karl 1997, 176–177; Oliveros 2013; Padron 1995).

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the Bolivar. This protectionist mechanism permitted the government to artificially overvalue the local currency and distribute the allocation of FX discretionally. For non-oil productivity, policies like FX controls had a twofold effect: It made imports cheaper than domestic production, and it increased the importance of patronage networks over economic efficiency. In other words, FX controls induced the outcomes associated with the Dutch disease and thus aggravating its undesirable socioeconomic outcomes. Such policy caused a reduction in non-oil productivity by rendering it internationally uncompetitive because of an overvalued currency, which increased the country’s reliance on imports (Karl 1997, 176–177; Sid Ahmed 1987, 903). For example, Venezuela imported 17.8 billion US$ worth of goods in 2004, and then 34.4 billion US$ in 2009 (Obuchi et al. 2011, 168–169). The Dutch disease produced by the latest and long-standing FX controls, starting in 2003, were bearable for the political system because of the economic context of very favorable terms of trade, thanks to the global oil price boom of 2003–2008, and 2010–2014 (Hausmann and Rodriguez 2014a, vii). Hence, high oil revenues provided the government with enough hard currency to cover for the loss in non-oil productivity with increased imports, based on political patronage. In other words, FX controls created an indirect subsidy to increase domestic consumption. Such indirect subsidy especially and significantly impacted low-income sectors. For example, the government increased the network of retail supermarkets, called Mercal, where such supermarkets sold food products at low prices due to indirect subsidies. According to data from 2009, 54% of the Venezuelan population acquired at least one product from state-owned retail supermarkets (Obuchi et al. 2011, 168–171, 180). Therefore, the government was able to provide low-cost grocery stores with staples imported with an artificially overvalued currency thanks to the FX controls. While oil-rent windfalls were high, policies like FX controls that intended to create political patronage had the positive impact of lowering relative consumer prices and thus increasing the purchasing power of Venezuelans at the national and especially at the urban level. Marginality rates decreased significantly from the end of the 1990s up to 2012, both nation-wide and in Caracas. As proxies of marginality, I employed the measurements of economic deprivation that are poverty rates and inequality rates, and the spatial category of the barrio, at the national and urban level. These measurements are adequate proxies showing the percentage of the population that are consuming more than they produce—i.e., the marginal population (Elsenhans 1994, 396).12 As one can appreciate in Fig. 1.6, changes in relative consumer prices, due to indirect subsidies like FX controls, halved household poverty rates nationally and in Caracas during the analyzed period.13 Figure 1.7 shows the impact of policies 12 However, this study does not make use of unemployment as a proxy of marginality even though the Keynesian roots of the marginality concept would suggest its use. This is because marginal individuals could have formal employment and still consume more than they produce, or vice a versa (Barrios et al. 1985, 65–73). Moreover, Levitt and Venkatesh (2000, 771–772) show the convoluted nature of employment in barrio dwellings, which makes its use as an indicator of marginality problematic. 13 The national poverty line measured by the “Canasta Básica” or basic basket of consumer prices entails the monthly costs of covering basic food necessities (2200 calories per person) and nonfood

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60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 % of households in poverty (Venezuela) % of households in poverty (Caracas)

Fig. 1.6 Percentages of household poverty in Venezuela from 1997 to 2012 in Caracas (note that the data provided by the Venezuela’s Instituto Nacional de Estdística (INE) was not disaggregated enough to calculate the exact values of poverty and inequality for the Caracas Metropolitan Area (CMA). Therefore, the values presented are an average of those reported for the Capital District and Miranda state. One-third of Miranda state, according to INE population data (2016c), belongs to the CMA. This makes the values presented in the above table representative of Caracas to a large extent but they might overestimate the city’s population size) from 2002 to 2012. Source Figure created by the author with data from: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (2016c)

affecting relative consumer prices like FX controls on the Gini coefficient—the measurement of inequality rates. This measurement declined by about 0.09 nationally and about 0.04 in Caracas up to 2012. Considering the reduction in poverty rates, one can interpret the reduction in inequality as a result of increased purchasing power due to policies like FX controls that artificially overvalued the local currency and allowed to subsidize basic goods and services indirectly. Resulting from this is the lowering of relative consumer prices, which increases the entire population’s purchasing power. The behavior of marginality indicators was due to upward social mobility because of rent windfall distribution through employment patronage or subsidies on consumption of basic goods. This upward social mobility was unsustainable as shown by Venezuela’s economic collapse after 2014. However, relative changes in purchasing power increase the productivity of barrio inhabitants, which reduces their economic marginality. Increased purchasing power by lower income sectors could explain why inequality decreased on average; they can accumulate more capital in relation to higher income classes. However, the official measurements of inequality look at vertical inequality between individuals, and not between groups within the same community. Hence, it does not look at horizontal inequality (Stewart 2005). This type of inequality could show different trends and relationships of relative depri-

necessities (housing, healthcare, water, and electricity) for a an average household (5 persons per household has typically been used in recent years, as it is the average size of the Venezuelan family). The classification of households as economically deprived follows if their income falls below the monthly “Canasta Básica,” which varies constantly due to the country’s volatile inflation rate. (Instituto Nacional de Estadística 2016d).

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0.55 0.5 0.45 0.4 0.35 0.3 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Gini coefficient (Venezuela)

Gini coefficient (Caracas)

Fig. 1.7 Gini coefficients as a measure of inequality in Venezuela from 1997 to 2012 in Caracas from 2002 to 2012

vation in marginalized urban sectors concerning urban violence (Briceño-Leon and Camardiel 2015, 384–385). Furthermore, the evolution of barrio prevalence provides a better perspective on the evolution of marginality. Barrios are, in no small degree, useful proxies of marginality because they make productivity lags visible by showing economic deprivation in geographical spaces. Barrios are a helpful, but not an entirely adequate proxy of marginality because they are broad aggregates of different factors including, but not limited to, legal informality, high rent premiums, and the governance gap (Marx et al. 2013, 194–197). From 1997 to 2007, the evolution of barrios was convoluted. Between these ten years, the percentage of precarious barrios declined substantially from twelve to seven nationally and eight to five in Caracas. However, the percentage of durable barrios increased 10% points both nation-wide and in Caracas; from 70 to 80 nationally and from 57 to 67 in Caracas (Universidad Católica Andrés Bello 2016). The changes in barrio structures show a likely significant reduction in marginality between 1997 and 2007, as barrio inhabitants likely had greater disposable resources—after meeting basic consumption needs—to invest in the upgrading of their housing. Policies aiming to create political patronage had a very significant effect in reducing poverty, and thus marginality, even if they were macroeconomically unsustainable on the long term, as it became evident after 2014 (DiJohn 2014, 351–352; Obuchi et al. 2011, 168–171, 180). Hence, analyzing the political economy of barrels, arepas, and urban growth in Venezuela helps explain why violence in the barrios of Caracas behaved pro-cyclically during the decade up to 2011. Urban violence increased while socioeconomic conditions improved. Public policies of rent distribution framed under the “sowing the petroleum” policy paradigm increased the purchasing power of the population, especially among low-income and marginalized sectors.

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Explaining the “causes of causes” of violence in the barrios of Caracas cannot rely on a linear narrative like institutional-anomie as a direct cause of high urban violence rates. As shown in this section, susceptibility to urban violence in Venezuela and Caracas declined during the decade up to 2011 because of reduced marginality rates. Explaining the phenomenon of urban violence requires the inclusion of intervening substructural variables like social capital’s moderating effect. Such nonlinear theoretical frameworks allow disentangling the convoluted process from macroeconomic conditions like Venezuela’s rent-cum-marginality structure to the actual appearance of high urban violence rates. By looking at intervening structural variables like social capital, the analysis provided in this book traces the structural process, as explained by Zinecker (2014, 42–43) from Gewaltanfälligkeit or susceptibility to violence to Gewaltwirklichkeit or actual violence.

1.4 Methodology This book contributes an abductive qualitative variable-oriented comparison in three barrios of Caracas, which are Catia, Petare, and Baruta, to analyze social capital’s intervening effect between Venezuela’s politico-economic structures and urban violence rates. It accommodates the employment of a positivist paradigm that tests hypotheses based on measurable variables without sacrificing inductive analysis and contextual interpretation (Babones 2015; Morgan 2007; Maxwell 2012).14 A comparative analysis identifies the combination of variables that continuously lead to the same result (Mill 1891, 185–186, 299; Ragin 1987, 24–25). Therefore, this study selects three barrios of Caracas as cases for cross-sectional comparison, showing variance in the dependent variable of urban violence. The variable-oriented comparison performed in this book employs the combined “Method of Difference and Agreement” developed by John S. Mill (1891, 258–259)—or in contemporary political science jargon, the combination of “Most Similar System Design” and “Most Different System Design.” This method permits comparing variances in both social capital and urban violence, which attempts to show the variable combination constantly leading to positive cases—where the dependent variable is present—even if the number of observations is relatively small (Lieberson 1991, 312–314). However, causal processes take place in a real context that often affects such processes, which is why this book presents a process-tracing analysis (Bennet and Checkel 2015; Collier 2011) of the substructural variable that is social capital. Causal process tracing, moreover, does not necessarily translate into using quantitative methods—i.e., statistical significance tests (Ragin 1987, 15). When discriminating between qualitative and quantitative research methods, as tools of causal inference, one identifies two differentiating factors. The first one is the open-ended 14 This book takes the methodological position of recognizing the strengths and limits of the positive approach. One can refer to this as the “realist approach” (Maxwell 2012, 656–658).

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versus close-ended nature of data gathering and processing between the two methods. Quantitative methods are close-ended to fit statistical models that analyze the probable significance of the relationship between variables (Starr 2014, 240). Although this method certainly has its advantages, it has the shortcoming of homogenizing cases (Ragin 2000, 5) and expelling the “wider impacting dynamics” from the empirical analysis (Gray 2011, 10). Considering the broader impacting dynamics is needed to trace the logical process between variables (Collier 2011, 824–825; Levitt and Venkatesh 2000, 79). Qualitative methods, on the other hand, gather open-ended data and provide greater flexibility when analyzing data (Starr 2014, 239–240). The second and probably most important differentiating factor is that qualitative methods elicit a reflexive analysis of the gathered data (Maxwell 2005, 2). In other words, qualitative methods call for a data analysis that considers a critical contextual examination where variables correspond—and not if they correlate. Hence, this study gathers open-ended data and infers causal relationships based on the data identified by the theoretical framework. Including the area studies perspective allows this research to trace and interpret the effects of the Venezuelan historical context on structural variables like social capital but impedes building a universal theoretical model of urban violence. Area studies show that there is embeddedness of historical processes and political, economic, and cultural structures within a geographical space (Castells 2000, 696–697; Granovetter 1985, 504–505). In addition, the theoretical model built in this book cannot assert that it is the only causal process leading to high urban violence rates (Weber 1905, 48–50). Reaching “appropriately qualified causal statements” is the goal of qualitative comparative analyses (Ragin 1987, 169) like the one performed in this book, which refines the theoretical model after testing it against empirical data. Taking account of the historical context is important to try to disentangle the interaction effect of different social structures, and thus properly trace the “causes of causes” of high urban violence rates. This methodological discussion continues in Sect. 1.4.1, which discusses the selection of the three chosen barrios of Caracas and the data sources of urban violence rates, the dependent variable. After that, Sect. 1.4.2 discusses the methods, operationalization, and data sources for the qualitative comparative analysis of social capital.

1.4.1 Case Selection and Sources of Violence Rates in the Barrios of Caracas The dependent variable informs the selection of cases for comparison. Nevertheless, cities are not appropriate cases for comparison because city-wide social capital is not possible to operationalize, as it depends on local network arrangement (Coase 1937, 390). Therefore, the focus of the analysis presented in this book is on barrios and excludes urban spaces falling outside of this category like middle-class and well-off

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Fig. 1.8 Map of Caracas, Venezuela with the location of Catia/23 de Enero, Petare and Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta barrios

neighborhoods. Barrios are indicators of the rent-cum-marginality structural parameter and are urban spaces manifesting differences in social capital. I selected three barrios for cross-sectional comparison, which are Catia/23 de Enero (henceforth, Catia), Santa Cruz del Este and Minas de Baruta (henceforth, Baruta), and Petare. One finds them in the Libertador County (north-west), Baruta County (south-center) and Sucre County (east) of Caracas respectively. One can appreciate the location of these barrios in Fig. 1.8. The selection of these three barrios rests on their different homicides rates, topographical distance from one another, and accessibility to the researcher. As of 2011, the homicide rates, per 100,000 inhabitants, of the county or parish (suburban political unit under the politico-geographical unit of the county) encompassing the barrios were: 105 for Catia (average rates for Sucre and 23 de Enero Parishes of Libertador County), 35 for Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta (Baruta County), and 93 for Petare (Sucre County) (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 84, 87, 103).15 The barrios of Catia and Petare are positive cases of urban violence—where the dependent variable is present—while Baruta is a negative case. The threshold to differentiate between positive and negative cases is the mean violence rate of the selected barrios, which is a rate of 77 homicides. Barrios above this threshold fall within the qualitative analytical category of Gewaltwirklichkeit or actuality of violence (Zinecker 2014, 43). After identifying the variances in the cases’ independent 15 To date, no barrio-specific homicide rates have been found, which requires the use of county-wide or parish-wide figures. These statistics have the limitation of encompassing population settlements other than those studied because political geographies are often arbitrary divisions of space. However, county-wide statistics are still valid for an exploratory qualitative comparison because the barrio areas selected are the biggest ones found in their respective counties or parishes.

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variables, one can comparatively analyze negative case with positive ones to identify the moderating effect of a particular structural composition of social capital between the rent-cum-marginality macrostructure and urban violence (Ragin 1987, 98–99). Furthermore, the selected barrios are topographically distanced from each other, as one can see in Fig. 1.8. The importance of topographical distance as a selection criterion is to minimize interaction effects between them while allowing for a valid comparison. Circulations of people and ideas create re-territorialization processes of previously arbitrarily constructed spaces like suburban political geographies (Middell and Naumann 2010, 155). Therefore, this study considers selected barrios that are topographical neighbors as a single space, like Catia and Baruta, because it is virtually impossible to separate the territory of these spaces and the interaction effects brought by the circulation of its inhabitants. Accessibility to outside researchers was another selection criterion due to questions of safety. In the western part of Caracas, Catia is a high violence barrio, but relatively accessible in terms of safety and transportation. Other barrios in other counties or parishes of western Caracas like El Junquito and Antímano have also exhibited high violence rates. These two barrios showed in 2011 violence rates of 106 and 159 homicides respectively, which are higher than Catia’s (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 84, 87, 103). However, they posed insurmountable security challenges, which did not permit to consider these barrios as research sites. The time frame of this study ends in 2011, as I was only able to find official data with transparent methodological clarifications on suburban homicide rates in Caracas for 2011 (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012). Suburban homicide rates for years after 2011 do exist, but the Venezuelan government has restricted the release of homicide information after 2003 because it saw the use of such data by journalists and academics as an attack on its political legitimacy (Briceño-Leon 2006, 323). When I attempted to collect more recent data on suburban homicide rates at a central police station in Caracas, I was courteously told by a police officer responsible for data collection that the release of such data, which they possessed, would result in the imprisonment of said officer (Police commander, April 25, 2016). Due to this political roadblock, the present study’s time frame for cross-sectional analyses of social capital is 2011, and any complementary longitudinal analysis ends around this year as well.

1.4.2 Operationalizing Social Capital The arrangement of social networks allows for productive endeavors to take place. Social capital can produce productive social network arrangements as social resources, or people become capital assets providing economic returns on nonmonetary investments like time and trust. Hence, operationalizing social capital translates into operationalizing social networks (Coase 1937, 390; Lin 2001, 19). Flagship

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studies of social capital, such as Robert Putnam’s analysis of northern and southern Italy, have operationalized social capital through membership in civil associations, allowing for qualitative and quantitative analyses (Putnam et al. 1993). Nonetheless, this approach has the limitation of not fully capturing the concept’s complexity (Paxton 1999, 90–96), which is especially true when analyzing social capital in urban spaces. One cannot approach an interpretation of social network structures city-wide, but locally at the suburban or neighborhood level. The process of social resources becoming capital takes place at the local or micro level, like in a barrio. People invest in social resources primarily at the local level in great part because human cognitive capacities limit natural social networks to less than 200 participants (Dunbar 1993, 692; Harari 2015, 362–363; Goyal 2007, 75). As discussed below, the data sources for the analysis of social capital were 50 semi-structured interviews in the three selected barrios of Caracas, which I analyzed through crisp set qualitative comparative analysis QCA batteries. However, this operationalization drew from elements of social network analysis (SNA), as one finds the evidence of social capital among repeated social interactions. QCA, developed by sociologist Ragin (1987) is a qualitative method of analysis made to fit a positivist or pragmatic paradigm. Moreover, it allows for a reflexive theory-based causal inference. QCA permits including a variety of data, making the analysis holistic—the spirit of qualitative research—along with the possibility of hypothesis-testing—the spirit of quantitative research. It is a theory-guided codification of data into a binary battery—called, crisp sets—analyzed through Boolean algebra instead of linear algebra (Ragin 1987, 82–94). QCA has the advantage of elucidating the sets of variables that do or do not lead to specific causal mechanisms and allowing mapping variable dependencies—or lack thereof—on the urban space by examining whether factors established by the theoretical framework are necessary or sufficient to produce the studied outcome. The crisp set description of QCA is essential in this regard, as this research method codes the presence or absence of analyzed variables or factors through Boolean binary notation (Grofman and Schneider 2009, 665–666). Importantly, QCA does not identify the only cause of an effect, but a possible set of conditions leading to a social outcome like high urban violence rates. Therefore, this method allows for qualitative process tracing, through which one reaches qualified causal statements. Additionally, QCA controls for omitted variables by comparing dependent causal relationships in positive and negative cases, which is the qualitative equivalent of a control group in quantitative research designs and allows for a reflexive analysis (Ragin 1987, 82–84). The rationale of the control variable is to infer the validity of the data used to test the hypotheses. One can infer the data’s validity by observing the outcomes of a phenomenon under different conditions (Zinecker 2007b, 123–124). A negative case is one without the presence of the dependent variable but within similar parameters. The analysis of negative cases rests on comparing the logical sequences of independent variables present in both positive and negative cases (Ragin 1987, 82–84, 98–99). The comparison of positive and negative cases allows tracing the causal process leading to the presence of the dependent variable (Bennet and Checkel

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2015, 29–30; Waldner 2015, 128). Hence, negative cases are essential elements in tracing the causal framework because they allow testing of the theoretical framework. Furthermore, QCA provides a useful method for data analysis, but no research method comes without limitations. QCA methods cannot make any interpretation on population distribution, which is a general issue of qualitative research designs. Another significant limitation is that QCA cannot control or test for interaction effects with other variables (Lieberson 1991, 313). The limitations of QCA increase the importance of the theoretical framework, as its internal logic provides the only way to reduce or interpret the presence of interaction effects. To operationalize social capital into QCA batteries, social network analysis (SNA) becomes crucial. The development of SNA allowed examining the complex web of human networks allowing them to convert social resources into capital assets because of repeated interactions (Barnes 1954; Scott 2000, 27, 33; Wellman 1983, 163). Therefore, SNA focuses on relational data collection and interpretation within social networks instead of attribute data (Scott 2000, 2–3). For example, an SNA approach would not try to determine the income of a studied subject, an attribute indicator, but the difficulty that he or she has in reaching and obtaining basic goods and services, which is an example of relational data since the answer depends on the structure of his or her social networks. SNA allows examining ties between agents, as they create norms and institutions. Furthermore, social anthropologist J. Clyde Mitchell argues that operationalizing SNA through qualitative methods is possible using nonquantitative mathematical logic to measure interpersonal relations (Mitchell 1969, 1). Mitchell’s methodological argument is noteworthy because the development of SNA has primarily rested on the use of graph theory, a quantitative method (Scott 2000, 4, 27, 33). As sociologist Jeremy Boissevain argues, the overreliance on graph theory to conduct SNA leads to methodological “overkill”. The application of a complex method, designed for other purposes in the first place, is akin to killing flies with dynamite (Boissevain 1979, 393). The present study operationalizes and interprets data on social networks through QCA batteries displayed as truth tables. These truth tables display the collected data through crisp sets representing the presence or absence of social capital’s comparatively analyzed factors. Such operationalization of the data allows tracing the different theory-guided factors to the outcome of urban violence by examining the consistency between the independent and dependent variables. Consistency refers to the relative presence or absence between a factor of social capital and urban violence (Grofman and Schneider 2009, 665). In order words, crisp sets QCA batteries show if the empirical data fits the theory, thus allowing testing hypotheses. This book gathers data on social networks through original semi-structured qualitative interviews in the areas mentioned above of Caracas. I conducted 50 interviews in total with barrio inhabitants of Catia, Petare, and Baruta from April to June 2016—in addition to eight expert interviews. The selected interview partners were men and women from ages ranging from the early 20s until mid-60s, holding lowincome employment, and living in different areas of the three studied barrios. In other words, I selected inhabitants with the possibility of engaging in organization-building to prevent or act against violent agents. Following SNA, the questions asked in the

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semi-structured interviews aimed to uncover the connectedness and the characteristics linking different individuals participating in a social network (Mitchell 1969, 12–19). However, it was not a random selection of interviewed subjects because of the qualitative research design does not estimate distribution within the general population. The basis for the interviewed partners’ selection was their theoretical and empirical significance (Wickes 2010, 429) to the intervening role of social capital on urban violence. The sample size of interviewed partners allowed for theoretical saturation (Strauss 1987, 25–26), and thus to find nonrandom patterns in the data (Wellman 1983, 174). Furthermore, I selected the interview subjects and conducted these interviews primarily in their workplaces, which allowed them to take time to meet with me face-to-face and to conduct the interview in a place where both the interviewer and interviewee felt safe and comfortable enough to conduct the interview. A secure environment was necessary to garner enough trust with the interviewee to produce a data-rich and valid interview. Nevertheless, because suburban data on violence in Caracas, to measure the dependent variable, dates to 2011, the interview questions and obtained answers analyzed in this book are those traceable to the structural composition at around the year of 2011. The cross-sectional research design of social capital forwarded in this book allows capturing accumulated effects in a single point in time (Rosenfeld et al. 2013, 3). As explained in Sect. 1.3.2, the political economy creating low susceptibility to urban violence in 2011 was not a one-year event, but the result of structural conditions showing high “stickiness” or stability over time (Boettke et al. 2008, 332–333). Moreover, the structuration of politico-economic policies (Karl 1997, 5–7) has remained in place across governments, including between the presidencies of Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro. The fact that urban violence rates remained stable from the late 1990s until the mid-2010s, as shown in Fig. 1.1, evidences the stickiness of structural variables. Hence, structural stickiness has remained across time and governments, which allows collecting valid data even if there is a five-year lag in the data between the independent and dependent variable. Lastly, I followed all ethical considerations in conducting the interviews. All interview partners consented to take part in this academic book, after a brief explanation of its purpose. I assured them that it was a completely anonymous survey and that the interview would not serve any political purposes. I did not collect any personal information that could identify the interviewed partners, and I assigned a code to each of them. I only recorded personal information that was of relevance to the SNA, such as gender, age, family structure, whether they or their parents originally came from the barrio, if they lived in another part of Caracas or the country and their employment. These pieces of data are not enough to identify the interview partners in barrios inhabited by relatively large populations. I recorded all the interviews with an audio recorder. Nonetheless, I asked each interviewee for their permission to record the interview. About one-third of them declined, but I took detailed notes of every interview.

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1.5 Structure of the Book The next five chapters develop the analysis of violence in the barrios of Caracas presented in this book. The following chapter, chapter two, provides a nonlinear model of social capital as a substructural variable explaining violence in the barrios of Caracas. It first discusses the concept of urban violence and reviews shortcomings of established theoretical perspectives on urban violence, which are ambivalent or linear explanations of this outcome. They explain why a city is susceptible to high violence rates, but not the process of why it occurs. Chapter two concludes by introducing the substructural variables of social capital to fill this gap in the literature, which provides a nonlinear theoretical model. The chapter then discusses the concept of social capital and the two factors constituting the theoretical model of social capital: Social network density and collective efficacy. The presence or absence of these factors can potentially lead to a productive or perverse structural composition of social capital. The proposed theoretical model discusses the theoretical mechanism of leading social capital to prevent and produce high urban violence rates. The chapter ends by crystallizing the proposed model of social capital as an intervening variable of high urban violence rates and provides three hypotheses to test against the empirical evidence discussed in the three proceeding chapters. Chapter three provides the first empirical discussion of social capital through a cross-sectional analysis of social network density in Catia, Petare, and Baruta. The chapter finds that social network density in all three barrios was qualitatively high because of the relatively high presence of weak ties, which are less frequent, intense, and intimate social ties (Granovetter 1973, 1361–1362; 1983, 202; Goyal 2007, 3–7). Such findings point to the presence of social capital in all barrios. However, the structural composition present in each barrio can be either productive or perverse. Chapter four continues the comparative qualitative analysis of social capital by examining two sub-factors of collective efficacy in Catia, Baruta, and Petare. These sub-factors are social disorganization (Shaw and McKay 1942; Sampson and Groves 1989, 774–776) and collective action within the institutional context (Morenoff et al. 2001; Sampson et al. 1997). The findings of the chapter are that social disorganization was not a consistent sub-factor of collective efficacy. However, it confirms the importance of the second sub-factor. Petare was the only barrio exhibiting significant social disorganization, which shows a lack of correspondence between this sub-factor and urban violence. On collective action within the institutional context, the chapter found that only Baruta showed evidence of sustainable goal-oriented collective action, meaning that attempts at community organization appeared to reach their goals. Hence, there was a correspondence between this sub-factor of collective efficacy and urban violence, but the evidence examined in this section was insufficient to correctly trace the process leading to the presence of collective efficacy. Chapter five analyzes the impact of urban security policies on collective efficacy and explains why this institution created transaction costs for the achievement of collective efficacy, which leads to a perverse structural composition of social capital. To reach this finding chapter five performed a triangulation between a longitudi-

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nal analysis of the evolution of urban security policies from 1960 to 2011 and a cross-sectional analysis of the repeated social relations between inhabitants of Catia, Petare, and Baruta, and security agents in 2011. The findings are that the Venezuelan state practiced a form of conditional impunity where security forces reduced law enforcement on violent sub-barrio groups like street gangs. Nonetheless, they strictly enforced it against small-scale drug dealers and traffickers, which led urban security policies to affect state-barrio relations negatively. Baruta was an exception primarily because of more repeated interactions with security agents, which had a positive impact on collective efficacy. Chapter six concludes with a discussion on the finding that a perverse structural composition of social capital moderated the cause of high urban violence rates in the barrios of Caracas. The chapter then discusses the contributions of the study’s finding to the literature regarding the political economy of urban violence and security studies. It also points to some theoretical, methodological, and empirical directions that future research can undertake to explain the pro-cyclical behavior of urban violence rates better. In addition, the book ends by briefly providing some policy recommendations drawn from this book’s findings. Finally, the concluding chapter very briefly discusses the application of the theoretical model elaborated in this book to the worsening socioeconomic conditions after 2014.

1.6 Interviews Police commander (25 April 2016) Interviewed by the author, Caracas.

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Chapter 2

A Theory of Social Capital as a Moderator of Urban Violence

Abstract This chapter discusses a nonlinear theoretical framework to explain high violence in the barrios of Caracas. Zinecker’s (Gewalt im Frieden: Formen und Ursachen der Gewaltkriminalität in Zentralamerika, 2014, 42–43) structural model of violence frames the theoretical model proposed in this chapter to explain high violence rates. Her structural model states that macrostructural variables can explain susceptibility to high violence rates, but only substructural variables, like social capital, can explain the actual appearance of high violence rates. Such theoretical framework helps explain why violence in the barrios of Caracas remained high while socioeconomic conditions improved. Hence, it helps to interpret why violence rates behaved pro-cyclically in Venezuela’s capital. In addition, this chapter reviews the critical shortcomings of competing theories of urban violence such as oil-rent windfalls, economic deprivation, and subcultural factors. Discussing these theoretical approaches to urban violence shows how the moderating role of social capital can help explain the “causes of causes” of urban violence. After that, this chapter elaborates on a theoretical model developed where social capital in the barrios of Caracas moderates violence rates in these urban spaces. The model developed in this chapter identifies and discusses two factors of social capital’s moderating effects: Social network density and collective efficacy. The former factor refers to the connectedness of an urban neighborhood, and the latter refers to two sub-factors, which are social disorganization and collective action within the institutional context. Keywords Urban violence · Rentierism · Political order · Post-structuralism · Social network density · Collective efficacy

2.1 Introduction Social capital’s structural composition can create or remove a neighborhood’s organizational capital or ability to prevent or act against individuals and organizations using violence as an effective mechanism to accumulate economic resources (Morenoff et al. 2001, 524–525; Matsueda 2006, 15–18. Sampson et al. 1997). The term “moderate” has important theoretical and methodological implications. It differs from “me© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. S. Leon, Violence in the Barrios of Caracas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5_2

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2 A Theory of Social Capital as a Moderator of Urban Violence

diate”, as a moderator is not affected by the predictor variable—in the case of my study, the rent-cum-marginality macrostructure—and “affects the direction and/or strength of the relation between” macrostructural conditions—or predictor—and the outcome variable (Baron and Kenny 1986, 1174). Therefore, social capital can moderate the relationship between structural politico-economic conditions and the outcome of high urban violence rates by impeding—or reinforcing—institutionalanomie induced by the rent-cum-marginality macrostructure, as explained in this book’s first chapter. Before expanding on this study’s theoretical model attempting to explain high violence rates in the barrios of Caracas, the chapter first discusses and conceptualizes urban violence in Sect. 2.2. This section conceptualizes the concept of violence by following on Charles Tilly and focusing on its instrumental or effective use as a tool of resource predation (Tilly 1989, 1992, 2003). Under this discussion, this section succinctly elaborates that urban violence is not a self-explanatory term. The discussion centers on whether violence falls within the category of crime, and if one can term it social or political when it occurs in urban spaces. This subsection finds that urban violence primarily, but not exclusively, falls under the purview of social violence, as it is the result of socioeconomic structural conflicts and not a struggle over political authority. After that, Sect. 2.3 thoroughly reviews the urban violence literature to argue in favor of social capital’s significance as a moderator of high violence rates in the barrios of Caracas. This section discusses the theoretical shortcomings of prominent structural and post-structural explanations of high violence rates in Caracas and Venezuela from a political economy perspective. To better structure the review of this literature, the discussion proceeds in three subsections. Section 2.3.1 reviews the causal link between rentierism and violence. The following Sect. 2.3.2 reviews perspectives that blame urban violence on economic deprivation and urban exclusion. Section 2.3.3 ends the literature review with a discussion of different post-structural perspectives in Venezuela and generally attempting to explain high urban violence without having to account for politico-economic structures, and thus for Caracas’ pro-cyclical behavior of violence rates. Finally, Sect. 2.3.4 briefly concludes this literature review by emphasizing the importance of identifying, conceptualizing and testing substructural variables that can better trace the causal process from politicoeconomic variables to the outcome of high urban violence rates. Section 2.4 develops the proposed theoretical model of social capital as a moderator of high urban violence rates. It discusses the theoretical logic of why social capital permits an urban neighborhood to pull resources together to prevent or act against individuals and groups employing violence as an instrumental tool of resource predation by discussing its two significant factors in two subsections. Section 2.4.1 explains why social network density is a necessary, but not sufficient, factor to achieve a structural composition of social capital, be it productive or perverse. Afterward, Sect. 2.4.2 frames the role of collective efficacy by discussing how social disorga-

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nization and collective action within the institutional context can create or remove transaction costs of achieving social capital. The final Sect. 2.5, concludes the chapter by visualizing and crystallizing the forwarded theoretical model of social capital’s moderating effect between politico-economic conditions and urban violence rates.

2.2 Defining Urban Violence: The Instrumentality of Homicides and the Social Versus Political Classification of Urban Violence Many countries, especially in Latin America, have seen the rise of violence in cities during the last decades of the twentieth century, while almost simultaneously urban spaces had been growing. This type of violence, moreover, is not comparable with traditional forms of violence such as warfare and rural violence, which were the dominant forms up to the 1970s (Briceño-Leon 2002, 34–35; Moser 2004, 3). Hence, one should classify such type of violence as urban violence. However, classifying violence in cities merely as urban violence is not self-explanatory since multiple structures interact and intersect in the urban space at different scales. The interaction and intersection of multiple structures make it difficult to classify the type of violence that occurs in urban spaces (Freitag et al. 2015, 8; Moncada 2016, 3). The term violence, in general, comes from the Latin violentia that refers to interpersonal aggression leading to injury, which can include sports injuries, traffic accidents, rape, and physical assault (Wood 2009, 133; Zinecker 2014, 38). This study focuses narrowly on the annual number of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants to operationalize urban violence as accurately as possible. Focusing on homicides shows the result of successful physical violence, as it makes violence visible and permitting for its operationalization or measurement (Briceño-Leon 2012, 3234; Levitt 2004, 165; Moser 2004, 4; Moncada 2016, 4). Nonetheless, homicide rates have the limitation that they measure only a particular portion of successful physical violence since “the difference between homicide and aggravated assault is often a matter of an inch’s variation in the path of the bullet” (Malmquist 1996, 351). Notwithstanding the limitation of measuring violence through homicide rates, and thus equating both terms, such operationalization permits analyzing the correspondence of independent variables with variations in violence rates. The above discussion on urban violence assumes an instrumental motivation for its use; viewing its use as a means to an end (Chaffee 1992, 141–144; Felson 2009, 27–28; Maume and Lee 2003, 1144; Tilly 1989, 567–570, 1992, 16–17, 19; Zinecker 2014, 38). Assuming that the motivation to use violence by urban agents is an instrumental one leaves aside emotive and expressive motivations of violence, e.g., a fit of rage or expressions of male virility, which classify violence as an end on itself (Briceño-Leon and Zubillaga 2002, 21; Maume and Lee 2003, 1144). Assuming an instrumental use of urban violence allows the analysis to focus on the politicoeconomic structures preventing or allowing agents to use violence as a mechanism

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of predation of economic resources (Felson 2009, 27–28; Chaffee 1992, 141–144). Assuming that the motivation to use urban violence is instrumental follows on the works of political sociologist Charles Tilly who conceptualized violence, or coercion, as a mechanism of resource predation and capital accumulation (Tilly 1989, 567–570, 1992, 16–17, 19, 2003, 3–4). Scholars have criticized the instrumental approach to urban violence by arguing that it does not explain why impoverished young individuals choose to kill for a pair of expensive sports shoes instead of food (Marquez 1999, 4). However, there is always a significant amount of instrumentality in violent actions (Felson 2009, 28). One could argue that the social symbol that a pair of expensive sports shoes brings to a violent assailant is not the end itself, but the means to an end. Such ends could be increased respect amongst fellow delinquents, and a thus greater share in looted goods or less competition from other criminals. Similarly, symbols of wealth and power acquired by feudal lords in Medieval Europe, as Charles Tilly explains, were not an end, but a means of acquiring further capital (Tilly 1992, 84–89). Additionally, it is essential to differentiate the categories of violence and crime and urban violence as a political or social. As explained above, violence refers to interpersonal aggression, which often leads to the death of the injured person; a homicide that one can measure. On the other hand, a crime refers to rule breaking (Durrant and Ward 2015, 2; Felson 2009, 24). Homicide is universally a type of crime, but there are certain instances where it may not constitute a crime under the corresponding jurisdiction, such as in cases of self-defense, police or military use of force, or state-sanctioned executions. Therefore, violence and crime certainly overlap but do not constitute the same analytical concept (Ibid., 24–27). This present book analyzes and operationalizes violence as homicides, without regard to whether it constitutes a crime under the corresponding jurisdiction. The categorical overlap found between the concepts of violence and crime is like the categorization of urban violence as social or political. The conceptual domains of social and political violence in the urban space are “porous” (Moncada 2016, 28). However, this present book places urban violence under social violence because the structural causes of high violence rates rest primarily in socioeconomic conflicts (Beall et al. 2013, 3069; Briceño-Leon 2002, 35; Hoelscher and Nussio 2015, 2; Fox and Hoelscher 2012, 434–435). Social violence differentiates itself from political violence because two factors compose the latter category, which the former always lacks at least one: the question of government authority and the significant organization of agents to dispense violence. Categorizing violence as political requires that agents pull resources to dispense violence to lobby the government to change a particular policy, to secede from it, or to replace it (Lessing 2018, 50–53; North et al. 2009, 14; Zinecker 2014, 41). Moreover, political violence could come from, and be directed to and between, nonstate actors (Zinecker 2014, 41). Political violence is not just forceful challenges from or against the state, as classically conceptualized (Fox and Hoelscher 2012, 433; Von der Mehden 1973, 6; Solimano 2004, 7).

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The use of political violence may arise as a result of instability in the political regime, which may incentivize organizations with violence capabilities to increase their position of power in order to extract a greater share of economic rent (North et al. 2013, 3–5). For example, high expenditure in military forces by South American countries is more an appeasement measure toward such violence-wielding organizations than an international arms race calculation (Martin 2006). Similarly, it may result from the dissolution of state borders, challenges to state policies, or struggles for autonomy. On the other hand, when violence is categorically social either the role of governmental authority (Weber 1918) is not directly in question, and the organization of agents in dispensing violence is either low or nonexistence. For violence to fall under the social category, establishing or challenging governmental authority must not be a goal of agents using violence (Zinecker 2014, 41–42). Therefore, using Tilly’s concept of violent coercion does not mean that this present book interprets violence as always being political. One can apply such concept to the analysis of social violence if specific agents or organization engage in coercive predation of resources without the question of authority being directly present (Tilly 2003, 4). Furthermore, agents may or may not organize to dispense social violence: a lone serial killer, family mafias or neighborhood gangs could fall under the social violence category. Violence in the urban space is primarily social since it, for the most part, is not a medium for monopolizing power to impose particular policies over a determined space and acquiring the acquiescence of its residents. However, identifying urban violence as social violence does not mean that political elements are absent since the urban space intertwines multiple structures due to the dense collocation of people. It is this embeddedness of structures that increase the difficulty of explaining urban violence’s structural causes.

2.3 The Shortcomings of (Post-) Structural Theories Explaining Urban Violence Rates The literature, in Venezuela and generally, proposes different structural and poststructural perspectives attempting to explain violence in cities. This literature review starts with the most obvious explanation of high violence rates that is rentierism due to oil windfalls’ historical dominance in Venezuela. The following pages discuss the theories linking impunity, created by the political order, and urban violence. After that, this section reviews the perspectives of economic deprivation and urban exclusion. Lastly, post-structural theories try to explain the pro-cyclical behavior of violence rates in cases like Caracas, as structural explanations are often ambivalent. Nevertheless, these explanations of urban violence, structuralist or not, suffer from the same shortcomings: They ignore the possibility of tracing structural processes through substructural variables like social capital. In other words, many of these explanations account for why cases like the barrios of Caracas are susceptible to urban violence, but not why they lead to actual high urban violence rates.

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2.3.1 Rentierism, Impunity, and the Political Order: The Ambivalent Link Between Oil-Rents and Urban Violence Countries like Venezuela, whose main source of economic surplus is oil, generate most of their income from rents. Most of these rents are differential rents, which are revenues derived from a large difference between production and market prices (Jenkins et al. 2011, 4–5). Following “Sutton’s Law”, when one attempts to build a causal model explaining high levels of urban violence rentierism appears as the most likely cause since oil-rents is the place “where the money was” (Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 1). The link between oil-induced rentierism and urban violence is in fact what the Venezuelan literature has primarily argued to explain many of the countries woes, including high urban violence rates. On the Venezuelan case, prominent research identified petroleum rents as an important variable explaining the rise of urban violence since the end of the 1980s (Briceño-Leon 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012; Coronil and Skurski 1991; España 1993). The rentier perspective on violence—i.e., the work of economist Paul Collier—indirectly links rentierism and violence through the Dutch disease (Auty 1993, 3–5. Gelb 1988, 321; Sid Ahmed 1987, 889–890) by arguing that agents have the incentive of using violence as a rent-procuring mechanism. This perspective stresses that high and sustained levels of violence occur only in the presence of rents, as they are a source of revenue needed to finance the continued use violence that does not collapse under the violent environment, unlike traditional domestic production (Collier and Hoeffler 2005, 625; Collier 2000, 842). However, the theoretical relationship between rentierism and violence is highly ambivalent: Some rentier states have experienced high violence rates, but others have not (Elsenhans 2009, 5). The ambivalence between rentierism and violence is especially evident in oil exporters: only one-third of oil exporters have experienced significant subnational violence (Basedau and Lay 2009, 758; Ross 2004). On average, rentierism tends to cause violence, but averages do not explain the causal process of such a phenomenon. Theories of violence in Venezuela follow a somewhat different causal process as Collier’s theory. They posit that sociopolitical crises induced by the rentier structure increased violence by modifying intervening macro-institutional variables, such as the social contract and the rule of law. In other words, the causal link between rentierism and urban violence rests on the detrimental effects of rentierism on political order—formal institutions administering the public sphere (Fukuyama 2012, 2014)—leading to the impunity of violence. The literature on urban violence notes that the development of political order is crucial in order to reduce violence as the state can impersonally, and thus dispassionately, enforces the rule of law (Fox and Hoelscher 2012, 433; Zinecker 2009, 2014, 53–54). Political scientist Ginsberg (2013) eloquently crystallized the abovementioned argument that places political order as a necessary structural variable reducing urban violence rates by

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elaborating that, “perhaps in the Kingdom of Heaven citizens cheerfully pay their taxes and dutifully obey every law, but in earthly kingdoms, they generally need a bit of encouragement” (82). Rentierism places structural conditions that strain the political order like increased public spending and debt accumulation to offset the Dutch disease (Karl 1997, 174–180; DiJohn 2014, 334, 339). Rentier states must continuously increase public spending and debt accumulation because their governmental institutions do not process and resolve politico-economic strains through contestation of policies but through clientelistic networks of patronage that appease stakeholders (Elsenhans 1996, 47, 57–58; Naim 2001, 20–21; Peñafiel 2008, 304). The basis of patronage networks is an inefficient investment that increases the willingness of the population to become “clients” of the “patron” ruling elite, which resolves the “politicalcommitment problem” by increasing the rewards of rent-seeking. Hence, for the population to access rents, they must maintain their political support of the elite since the withdrawal of political commitment translates into being ostracized from rent-seeking opportunities (Robinson and Verdier 2013, 261–263). In other words, rentier states employ petrodollars or rent windfalls to temporarily meet political demands, which keeps the elite coalition on power and other stakeholders sufficiently content (Karl 1997, 225–227; Mazzuca 2013; Monaldi and Penfold 2014; North et al. 2009, 18–21, 2013, 3–5; Weyland 2009). However, strains in the political order turn into economic strains that reduce the reach of law enforcement agencies, which produces impunity (Briceño-Leon 2005, 1641–1642, 2012, 3235–3236, 2015b, 125–126). Impunity caused by rentierims translates into higher violence rates as explained by Becker’s (1968) and Ehrlich’s (1996) models of crime, which state that the absence of negative incentives against the use of violence, like effective law enforcement, increase the incentives of using violence to meet one’s cultural and economic goals. Although the logic of the argument linking rentierism and violence makes perfect economic sense, it assumes that the existence of a Hobbesian state of nature when political order remains underdeveloped or strained (Fox and Hoelscher 2012, 433). Linking rentierism and violence leads to the theoretical shortfall of not explaining why most agents are not violent in the absence of negative incentives against such action. In other words, if a third-party or Leviathan enforcer were required to maintain violence rates low, then no society could survive since it is prohibitively costly for a third party, like law enforcement organizations, to prevent or resolve social conflicts in every social interaction (Gaviria 2000, 14; Putnam et al. 1993, 165, 173–174; Putnam 2000, 308–309). Moreover, many barrios are not violent while they may exhibit high impunity due to low state penetration (Briceño-Leon 2015a, 25; Rosas Meza 2015, 156). The theoretical shortcoming of the perspective linking a weak or absent political order to high urban violence rates by creating impunity tends to emphasize formal institutions that, when absent, lead to the rise of violence. Linking a weak or absent political order to violence ignores the relationship between formal and informal institutions that intervene in the causal process between structural conditions and outcomes.

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One finds formal and informal institutions embedded in urban social structures (Granovetter 1985). For example, policy interventions to increase the strength and presence of formal institutions to reduce violence, like security institutions, often fail at reducing homicide rates because they ignore their impact on informal institutions (Arias 2006, 295; Arias and Goldstein 2010; Holscher and Nussio 2015, 3; Wennmann 2014, 258–261). Informal institutions play an essential role in the moderation between macroeconomic conditions and the outcome of violence. These can prevent the rise of violent individuals and groups by allowing for collective efficacy at the neighborhood level (Sampson et al. 1997). Collective efficacy, a factor of social capital, allows for the efficient pulling of resources to prevent or act against violent agents or organizations (Ibid., 918; Zinecker 2014, 83). Social capital could intervene in the absence, or even presence, of formal political institutions and the rise of urban violence. If rent-deterministic theories of violence in Venezuela were correct, then one would look no further. Sutton was right. However, following John Stuart Mill’s definition of causality, one can identify the cause of an outcome, as the factor invariably leading to the same result (Mill 1891, 214). Following Mill’s definition of causality rentierism hardly seems to be a direct cause of violence because some rentier states show a correspondence of rising violence along increased rent windfalls, while others do not. Some quintessential rentier states such as Algeria block rent access to nonstate actors, but violent groups still manage to persist (Elsenhans 2009, 5–6). Hence, the theoretical relationship between rentierism and urban violence is ambivalent. Furthermore, the theories that stress impunity resulting from the rentier macrostructure do not accurately trace the causal process, as they ignore the role of informal institutions. Any theoretical discussion of the relationship between rents and violence should involve an explanation of the observed ambivalence between rentierism and studied outcome (Elsenhans 2009, 6). The substructural variable that is social capital does not act in opposition or parallel to formal political institutions; these institutions are mutually embedded (Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 61–66). For example, variations in social capital appear to explain different outcomes under similar macrostructural conditions (Putnam et al. 1993). Therefore, this study does not deny or exclude the importance of formal political institutions—and their role in shaping political order—in the causal process leading to urban violence. Nonetheless, it focuses the analysis on social capital since variations in this substructural variable could provide a more thorough process tracing of how urban violence rises or not under an overarching structural condition marked by rentierism and a strained political order like the one found in Venezuela as elaborated in Sect. 1.3.2.

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2.3.2 Economic Deprivation: The Low Explanatory Power of Poverty, Inequality, and Urban Exclusion Structural theories of high urban violence rates posit macroeconomic variables as the causes of this phenomenon. The theoretical logic is that macroeconomic variables make the use of violence evident in situations of significant material disadvantage, viewed through the rational-choice lenses of economic theory, and thus violence increases counter-cyclically to the business cycle (Becker 1968; Cook and Zarkin 1985; Florence and Barnett 2013, 307–309; Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 1–6). In other words, as economic indicators worsen, violence rates rise. Hence, the prominent literature places socioeconomic structural variables such as absolute and relative economic—i.e., poverty and inequality—along with urban exclusion as primary independent variables of urban violence (Briceño-Leon 2015a, 16; Lee 2000, 192–193). However, the theoretical logic of these variables suffers from endogeneity problems, weak empirical backing, and direct causal links displaying poor process tracing. These limitations severely reduce their explanatory power of urban violence. Poverty or absolute deprivation have been popular explanations of urban violence among scholars and politicians. It argues that factors such as neoliberal policies pushed by pro-globalization institutions increase poverty, and not the dynamics of urban growth (Briceño-Leon and Zubillaga 2002, 31–32; Ziccardi 2008. Moser and McIlwaine 2006, 95–97; Sanchez 2006, 178–180; Hettne 2003, 54–55). In turn, the poorer sectors of a society concentrate on certain spaces of the city, like the barrios. Poverty and its urban concentration may “foster the oppositional ghetto culture that leads to high levels of community violence” (Lee 2000, 194). This perspective further argues that physical or geographical marginalization is a product of normative segregation, this perspective argues, because structural adjustment policies imposed by the ruling classes induce economic marginalization (Deffner 2011; Ziccardi 2008). Physical or geographical marginalization further reproduces poverty and motivates the excluded to use violence as an effective mechanism to overcome or at least reduce their precarious situation. However, empirical evidence shows that although the bulk of violence perpetrators comes from impoverished areas, these individuals affect the impoverished communities themselves more than they affect non-excluded or affluent sectors of society, as well as the fact that not all areas marked by absolute deprivation show high violence rates (Briceño-Leon 2015a, 25; Rosas Meza 2015, 156; Moreno et al. 2009, 857–859). Regarding groups of violent agents like gangs, the literature shows that the presence of an economic underclass is not a sufficient condition for such groups to emerge (Hagedorn 2014, 349–350). Therefore, the empirical backing for such theories is weak. Furthermore, such theories do not consider that increased urban violence, by possibly other variables, can reproduce poverty and exclusion. Increased violence in poor areas, such as barrios, forces its inhabitants to reduce routine activities (Rosas Meza 2015, 185–186). Reducing routine activities, in turn, reduces productive economic activities, which stifles the possibility of capital accumulation and social mobility.

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Additionally, the causal tracing in theories linking absolute deprivation or poverty to urban violence is poor because impoverished or excluded urban areas form part of a structural variable set that creates a susceptibility to violence, but not a causal mechanism leading to the actuality of violence. For example, research by sociologists Briceño-Leon and Zubillaga (2002) lists variables linking global processes to increased violence rates without assessing their hierarchy or without classifying them as necessary or sufficient, independent or intervening. Therefore, such theories require the addition of specific substructural variables to explain better the process leading to actual urban violence. For example, social capital can reduce or increase rates of violence in excluded urban neighborhoods as an effective instrumental mechanism to overcome their precarious socioeconomic situation. On the question of gangs it seems that in addition to the presence of structural poverty and economic exclusion, these violent groups arise because of the lack of social institutions that can manage conditions of deindustrialization, which does not allow specific agents, especially youth, to accomplish culturally valued goals (Hagedorn 2014, 349–350). The above discussion provides further evidence of the significance of analyzing sub or substructural variables such as social capital that can trace the process leading to actual urban violence. A second theory from the economic deprivation perspective attempting to explain high urban violence rates is that of inequality, or relative deprivation explains that violence occurs due to the absence of incentives that would deter a motivated perpetrator (Ehrlich 1996, 43). The presence of inequality, and not poverty alone, increase the opportunity costs to use violence (Bourguignon 1999, 11; Fox and Hoelscher 2012, 6). However, this perspective fails to explain when individuals do not engage in violence every time that the opportunity outweighs the costs. If the model were to hold, no society would have survived (Gaviria 2000, 14). Therefore, such a perspective does not consider that a substructural variable could inhibit or allow a structural variable such as poverty and inequality to affect the opportunities or incentives motivating individuals or groups to use violence. Another perspective that emanates from the view that economic deprivation causes urban violence is that of the exclusion and density of urban poverty. In other words, this perspective blames the high presence of marginalized barrios, and not density itself, as a cause of violence (Beall et al. 2013, 3069; Lee 2000, 189–190; Rodgers 2009). According to this perspective, urban density and concentration of poverty increased psychological strain on individuals, which leads to an increased motivation to use violence to accomplish culturally valued goals. The rationale is that population agglomeration under economically precarious conditions increases fear and psychological strain among individuals at higher rates than in non-dense precarious environments because of an increasing sentiment of invasion of their vital space (Briceño-Leon 2015a, 24; Brown and Osterman 2012, 219–221; Gorelik et al. 2012, 507–509). Sociologist Wacquant (2000, 382–384) argues that density and exclusion of urban poverty are similar to conditions found in the modern prison, where similar structural conditions produce psychological strain through “stigma”, “constraint”, “territorial confinement”, and “institutional encasement”. Therefore, in these spaces violence becomes a mechanism by individuals in both prisons and barrios to

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survive the strain imposed by such marginalized and detrimental structural conditions (Dhami et al. 2007, 1086–1087; Farrington and Nuttall 1980, 229–230; Wacquant 2000, 383–384). In other words, density and exclusion of urban poverty increase the costs of engaging in formal economic activities, which increases the opportunities provided by violence as a tool of resource predation. The problem with such perspective, as with the theories blaming poverty and inequality, is that the process tracing leading such variables to urban violence is not at all clear because many urban sectors displaying agglomerated urban poverty do not show high violence rates. Additionally, observed correspondence between urban density and violence is a deviation from the macro-trend that had seen violence secularly decline. Urban growth appears to account for a moderate reversal of the macro-trend during the second half of the twentieth century, a time when cities were growing (Eisner 2001, 618–620).1 High quantities of marginal and dense urban spaces such as barrios do not linearly translate into high violence rates. On the other hand, it is likely that the level of social organization, moderated by variables such as social capital, can reduce the straining effects of urban density under economically precarious conditions. This substructural variable could explain why actual violence arises in urban spaces under a macrostructure with high barrio presence in a nonlinear manner. Therefore, poverty and inequality do not explain urban violence linearly, and the study of this phenomenon requires a substructural moderating variable (Bourguignon 1999, 32; Bourguignon et al. 2010; Briceño-Leon 2015b, 122; Cramer 2003). As with the absolute deprivation theories, the structural analysis of social capital can reduce or increase the opportunity costs of the individuals that are prone to using violence as an instrumental mechanism of offsetting poverty or inequality. However, economists have challenged the moderating substructural link between social capital and violence under situations of relative deprivation arguing that this theoretical concept was ambivalent because of two reasons: First, many violent agents show a high degree of social capital, yet they increase violence. Second, social capital seems to suffer from the problem of endogeneity, two-way causation between the independent and independent variable, which hinders the validity of a causal mechanism (Laderman et al. 2002, 510, 530). However, both arguments have essential weaknesses. On the first argument against social capital, Lederman et al. (2002, 515, 529–530) claim that social capital lowers transaction costs to the spread of “successful criminals” and groups that produce violence against nonmembers, such as drug gangs. Hence, social capital does not necessarily entail pacification. However, such a claim ignores the existing literature on perverse social capital, which has moved beyond viewing this concept as always leading to socially desirable outcomes. This literature explains that social capital can produce positive and negative externalities; i.e., socially desirable or undesirable effects to third parties of such economic activity (Rubio 1997, 815; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 981; Fukuyama 2001, 8; Portes 1998, 1 Pinker

(2011) and Keely (1996) also argued that the advancement of modernity has led to a reduction of violence. However, they made such analyses on global terms and not focusing on the urban space.

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18). On the second argument, the authors claim that social capital suffers from an endogeneity problem because rising violence could increase social capital as communities organize to tackle the problem, or it could decline as people reduce out-of-home activities due to fear of victimization (Lederman et al. 2002, 511). However, such argument also suffers from an endogeneity problem, as rising violence can cause violence since it reduces productive enterprises by increasing the costs of engaging in them (Collier 2000, 842). Theoretical models explaining violence as a function of poverty and inequality do not address negative cases, which are cases where poverty and inequality are significant, but violence is not like Managua and Cairocases mentioned in the introduction. Negative cases show that there are moderating substructural variables, such as social capital, between economic inequality and the presence of high urban violence rates (Harrigan and El-Said, 2009, 78; Zinecker 2012, 31–34; Zinecker 2014, 42–43). Furthermore, the Venezuelan literature on urban violence proposes theoretical models where substructural variables intervene, which includes social capital, social cohesion, citizen culture, and the rule of law (Briceño-Leon 2015a, 25; 2015b, 119–120; Briceño-Leon and Camardiel 2015; Farias 2015). They move away from linear explanations of violence—similarly to the development studied literature—in discarding linear analyses that blamed violence on apparent correlates such as poverty, inequality, or density of urban poverty (Moser 2004, 8; 2006). Post-1970s, or “late” development studies took a holistic approach to the analysis of variables because their interaction was often convoluted, thus making linear arguments fallacious (Przeworski 2003). These models propose that the absence or poor performance of the abovementioned sociopolitical institutions intervene in Venezuela’s high rates of urban violence (Zubillaga et al. 2015). However, such models present the important limitation of not providing a thorough conceptualization of these substructural variables. As explained below, factors such as social cohesion and trust result from social capital, but they are not part of it (Fukuyama 2001, 7). Other factors like the rule of law may refer to the primacy of state authority, which in turn refers to the efficiency of the criminal justice system, which in turn refers to the capacities of law enforcement organizations, the courts, and the penitentiary system. Analyzing these institutions requires considering their specific theoretical and methodological implications (Voigt 2009, 2–3). Poor conceptualization of substructural variables is a common problem in the literature and prevents valid operationalization and analysis.

2.3.3 Reconciling the “Paradox of Caracas”: Post-structural Explanations of Urban Violence When the evidence does not support traditional structural approaches, explanations of urban violence rates pro-cyclical behavior often turn to poststructural perspectives. The literature on the barrios of Caracas argues that established explanations of urban violence viewing the rise of this phenomenon as countercyclical to downturns

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in the business cycle does not match the empirical evidence (Antillano 2016, 38, 44–45; Briceño-Leon et al. 2012; Briceño-Leon 2015c). In other words, poststructural explanations try to address the “Paradox of Caracas”, as coined by sociologist Veronica Zubillaga (2013, 108–109). In trying to reconcile the pro-cyclical behavior of urban violence rates with macroeconomic indicators, post-structural perspectives try to account for high violence rates by blaming the construction of violent subcultures and the routine activities created by Caracas’ area development. These perspectives move away from the relationship between politico-economic structures and urban violence, hence their classification as post-structural theories. However, such perspectives ignore substructural mechanisms, which can trace the process leading from politico-economic macrostructures to actual urban violence. Post-structural explanations of violence in the barrios of Caracas rely primarily on constructivist perspectives blaming high violence rates on subcultural norms reproduced by the cycles of violence, and not by structural politico-economic incentives. One example of the poststructural perspective is the centrality of grief and fear of victimization, both social constructs, in the reproduction of violent subcultures (Ibid., 111–113; Zubillaga et al. 2015, 230–232). The killing of individuals in urban environments—most of them being young males—they leave family members and close friends in a state of profound grief. The immediate solution to relief such grief is bringing the perpetrator to account and achieve extralegal justice by killing the perpetrator. Processes of extralegal justice coupled with institutional deterioration where the state and security forces withdraw from barrios and further reproduce urban violence rates (Briceño-Leon 2015c, 61–64; Tremaria 2016, 70–74; Zubillaga 2013, 113–117). The theoretical basis of the subculture perspective as a cause of violence is the cultural deviance theory, where subcultural norms in conflict with the dominant culture promote violent behavior. Cultural deviance theory allows for a “freestanding” interpretation of the conflict between cultural norms and the larger politico-economic structures. Subcultural norms reproducing violence are normative systems independent of social structures like neighborhood economic disadvantage (Miller 1966, 111–112). At the heart of this argument, is that social learning processes, independent of politico-economic structures, allow for the reproduction of violent norms, and thus for high violent rates. For example, violence as a form of justice in barrios, with the purpose of reducing grief from the loss of a loved one, is a socially learned subcultural norm (Zubillaga 2013, 108–109; Zubillaga et al. 2015, 230–232). In addition, the ethnographic description of the “code of the street” is another excellent example embodying this theoretical logic (Anderson 1999; Hirschi 1969). However, the theoretical logic of post-structural perspective like cultural deviance theory has come under heavy scrutiny from the Chicago school of urban sociology, which argues that contextual factors like structural disadvantage are impossible to ignore in the analysis of urban violence (Sampson 2002, 217; Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 46–47). Analyzing substructural variables can provide greater explanatory power to the analysis of urban violence’s pro-cyclical behavior, as in the case of Caracas.

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Another important post-structural perspective of urban violence is the routine activities approach of agents in the urban area. It states that specific motivated agents to engage in predatory violence against victims whose routine economic activities match their routine geographical movements (Cohen and Felson 1979, 589–590; Messner and Tardiff 1985, 242–243). Consequently, under these preconditions and with matching urban geographical patterns of both victim and perpetrator the likelihood of violence increases. The routine activities approach does not argue for a linear causal mechanism and is contingent on the presence of other variables like economic marginality. However, such a perspective falls within the category of post-structural theories, as it follows the epidemiological approach in analyzing violence. It theorizes on the causes of violence by analyzing where homicides took place. Such an approach has severe methodological weaknesses. The urban epidemiological approach takes a victim-centric approach, which may lead to a diagnostic fallacy. For example, if an individual suffers from a psychiatric disorder or originates from an economically underprivileged community, these factors do not explain by themselves why such individual is the victim or perpetrator of a homicide (Malmquist 1996, 188, 337). This methodological approach can lead to the conceptualization of violence as a virus, which originates from the observation of almost identical spatial patterns between how viruses and violence develop within urban settlements (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council 2013, 9, 11, 41–44). Hence, according to this perspective, reducing violence requires the interruption of the virus—i.e., of the violent agents. Although one could observe a strong correlation between the progress of urban violence and infectious diseases, it is likely due to the circumscription effect of the urban area and not a shared causal mechanism (Harari 2015, 51–52). Additionally, not all agents become violent in neighborhoods where violence is high, which should be the case if it indeed behaved like a virus (Rosenfeld et al. 2013, 14). The theoretical limitation of the epidemiological approach is one found in approaches relying primarily on methodological individualism, like cultural deviance theory. These approaches wonder into the territory of social psychological (Bandura et al. 1975; Zimbardo 2007, 10–17), which post-structural theories are typically unable to address. Moreover, methodological individualism has the disadvantage of not being able to explain variations in violence rates, and only shows risk factors of victimization (Rosenfeld et al. 2013, 14). Moreover, post-structuralist explanations possess dispositional assumptions inhibiting the structural analyses. Dispositional analyses explore the individual and not the social environment or structure and try to explain away structural complexities (Wikström and Treiber 2009; Zimbardo 2007, 8–10). Hence, explaining high violence in the barrios of Caracas, one must explore the complex composition of politico-economic structural variables. As criminologist Andres Antillano (2016, 45–48) explains, the shortcoming with post-structural theoretical perspectives on violence in Venezuela is in significant part due to the methodology used to analyze socioeconomic structures. These perspectives dismiss the role of structural effects

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on the rise of violence because they use aggregates of socioeconomic indicators at the macro-level. Comparatively analyzing capital asymmetries, like social capital, among barrio residents allows for the process tracing of complex structural interactions.

2.3.4 Filling the Gap: The Intervening Role of Social Capital The literature on attempting to explain high violence in the barrios of Caracas has not conceptualized substructural variables that can trace the process leading to the “causes of causes” of urban violence. Identifying the causal mechanism explaining high urban violence in Venezuela requires disentangling its convoluted structural variable combination. Disentangling convoluted structural variables means tracing the process of the causal mechanism and moving beyond ambivalent or linear explanations like rentierism or economic deprivation, which point toward politicoeconomic structures making an urban case susceptibility to violence, Gewaltanfälligkeit, and do not trace the causal process leading to actual violence, Gewaltwirklichkeit (Zinecker 2014, 42–43). Additionally, post-structural perspectives ignoring structural contexts do not disprove the explanatory power of structural approaches, but their poor conceptualization. Thoroughly conceptualizing substructural variables allow for process tracing between macrostructural conditions and the outcome of violence. This study attempts to trace the structural causal process between politicoeconomic macrostructures and urban violence by conceptualizing the substructural variable of social capital as an intervening variable. A qualitative analysis of social capital aiming to trace the causal process between Venezuela’s politico-economic macrostructure and violence in the barrios of Caracas is, to the knowledge of the author, missing. This book aims to fill this gap in the literature.

2.4 Social Capital’s Moderating Effect of Urban Violence: The Role of Social Network Density and Collective Efficacy The heart of the theoretical framework of social capital’s moderating effect between the predictor politico-economic macrostructure and urban violence is its ability to produce collective efficacy allowing for an urban neighborhood to prevent or act against violent groups and individuals (Morenoff et al. 2001, 525). This moderating process can explain different rates of actual urban violence. The substructural variable that is social capital can reduce transaction costs of collective action at the urban neighborhood level, thus increasing collective efficacy (Sampson et al. 1997).

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Therefore, social capital can moderate urban violence by affecting internal social control within communities. Nonetheless, this mechanism does not only lead it to a moderating effect where violence decreases; the contrary outcome can occur as well. Certain structural compositions of social capital allow violence to increase or remain high. This present theoretical framework explains that social network arrangements can lead to different structural compositions of social capital, which leads this substructural variable to have different moderating roles. The theoretical moderating mechanism linking social capital to low or high urban violence rates lies in the structural combination created by the presence or absence of social network density and collective efficacy. Different structural compositions of social capital lead to high or low transaction costs and different cognitive heuristics or beliefs (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 3–4; Uphoff 1999, 218–219). The structural composition of social capital, which depends on the combinatorial presence or absence of social network density and collective efficacy, allow—or not—an urban neighborhood that is susceptible to urban violence to organize and impart informal social control. Therefore, social capital is negatively correlated with homicide rates (Rosenfeld et al. 2001, 286–287), as it allows for informal social control in urban neighborhoods that prevent or act against individuals or groups that use actual violence as an effective mechanism of resource predation. Social capital could explain the structural ambivalence of an overarching structural condition like high oil rents and urban marginality. Social capital can have productive and perverse structural compositions, which are traceable, and moderate low or high actual urban violence under a politico-economic economic structure of rent-cum-marginality. This section continues in Sect. 2.3.1 by first discussing the core theoretical logic of social capital as a substructural variable. Section 2.3.2 then reviews the conceptual relationship between social network density and collective efficacy, the two factors composing this book’s theoretical model of social capital as a moderator of urban violence rates. Thereafter, Sect. 2.3.3 elaborates on the first factor of the model: social network density or the relative connectedness of an urban neighborhood. Subsection 3.3.4 discusses the theoretic set of social disorganization and collective action within the institutional context, which constitute collective efficacy in an urban neighborhood, the model’s second factor of social capital. This theoretical discussion allows constructing a nonlinear theoretical model of social capital’s moderating effect of violence in the barrios of Caracas.

2.4.1 The Concept of Social Capital Central to the present theoretical model of social capital is the canonic work of institutional economist Coase’s (1937, 387–393) transaction costs model. This model argues against the neoclassical concept that the social division of labor is the result of Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market (e.g., Hayek 1933) but instead posits that social organizations partly suppress the price mechanism to create a “system of relationships which comes into existence when the direction of resources is

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dependent on the entrepreneur” (Coase 1937, 387–388, 393). Social capital allows for increased socioeconomic organization toward certain neighborhood goals like preventing or acting against violence agents by lowering transactions costs for the structuration of collective action (Cooter 1982, 14; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968; Uphoff 1999, 218–219; Williamson 1979, 233–234), which leads to collective efficacy (Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919). Nonetheless, the structuration of social capital only occurs in reiterated exchanges between two or more people. In game theory terms, social capital is a solution to reiterated Prisoners’ Dilemma (PD), or collective action problems, by structuralizing future reciprocity and cooperation between community members (Taylor 1987, 13–18). The term “reiterated” in the previous sentence is critical. Without reiterated or repeated exchanges, like a onetime PD game, defection from cooperation becomes the Nash equilibrium, and social capital does not form (Fukuyama 2001, 14). Importantly, nonetheless, the presence of trust and cooperation by themselves are not necessarily indicators social capital. Social outcomes such as trust, networks of reciprocity and cooperation are epiphenomenal or a by-product of social capital (Ibid., 7). Trust is a separate concept that is separate from social capital, even if there are conceptual relationships between the two (Booth and Richard 2012, 36). The concept of trust, however, is directly related to that of risk, which is the understanding and acceptance of the unanticipated results of a given action (Giddens 1990, 30–31). However, social capital leads to specific social outcomes because it produces externalities, which are nonmarket consequences to third parties of socioeconomic activities like reiterated investment in social relations (Collier 1998, 2; Fukuyama 2001, 7; Glaeser et al. 2002, F438–F439). Externalities produced by social capital may include trust, but not necessarily. It is important to note that social capital is a form of capital because it produces externalities, which could be either positive or negative. Moreover, the urban space allows for faster creation and transfer of externalities arising from nonmarket social interactions (Wirth 1938, 14; Helsley and Zenou 2014, 427). This factor is crucial to the conceptualization of social capital because the externalities produced spread as a function of urban density, as it reduces the costs of information sharing allowing for a more significant number of externalities (Helsley and Zenou 2014, 427). Urban agglomeration weakens interpersonal ties by increasing the number of social interactions, and thus the channels of information (Wirth 1938, 11). However, this process aids the growth of networks of cooperation that produce socially desirable externalities like informal social control and undesirable externalities like urban violence (Patacchini and Zenou 2012, 4, 6; Bettencourt et al. 2007, 7303). The type of externality produced by social capital—i.e., positive or negative (Szreter 2001, 294–295; Fukuyama 2001, 7)—helps explain its moderating mechanism between the politico-economic macrostructure and urban violence. Externalities explain why trust and norms of cooperation are epiphenomenal to social capital. In reiterated PD games leading to the creation of social capital and the structuration of networks and norms of trust and cooperation reduce transaction costs allowing for organization-building toward community goals (Olson 1971, 5–8). Norms arise in repeated network interactions, where there are repeated investments with expectations of future returns. The by-products or externalities of social capital

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such as trust and cooperation allow for collective efficacy. The concept of collective efficacy refers to repeated and sustainable organization-building at the urban neighborhood level when groups pull resources together for a common goal (Sampson et al. 1997, 919; Szreter 2001, 293–295). At this point, it is essential to differentiate between collective efficacy and collective action. One can broadly define collective action as “putting your money where your mouth is”, or attempting to pull resources together in pursuit of a common goal (van Zomeren et al. 2004, 651). Collective efficacy refers to accomplishing common goals resulting from collective action. Whether the perception of accomplishing common goals is subjective or objective is irrelevant for one to find the presence of collective efficacy. This distinction comes from social psychology where the perception of individual efficacy influences whether collective actions become structuralized or sustainable over time, thus giving way to collective efficacy (Bandura 2000, 76; Watson et al. 2001, 1057–1058). In the social sciences, sociologist Robert Sampson and his colleagues developed this concept to analyze varying levels of violence at the substructural urban neighborhood level (Sampson et al. 1997; Hipp and Wo 2015, 169–170; Sampson and Graif 2009, 1580–1583). This present book borrows from Sampson et al.’s (1997) conceptualization of social capital’s role in allowing for collective efficacy at the substructural level and leaves the research on agent-level efficacy for other researchers. Social capital establishes institutional norms specifically leading to organizationbuilding as it lowers transaction costs inherent in socioeconomic activities by facilitating the flow of information, a significant transaction cost, within and between social networks or groups (Fukuyama 2001, 7; Lin 2001, 20). Institutions provide the norms and rules constraining human action by establishing intersubjective social orders, which permit for different groups to overlap and for the structuration networks of trust and cooperation (Morenoff et al. 523–525; North 1991, 3–4). Social capital helps reduce information asymmetries when a neighborhood attempts to be collectively efficacious. It complements costlier forms of socioeconomic “formal coordination mechanisms like contracts, hierarchies, bureaucratic rules, and the like” (Fukuyama 2001, 10). The enforcement of transaction rules is typically endogenous or internal to a community, which allows for preventive informal social control. Nevertheless, the exogenous institutional context of the neighborhood can place significant transaction costs for achieving neighborhood-wide collective efficacy. Exogenous or third-party enforcement mechanisms may be absent or too costly for inhabitants of an urban neighborhood. Moreover, exogenous enforcers may increase transaction costs, thus reducing collective efficacy. Formal social control institutions such as the police or other security forces tend to be reactionary and external to the neighborhoods, placing higher transaction costs in achieving collective efficacy against individuals and groups using violence (Zinecker 2014, 83; Kubrin and Witzer 2003, 383–384). Nonetheless, it is important to stress that social capital is not mutually exclusive with formal coordination mechanisms like political institutions. Following the concept of embeddedness formal and informal institutions have mutual effects. Hence, social capital occurs in both formal and informal institutions (Stiglitz 1999, 63–66). Formal institutions become relatively prevalent with the transition

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from traditional to modern market societies—primarily taking place in urban centers—where social relations between nonkin formed new social linkages and increased the number of interactive networks between nonrelatives (Fukuyama 2012, 39; Newson and Richerson 2009, 130). However, formal institutions never replace completely traditional or informal institutions. Formal and informal institutions become embedded in more complex economic, organizational networks, especially in urban spaces (Granovetter 1985, 483–484, 505–506; Hirschman 1982, 1473).

2.4.2 The Role of Social Network Density and Collective Efficacy A theoretical problem in explaining the logic of social capital’s moderating effect of urban violence is separating the overlapping concepts that are social network density or the connectedness of a community, and collective efficacy, the possibility of collective action becoming sustainable. Their conceptual entanglement is a prime reason for social capital’s normative charge. The classical assumption coming from urban sociology in the mechanical process of social capital is that high density within social networks automatically allows for greater collective efficacy (Matsueda 2006, 17–18). Following from this is that high social network density acts as an informal social inhibitor of violent behavior among certain individuals and groups (Sampson and Groves 1989, 328–329, 777–782; Wirth 1938, 13–15). The inhibition effect on violence occurs as greater network density helps in mitigating institutional-anomie (Couto and Guthrie 1999, 292–293). The literature terms this the “systemic model”, which posits a linear logic between social network density and collective efficacy through social capital (Browning et al. 2004, 506; Bellair 2000, 139–141). Primarily based on this assumption, early conceptions of social capital theory state that this variable lead only to positive outcomes (Coleman 1988). For example, unemployed youth may find meaningful forms of income generation other than violent resource predation if network ties are dense (Granovetter 1973, 1983; Putnam et al. 1993; Hipp and Wo 2015, 171–172). However, in explaining urban violence, the above argument is not conclusive since different network arrangements where social network density is present vary in collective efficacy, and thus the social desirability of the outcomes they produce. Social network density is a necessary, but not a sufficient factor of social capital to produce collective efficacy for an urban neighborhood to be able to pull resources together to prevent or act against violent individuals and groups because of two reasons. First, collective efficacy may have more than one source besides network density. For example, common symbols and representations may generate collective efficacy at specific tasks (Wickes et al. 2013, 124–125). Moreover, a positive endogeneity effect can occur as well. The presence of violence might cause outrage in a population, leading to effective collective action even if network density was low

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(Bellair 2000, 142–144). This not only shows the importance of analyzing social outcomes such as urban violence nonlinearly, but that different compositions of social capital lead to different outcomes. The literature on social capital and violence, following economist Mauricio Rubio, differentiates between social capital that produces net positive and net negative externalities—e.g., reductions or increases in urban violence—by qualifying them as productive or perverse (Rubio 1997, 815; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968; Portes 1998, 18). This latter type of social capital produces benefits to insider members, as is also the case with the productive form of social capital, but creates net negative externalities to third parties. Perverse social capital partially arises due to a structural context that inhibits the formation of productive social capital (Fukuyama 2001, 8–9; Glaeser et al. 1997, 543). These networks encourage or accept collective actions that harm outsiders, as they perceive increased utility to their group of membership from such actions. For example, a gang kills a rival gang member, or a government official accepts a bribe from a construction firm to overcome safety regulations. These examples show how networks that have a relatively high degree of social capital create net negative externalities that nonetheless increase the utility of their groups. Hence, this composition of social capital becomes perverse, as it shows a countervailing effect on urban violence (Browning et al. 2004, 509–511). One could argue that this distinction between productive and perverse social capital is merely normative: they are different names for the same variable, social capital. However, one can identify different structural compositions in network arrangements that merit classifying social capital as productive or perverse.

2.4.3 Social Network Density: The Importance of Weak Ties A significant factor explaining whether social capital becomes productive or perverse is the relative presence of weak ties (Granovetter 1973, 1983; Zenou 2013, 2015). These ties are social relations of relatively low frequency, intimacy, and intensity between members of different social clusters or groups (Granovetter 1973, 1361–1362; Lin 2001, 65–68). Weak ties strengthen productive social capital, in a counterintuitive fashion, as they create bridges between network clusters or groups of people; increasing the connectedness of an urban neighborhood (Mitchell 1969, 15, 17–18; Borgatti and Halgin 2011, 1171; Goyal 2007, 64). They create inter-network bridges permitting for greater risk-taking. Hence, high social network density potentially allows for increased collective efficacy (Ibid., 67–68; Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919). Concerning urban violence, weak ties allow social networks to collectively act against other networks producing perverse social capital, as a denser social network reduces transaction costs for achieving collective efficacy (Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919; Coase 1937). Opposite to weak ties are strong ties, which are more frequent, intimate, and intense. Strong social ties tend to reduce risk-taking. Hence, when one finds more strong ties than weak ties, they increase transaction costs of achieving collective

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efficacy. In turn, this increases in-group biases and the costs of outsiders to act against and resist violent agents. One can describe these social networks with more strong ties than weak ones as cleavages. A low number or total lack of overlapping or weak ties between certain groups creates in-group biases, thus increasing the risk of violent conflict (Thurber 2015, 9–10). In other words, it increases the goaloriented capacities of certain groups for perverse purposes (Browning et al. 2004, 511). When this occurs under a macrostructure dominated by economic institutions, then institutional-anomie increases the rationale of using violence as an instrumental mechanism of resource predation. Such groups make use of strong ties to reduce transaction costs of pulling resources together toward the goal of resource predation (Hagedorn 2014, 349–350; Katz and Schnebly 2014, 357). This is an integral part of the theoretical mechanism allowing for a perverse structural composition of social capital that shares net negative externalities. On the other hand, weak ties increase social network density between groups (Messner and Rosenfeld 1997, 1396). These ties create a sort of “bridge” among networks leading to the creation of productive social capital; permitting groups to pull extra-local resources together to achieve collective efficacy (Morenoff et al. 2001, 525). Hence, such ties help to create net positive externalities resulting from a productive structural composition of social capital. In analyzing social network density, one should explore if there are overlapping groups, which shows the relatively high presence of weak ties. If social network density is overall low, then it is structurally difficult for knowledge about trust and cooperation between neighborhood inhabitants to circulate, which reduces collective efficacy allowing for socioeconomic organization toward common goals (Freeman 1979, 219–220; Helsley and Zenou 2014, 427; Goyal 2007, 44).2 Exploring the presence of weak and strong ties plays a vital role in explaining the presence of collective efficacy, and thus whether there an urban community presents a productive or perverse composition of social capital.

2 Social network density explains why premodern societies seemed to be more cohesive. They were

small networks, which in turned allowed individuals to gather information of most other network members (Harari 2015, 26–27). However, the literature argues that weak ties—i.e., a dense social network—may increase negative externalities that give way to increases in petty crime, as they increase the “technologies” of engaging in such crime by permitting noncriminal agents from engaging in it through “friends of friends” (Patacchini and Zenou 2008, 212). However, engaging in violence is not the same as engaging in petty crime since the former requires the circumvention of the confrontational fear and tension barrier (Collins 2008). However, strong ties allow for increased in-group biases to form, allowing members of a certain group like gangs to absorb themselves in techniques of violence to overcome the fear and tension barrier that violent situations produce (Collins 2009, 15; Wolf 2012, 82–83).

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2.4.4 Collective Efficacy: The Role of Social Disorganization and Collective Action Within the Institutional Context Collective efficacy explains how goal-oriented collective action by an urban community becomes efficient and durable over time. The objective of this book is to explain why or why not marginalized urban communities like barrios prevent or act against individuals and groups using violence as an instrumental tool of resource predation (Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919; Morenoff et al. 2001, 525; Rosenfeld et al. 2001, 286–287). As explained in the previous subsection, a dense social network is necessary, but not sufficient, factor of social capital to achieve collective efficacy because it allows for lower transaction costs in pulling resources together, especially extra-local ones, so that collective action becomes effective (Morenoff et al. 2001, 547–548; Wickes et al. 2013, 124–125). This subsection identifies two sub-factors composing collective efficacy: social disorganization and collective action within the institutional context. These two sub-factors help explain increases or decreases in transaction costs that permit collective efficacy to take place in a barrio.

2.4.4.1

Social Disorganization

Social disorganization consists of three interrelated structural urban elements: (1) concentrated poverty or low socioeconomic status, (2) higher population turnover or migration, and (3) ethnic heterogeneity (Shaw and McKay 1942; Bursik 1988, 520–521; Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn 2000, 309–310; Sampson and Groves 1989, 774–776; and Parker 2008, 30–32). The three elements of social disorganization prevent a given urban neighborhood from acting effectively against potential or actual violent agents because there are less ability and willingness among community members to intervene on behalf of the community to impart informal social control (Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919; Fang et al. 2013, 122; Putnam 2000, 314; Zinecker 2014, 83). In economic terms, social disorganization increases the transactional costs of pulling individual and group resources together to achieve common goals, thus making the achievement of neighborhood-wide collective efficacy more difficult (Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919). This theoretical approach fell out of favor from criminological theory after the 1960s because of the pejorative assumption placed on economically marginalized neighborhoods; that urban neighborhoods like barrios were criminogenic spaces (Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 41–43). The criminological literature proposed replacing social disorganization theory with concepts like differential association processes (Matsueda 2006, 3–4). However, the Chicago school of urban sociology has brought social disorganization theory to the fore once again to analyze urban violence (Fang et al. 2013, 122; Sampson and Graif 2009, 1579–1583). Social disorganization theory not only helps explain transaction costs for collective efficacy as a mechanism of informal social control, but it helps explain the likelihood that some agents resort to violence as a resource predation mechanism. The

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latter occurs as the community loses preventive social control mechanisms and perpetrators see increased opportunities for its use. High social disorganization increases the opportunities over costs for perpetrators. It also increases the costs of a neighborhood to act against them collectively, as it tends to reduce networks of trust and cooperation (Fang et al. 2013, 122; St. Jean 2007, 4–5). The presence of this subfactor increases the preferability of a “tournament” organizational design, which refers to an organizational design where agents’ economic motivation is to achieve upward social mobility by surging in a hierarchical organization like a neighborhood gang.3 These motivations may not only be pecuniary. Motivations to joining organizations like gangs can also involve the pursuit of physical security and identity (Venkatesh 1997, 95, 107–108). Nevertheless, the presence of institutional-anomie assumes a politico-economic structure that creates post-Fordist economic conditions. This means the absence of labor empowerment opportunities for less-skilled workers (Crutchfield and Wadsworth 2013, 156–157; Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 50–51). Hence, the presence of social disorganization helps explain the absence of collective efficacy in an urban neighborhood, which prevents informal social control or and increases incentives of certain groups to organize in favor of the instrumental use of violence to predate on economic resources.

2.4.4.2

Collective Action Within the Institutional Context

The institutional context, furthermore, shapes shared beliefs underpinning the possibility of collective action giving way for collective efficacy. Shared or structural beliefs are an essential determinant of socioeconomic organization or collective action (Piketty 1995, 551–555; Di Tella and MacCulloch 2009). It is true that macroeconomic structural changes help to shape such beliefs, but political institutions react and adapt to such structural changes (Di Tella et al. 2014, 408–409). Hence, the institutional context—a product of the broader political economy—structuralizes shared beliefs making collective action sustainable. Collective action, or “putting your money where your mouth is” (van Zomeren et al. 2004, 651), can lead to collective efficacy (Sampson et al. 1997), but not automatically. Low transaction costs can lead to collective actions, but these actions become sustainable and structuralized when expectations of future returns from them become credible, which speaks to the structural and cognitive aspects of social capital (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 3–4; Uphoff 1999, 218–219). Norms—beliefs and values—contain the cognitive heuristics of whether collective actions in social network 3 The analysis of a drug-selling gang’s finances by economist Steven Levitt and sociologist Venkatesh

(2000, 757–758, 773–774, 786–787) argues with a unique data set that the pecuniary goals of maximizing income do not explain involvement in risky violent activities; where the agents involve are aware of the risks involved. Most of the agents studied by the aforementioned authors hold formal employment alongside their illegal and violent activities within the gang. The authors conclude that the “tournament structure” of violent organizations such as the gang shows that nonpecuniary preferences factor into the suboptimal decisions of agents to engage in violent organization. They base their conclusion on the model of tournament structures from Lazear and Rosen (1981).

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interactions provide future returns and bring about collective efficacy. In other words, the cognitive heuristics within norms rationalize the willingness of social network members to collectively act toward common goals, which can include preventing or acting against violent individuals and groups (Hipp and Wo 2015, 169–170). Therefore, social network density is necessary, but not a deterministic factor in permitting that productive social capital to produce positive externalities and moderate low urban violence. This present theoretical framework does not delve into the formation of social capital’s cognitive aspects, as not to enter a territory best left to behavioral scientists. Nonetheless, it behooves this discussion to explain that the institutional context helps shape the cognitive heuristics allowing collective action to become collective efficacy (Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004). Institutions create norms under which collective action takes places (North et al. 2009, 14–16). The institutional context can impose or remove transaction costs shaping socioeconomic organization (Piketty 1995, 551–555; Di Tella and MacCulloch 2009). Hence, the institutional context—a product of the broader political economy—structuralizes norms shaping the socioeconomic organization. It is under this theoretical logic that analyzing beliefs in an urban neighborhood help trace the presence or absence of collective efficacy in helping achieve goals such as preventing or acting against violent individuals and groups. An empirical category indicating how beliefs facilitate or prevent achieving collective efficacy is the radius of trust, which is a product of negative or positive externalities from repeated social interactions (Fukuyama 2001, 7). As mentioned above, the type of externalities is essential to help analyze whether social capital is productive or perverse (Rubio 1997, 808; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 4). The structuration of beliefs and values can reproduce routine practices—e.g., cultural norms—impeding agent empowerment and social relations with non-group members (Warren 2004, 17–18). Additionally, it can create in-group biases creating groups with low radius of trust—i.e., low risk-taking with perceived outsiders. They can create vertical networks of dependencies that bridge insider networks promoting rent-seeking (Fukuyama 2001, 9, 16). Transaction costs placed or removed by the institutional context, and the norms that it structuralizes helps explain why certain compositions of social capital produce either positive or negative externalities. The institutional context may provide incentives for the formation of vertical instead of horizontal associations (Putnam et al. 1993, 88, 174–175; Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004, 17–18), which should reduce risk-taking or trust (Giddens 1990, 30–31). Vertical socioeconomic associations increase transaction costs for collective efficacy, while horizontal ones reduce them (Putnam et al. 1993, 88). When interactions become vertical, meaning hierarchical, then productive social capital creation becomes difficult because they produce relations of authority and dependency that leads to an inequitable distribution of resources (Sampson and Groves 1989, 774–776; Shaw and McKay 1942), which can occur through various contextual factors. One of them is political power, where one group establishes clientelistic networks of patronage. Another one is through the reproduction of routine practices—e.g., cultural norms—impeding agent empowerment and social relations with non-group members (Warren 2004, 17–18). These contextual factors help create

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in-group biases creating groups with low radius of trust—i.e., low risk-taking with perceived outsiders. Moreover, they can create vertical networks of dependencies that bridge insider networks promoting rent-seeking (Fukuyama 2001, 9, 16), which generates a tendency for producing negative externalities. Political scientist Putnam et al. (1993), argue on why vertical socioeconomic associations stifle horizontally organized social networks, and thus social capital, by elaborating that: [in] a vertical network, no matter how dense and no matter how important to its participants, cannot sustain social trust and cooperation…patron-client relation[s], for example, involve interpersonal exchanges and reciprocal obligations, but the exchanges are vertical and the obligations asymmetric (174).

Two clients with the same patron do not have ties to each other even if they are participating in the same association and the same urban neighborhood. In such case, trust and cooperation for the achievement of common goals do not develop because such vertical structures impede the development of reciprocal norms between them (Ibid., 175). In turn, this increases the costs of a weak tie formation between network clusters; reducing risk-taking and trust, which in turn impedes collective efficacy (Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004, 17–18). The presence of vertical socioeconomic associations allows perverse social capital to dominate over a productive composition, as it reduces the ability of urban communities from pulling resources together to prevent or act against violent groups. Additionally, it reinforces macrostructural conditions that create institutional-anomie, thus increasing the opportunities to use urban violence as an instrumental mechanism of resource predation. The reinforcement of institutional-anomie means that a perverse composition of social capital can moderate an increase of urban violence, as it reproduces the politico-economic rent-cum-marginality macrostructure (Browning et al. 2004, 511–512). The logic that social capital lowers transaction costs of socioeconomic organization or organization in the public sphere rests at the heart of this theoretical framework (Coase 1937; Cooter 1982; Williamson 1979). Socioeconomic organization induced by productive social capital can permit an urban neighborhood to pull resources together in order to prevent or act against violent agents (Morenoff et al. 2001, 524–525; Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919). However, social capital can have a perverse composition where the reduction of transaction costs allows groups to organize to predate on economic resources. Determining the structural composition of social capital is necessary to trace the mechanism explaining this substructural variable’s moderation effect between institutional-anomie induced by rent-cum-marginality and urban violence rates.

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2.5 A Nonlinear Theoretical Model of Social Capital and Urban Violence and Hypotheses This present book forwards a nonlinear model where social capital acts as a moderator between the predictor variable that is the rent-cum-marginality structure emanating from the fact that Venezuela is a rentier state and has significant barrio dwellings and persistently high violence rates in the barrios of Caracas. As a moderator, social capital is not affected by the predictor variable—i.e., the rent-cummarginality macrostructure—and “affects the direction and/or strength of the relation between” the macrostructural conditions and levels of urban violence (Baron and Kenny 1986, 1174, 1176). As elaborates in Sect. 2.3, social capital’s structural composition could be productive or perverse, if relatively high social network density is present. These structural compositions can moderate low or high urban violence rates under a structural condition that has shown reduced susceptibility to urban violence (see Sect. 1.3.2). A productive composition of social capital can increase a neighborhood’s collective efficacy to organize and achieve common goals like imparting informal social control. On the other hand, a perverse composition can prevent a community from achieving collective efficacy and increase incentives to use violence as a tool of resource predation. Hence, social capital, through a perverse composition, can change the strength and direction between macrostructural conditions to produce high urban violence rates, even if susceptibility to violence—the predictor variable—had decreased in strength. As one can visualize in Fig. 2.1, this book proposes a nonlinear model where social capital moderates the relationship between the rent-cum-marginality structure and urban violence rates by reducing or increasing the instrumentality violence as a mechanism to acquire resource to achieve valued cultural goals. Social capital can produce low levels of urban violence by increasing the importance of noneconomic institutions, reducing institutional-anomie, as it lowers the transaction costs of organizations to achieve collective efficacy by pulling resources together against violent agents (Morenoff et al. 2001, 524–525; Sampson et al. 1997, 918; Rosenfeld et al. 2001, 286–287; Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 61–62, 64; Zinecker 2014, 83). Therefore, social capital can moderate urban violence by preventing or acting against agent or groups willing to use violence as an instrumental tool of resource predation. One can describe this theoretical process in the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1 If social capital is significantly high, i.e., overall high social network density and high collective efficacy (low levels of social disorganization along with the structuration of collective action), then it allows for the sharing of positive externalities, which creates a productive structural composition of social capital. The presence of social capital blocks the rentier-cum-marginality structure from inducing institutional-anomie and thus impeding susceptibility to urban violence from leading high urban violence rates. The first hypothesis follows the classical conceptualization of structural social as an institution impeding the rise of urban violence. The theoretical logic is that it lowers the transactional costs for urban communities to organize and impart informal

2.5 A Nonlinear Theoretical Model of Social Capital …

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Moderating Variable:

Social Capital

• Productive composition: High social network density + High collective efficacy • Perverse composition: High social network density + Low collective efficacy

Macro-Structural Condition: Institutional-Anomie induced by Rent-cumMarginality

Outcome Variable: Urban Violence

Fig. 2.1 A nonlinear political economy model of urban violence in Venezuela

social control, which impedes institutional-anomie induced by the politico-economic macrostructure of rent-cum-marginality (Messner et al. 2004; Rosenfeld et al. 2001; Putnam 2000, 308–309; Zinecker 2014, 82–83). Therefore, internal and primarily informal social control mechanisms prevent high urban violence rates. Hypothesis 2 If social capital is significantly low when social network density is low, the absence of this factor does not allow for collective efficacy in urban neighborhoods. In such a case, social capital is not present and does not block the rentiercum-marginality structure from inducing institutional-anomie. Hence, susceptibility to urban violence can lead to high urban violence rates. On the other hand, the second hypothesis argues that the absence of high social network density is sufficient to show that a structural composition of social capital is absent. Absent social capital impedes internal social control mechanisms and noneconomic institutions from preventing violence to become an effective mechanism of resource predation. High social network density alone is not sufficient to allow for a productive structural composition of social capital, where collective efficacy allows an urban neighborhood to prevent or act against violent groups and individuals. However, its presence is necessary to achieve such composition (Morenoff et al. 2001, 547–548; Wickes et al. 2013, 124–125). Therefore, where social network density is low, levels of urban violence remain high, if susceptibility to urban violence is high. Hypothesis 3 If social capital is significantly perverse, i.e., high social network density and low collective efficacy (high levels of social disorganization along with low structuration of collective action) allows for high social capital within certain groups that share net negative externalities. Such composition reinforces the rentcum-marginality macrostructure and thus reproducing institutional-anomie in urban neighborhoods. Such structural composition leads to high urban violence rates, as social capital becomes a mechanism reproducing violence due to its perversity.

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Social capital can moderate the production of high levels of urban violence when its structural composition is perverse as the third hypothesis argues. Social capital becomes perverse when collective efficacy is weak neighborhood-wide, but strong within organizations using violence as an instrumental tool of resource predation. In other words, perverse social capital impedes the formation of community organizations that impart informal social control but reduces the transaction costs of particular organizations, like gangs or mafias, to pull resources together, to use urban violence as a tool of accumulating resources to achieve valued cultural goals (Rubio 1997, 815; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968; Portes 1998, 18). Under a perverse structural composition of social capital, social network density is high, as this factor is necessary for social capital to exist (Morenoff et al. 2001, 547–548). By density, one means that weak ties are relatively more present than strong ties. What makes this structural composition of social capital different from the productive one is that collective efficacy is low.4 Low collective efficacy means the presence of high levels of social disorganization and an unfavorable institutional context placing high transaction costs, which impedes the structuration of goaloriented collective action. Perverse social capital increases the sharing of net negative externalities, which encourage rent-seeking and thus the instrumental use of urban violence as a resource predation mechanism, even if susceptibility to urban violence had decreased. As a result, the presence of perverse social capital can explain the pro-cyclical behavior of high urban violence rates.

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Weber M ([1918] 1993) Politk als Beruf. Reclam, Stuttgart Wennmann A (2014) Negotiated exits from organized crime? Building peace in conflict and crimeafflicted contexts. Negot J 30:255–273 Weyland K (2009) The rise of Latin America’s two lefts: insights from rentier state theory. Comp Polit 41(2):145–164 Wickes R, Hipp JR, Sargeant E, Homel R (2013) Collective efficacy as a task specific process: examining the relationship between social ties, neighborhood cohesion and the capacity to respond to violence, delinquency and civic problems. Am J Commun Psychol 52:115–127 Williamson OE (1979) Transaction-cost economics: the governance of contractual relations. J Law Econ 22(2):233–261 Wikström PO, Triber KH (2009) Violence as a situational action. Int J Confl Violence 3(1):75–96 Wirth L (1938) Urbanism as a way of life. Am J Sociol 44(1):1–24 Wolf S (2012) Mara Salvatrucha: the most dangerous street gang in the Americas? Lat Am Polit Soc 54(1):65–99 Wood EJ (2009) Armed groups and sexual violence: when is wartime rape rare? Polit Soc 37(1):131–162 Zenou Y (2013) Spatial versus social mismatch. J Urban Econ 74:113–132 Zenou Y (2015) A dynamic model of weak and strong ties in the labor market. J Labor Econ 33(4):891–932 Ziccardi A (2008) Pobreza y Exclusión Social en las Ciudades del Siglo XXI. In: Ziccardi A (ed) Procesos de Urbanización de la Pobreza y Nuevas Formas de Exclusión Social. CLACSO, Bogotá Zimbardo PG (2007) The Lucifer effect: understanding how good people turn evil. Random House, New York Zinecker H (2009) Regime-hybridity in developing countries: achievements and limitations of new research on transition. Int Stud Rev 11:301–331 Zinecker H (2012) Gewaltarmut in Nicaragua: Mythos oder Realität? Empirische Befunde, Kausaltäten und Lehren. Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, report 5 Zinecker H (2014) Gewalt im Frieden: Formen und Ursachen der Gewaltkriminalität in Zentralamerika. Nomos, Baden-Baden Zubillaga V, Llorens M, Souto J (2015) Una Tregua Posible: La Violencia y el Pacto de Cese al Fuego entre Mujeres y Jóvenes Armados. In: Briceño-Leon R (ed) Ciudades de Vida y Muerte: La Ciudad y el Pacto Social para la Contención de la Violencia. Alfa, Caracas, pp 225–253 Zubillaga V (2013) Menos Desigualdad, Más Violencia: La Paradoja de Caracas. Nueva Sociedad 243:105–118

Chapter 3

High-Connectedness in Three Barrios of Caracas: Empirical Findings on Social Network Density

Abstract Venezuela’s macrostructure of rent-cum-marginality did not increase the susceptibility to violence in the barrios of Caracas during the twenty-first century. However, during this time violence in the barrios of Caracas was significantly high, and thus this undesirable social outcome behaved pro-cyclically (see Chap. 1). This chapter begins the analyses of social capital’s moderating effect between the politicoeconomic macrostructure and urban violence to explain this pro-cyclical behavior of urban violence rates in relation to the macroeconomic indicators. To this end, this chapter focuses on analyzing social network density in the three studied barrios of Caracas: Catia/23 de Enero (henceforth, Catia) located in the east, Petare in the west, and Santa Cruz del Este and Minas de Baruta (henceforth, Baruta) in the centersouth of Caracas. After a qualitative comparative analysis of barrio inhabitants’ relational data in the barrios mentioned above, this chapter explains that in these barrios social network density was high in all of them. High social network density means that overall barrio inhabitants possessed multiple social connections beyond nuclear family and close friends. This finding points to a particular composition of social capital, as this factor is a necessary one for such substructural variable to be present. Keywords Social network density · Violence rates · Barrios · History · Caracas

3.1 Introduction Social network density refers to the connectedness of a social network and one analyzes it through the relative presence of weak ties. Weak ties are low in frequency, intimacy, and intensity (Granovetter 1973, 1361–1362). They allow individuals in a network to accomplish instrumental actions more efficiently—means to ends—while strong ties, the opposite type of social tie like the nuclear family, are more apt for expressive actions—ends in themselves. Strong ties are less useful for instrumental actions because there is less willingness for risk-taking among them (Lin 2001, 58, 67–68). Hence, the significant presence of weak ties makes a social network, like a

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. S. Leon, Violence in the Barrios of Caracas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5_3

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80

3 High-Connectedness in Three Barrios of Caracas …

barrio, denser (Borgatti and Halgin 2011, 1171; Goyal 2007, 64; Mitchell 1969, 15, 17–18). Weak ties increase social network density among network clusters or groups, allowing for different groups in an urban neighborhood to overlap. Hence, weak ties create a sort of “bridge” among community members leading to the creation of productive social capital, which permits groups to pull local extra-local resources together in order to achieve collective efficacy. Collective efficacy refers to effective attempts at a community organization that pull resources toward common goals (Morenoff et al. 2001, 525; Messner and Rosenfeld 1997, 1396). High social network density is a necessary, but not a deterministic, factor of having a productive structural composition of social capital, which increases an urban neighborhood’s goal-oriented capacity of preventing and acting against violent groups and individuals (Morenoff et al. 2001, 547–548). In other words, it helps to create informal social control in barrios. Therefore, the denser a social network is, the lower the transaction costs for achieving collective efficacy (Coase 1937; Lin 2001, 65–68; Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919). The relative absence of weak ties prevents the formation of overlapping ties between individuals and groups in an urban neighborhood, which increases the transaction costs of barrio inhabitants to organize and impart informal social control effectively. Methodologically, this chapter analyzes cross-sectional data of the 50 interviewed partners from the barrios of Catia, Petare, and Baruta. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is the primary method used to process data on social network density (Ragin 1987, 82–94). The present book used elements of social network analysis (SNA) to explore the diversity of social links, studied from the point of view of the interview partners, and thus interpret the connectedness or density of social networks at the urban neighborhood level (Mitchell 1969, 15, 17–18; Borgatti and Halgin 2011, 1171; Goyal 2007, 64). SNA included analyzing the indicator that is membership in community associations, as it provides evidence of overlapping ties between individuals belonging to different groups—i.e., weak ties (Putnam et al. 1993, 107). However, one must clarify that the presented data is not a statistically representative model of social network density. It provides information from 50 interviewed partners that lived in different geographical sectors of the barrios studied—an effort was made to acquire interview partners of most sectors of the three barrios—to build a structural picture of social network density. Hence, the data provides explorative information on social network density. The findings on social network density or connectedness in the three studied barrios presented are that on average it was high in all three studied barrios: Catia, Petare, and Baruta. This finding shows that there is not a correspondence between absent social capital and urban violence since social network density, a necessary factor of this substructural variable, was present in both positive and negative cases; meaning barrios with relatively high and low violence rates. Catia and Petare showed an urban violence rate for the year of 2011 of 105 and 93 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 84, 103. On the other hand, Baruta displayed in 2011 an urban violence rate of 35 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de

3.1 Introduction

81

Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 103). Even though such urban violence rate is significantly high when compared to other cities and countries of Latin America and the world, it is low in comparison to Catia and Petare. Hence, one can categorize this barrio as a negative case of urban violence. I reached the above interpretation after analyzing patterns of interpersonal connections in matters of cooperation to solve social needs, plus patterns and frequency of membership in various community associations. The categories analyzed in the interviews to interpret social network density are: the people that an interview partner approaches in situations of need (“friends of friends”), whether other people regularly approach the interviewee for certain help (“links seeking subjects help”), regular participation in neighborhood associations (“membership in religious organizations” and “membership in social, political, or sport organizations”), and finally the category of ease of movement (“availability of public transportation” and “is your work far away from where you live”). The relational data collected by these interview questions provided a qualitative picture of weak tie presence and the willingness to honor investments in interpersonal ties made by network members (Mitchell 1969, 15, 24–29). Additionally, repeated participation in community associations allows for overlapping ties between groups to form, which reduces the costs of pulling local and extra-local resources for community-oriented goals like preventing or acting against violent agents—i.e., achieving informal social control (Putnam et al. 1993, 87–88). Such indicators provided further evidence on the relative presence of weak ties. However, there are some variances between the barrios. In the case of Petare, its unfavorable socio-geographic marginalization increased the transaction costs on social networks by reducing the ease of movement in this barrio (Zenou 2013). The opposite was the case in Catia and Baruta. It appears that socioeconomic marginalization, especially in Petare, helped to increase social network density since interpersonal resources in the community may be crucial in dealing with public problems that require immediate attention such as housing, recovery from natural disasters, and of course, urban violence. The chapter continues by first providing a concise history of the three studied barrios of Caracas, as to provide the historical background that affects social capital’s factors like social network density. After that, the chapter continues by comparing social network density in Catia, Petare, and Baruta in separate sections. Each of these sections discusses evidence on social network density provided by QCA truth tables.

3.2 A Brief History of Catia, Petare, and Baruta In the social imaginary of Caraqueños, residents of Caracas, the city divides itself into Western and Eastern Caracas—with Plaza Venezuela being the most mentioned imagined “center” of the city. In Western Caracas one finds the “downtown” of the city, containing the administrative and financial centers. Moreover, in this area, one finds most of the city’s barrios. Catia, located in the northeast of the city, is just one of them. It is because of the high concentration of barrios in Western Caracas that

82

3 High-Connectedness in Three Barrios of Caracas …

its inhabitants imagine it as being poor and violent. Eastern Caracas, on the other hand, has positive connotations for Caraqueños; it is where the “rich” live. Many of its residents are middle- and low-middle class, but only very few are rich according to income standards. The barrio of Petare breaks the imagined reality of eastern Caracas as being the “rich” part. It is Venezuela’s biggest consolidated barrio, and one finds it toward the very east of the city. Unlike Catia and Petare, one finds the barrio of Baruta located in south-center Caracas, which breaks the social imaginary of Caracas as well. The topography of Baruta has an important factor that differs from that of other barrios of Caracas; its inhabitants have for over half a century built durable barrio settlements in a V-shaped valley with relatively easy access to other parts of Caracas.1 Regarding their developmental history, these three barrios share the fact that their growth was primarily due to rural-to-urban migration since the 1940s when Venezuela became a major oil exporter. However, a significant difference is that the barrios of Petare and Baruta became officially part of Caracas well into the second half of the twentieth century, while Catia had been part of the capital city since the nineteenth century. Catia, Petare, and Baruta grew in population, and in barrio settlements, primarily between the 1940s and 1960s, as rural-to-urban migration swelled the Caracas’ population—see Sect. 1.3.2. These migrants received little to no support from both elected and nonelected authorities governmental authorities (Velasco 2015, 55, 136). Hence, they settled in whatever spaces they could find. As historian German Carreras Damas (1969, 172) explained, the monopoly of force by a strongman dictator or caudillo has been the main political order throughout the nation’s history. During the 1950s and 50s were times of increased wealth and wages due to very advantageous terms of trade regarding Venezuela’s oil exports; the country had a decisive comparative advantage during this period (Manzano 2014, 58–60). The significant comparative advantaged that Venezuela enjoyed provided incentives for low-income rural inhabitants to migrate to the cities with the hopes of capturing high-wage employment. In addition, one must consider this in the context of reduced agricultural productivity, as ever-growing petrodollars windfalls increased the country’s ability to import and meet domestic demand, which made domestic agriculture uncompetitive (see Sect. 1.3.2). As Caracas’ population swelled due to rural-to-urban migration, many rural-tourban migrants settled in the hills surrounding the city. In Catia and the 23 de Enero migrants who arrived after the 1950s did not find empty spaces to squat and built their housing in between and surrounding the apartment blocks built in this decade (Velasco 2015, 69; 1.01, 16 April 2016; 1.17, 5 May 2016). However, many of these migrants did not increase their wage incomes to the point of permitting for upward social mobility. In oil-based economies wage drifts from one productive sector to another, which allow for overall wages to rise, did not occur but remained atomized 1 At

the bottom of the V-shaped valley passes the old Caracas-Baruta road. I am greatly indebted to Natasha Diaz for her valuable insights into this barrio, and her help in allowing me to access it and to go barrio adentro or deep into the barrio.

3.2 A Brief History of Catia, Petare, and Baruta

83

in the oil industry (Elsenhans 1996, 16–17; Seers 1964). Therefore, upward social mobility for barrio settlers remained an impossibility, which caused their socioeconomic marginalization. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, high population natural growth rates and a persistent oil-dependent economy reproduced barrio settlement, which led to the rise of the barrios that one finds in the twenty-first century. Geographically, the development of Petare differs from Catia. At the time of the Spanish conquest, inhabitants of Petare were mainly indigenous Caribs. The name Petare comes from the Carib language—as do many names of central Venezuela—and means “facing the river” referring to the two main rivers—Cuarimare and Guaire—crossing through this population settlement (Fundación Jose Ángel Lamas 2016). However, Petare does not become a part of Caracas until the second half of the twentieth century. One finds Petare in between two hills east of Caracas’ valley. Due to the natural space and irrigation provided by the rivers running through it, Petare was from Spanish colonial period and up to the twentieth century a rural agricultural space with a small town in between the two hills. By the mid-twentieth century, the urban center of Caracas had grown, and Petare was no longer a rural area at a distance to the capital city. Many of the rural-to-urban migrants settled in once productive agricultural lands across the two hills surrounding what was once the small rural town of Petare. As this space grew, it became connected with the rest of Caracas in the second half of the twentieth century. Today all agricultural land and vegetation that existed in Petare have given way entirely to barrios. Like Petare, Baruta was an agricultural area near Caracas until the mid-twentieth century with cocoa, coffee, and sugar cane plantations. Its urban population consisted of small towns until the 1960s when urban planners did away with agricultural production—left uncompetitive by the oil-based rentier economy (Hausmann and Rodriguez 2014, 34; Karl 1997, 141–142; Rodriguez Sosa and Rodriguez Pardo 2013, 96–97)—and enacted residential projects like El Cafetal, which is now a wellknown middle-class residential area.2 Most of the county harboring this barrio, unlike Catia and Petare, became a middle-class housing and tertiary industry center during the 1970s, which was the time of massive oil windfalls. It is only in the 1980s when this county officially becomes part of greater Caracas. Catia has been part of Caracas since at least the nineteenth century as a residential area north of the presidential palace—named Miraflores—and the Sucre Avenue; the old road used to reach the seaport and—since the 1940s—the international airport in the towns of La Guaira and Maiquetia, directly north of Caracas. In the very north part of Catia, in the sector named Alta Vista, the then government of long-time caudillo General Juan Vicente Gomez (1908–1935) erected the first public housing complexes—one-story houses following Spanish colonial architecture—during the 1930s. In the 1940s Russian migrants fleeing Stalinism and the Second World War were among the first recipients of such housing (El Universal 2013; 1.01, 16 April 2 Moreover,

the completion of the Caracas-Baruta road in 1961 facilitated the residential growth of middle-class and barrio dwelling in Baruta (Comunicas Minas de Baruta, accessed on June 23, 2017, “Municipio Baruta.” https://minasdebaruta.comunicas.org/municipio-baruta/).

84

3 High-Connectedness in Three Barrios of Caracas …

2016). This sector of Caracas finds itself just above the emblematic 23 de Enero (23 of January) barrio, built as a modern apartment block complex by the military junta of General Marco Perez Jimenez in the 1950s (Velasco 2015, 31–33; Yanes 2012). It became inhabited by rural-to-urban migrants and low-income people in 1958 after the military junta fell.3 Some of the interview partners lived or originally came from the 23 de Enero, which entangles the development of this neighborhood with that of Catia’s in no small extent. The similarities and differences in the demographic and geographical development between Catia, Petare, and Baruta condition the formation of social capital’s factors like social network density.

3.3 Weak Tie Presence in Catia Like most barrios, Catia, located in the north-west of Caracas, is a patchwork of informal and formally housing (Perlman 2010; Rosas Meza 2015, 155; Zayerz Moitalta 2013, 110). The high violence barrio that is Catia possesses a different history from the other two studied barrios, as it is one of the oldest urban areas in Caracas. Catia’s particular history helps explain why it is a diverse barrio where poor and nonpoor neighborhoods coexist. Additionally, these communities built by their inhabitants created social new and lasting networks, which are essential to pull capital resources together to invest and improve their housing units. Social networks are especially when the average capital stock of barrio residents is low. In fact, for residents of Catia the need to improve the livability of their housing units—especially of public services such as clean water and waste management—incentivized barrio dwellers to repeatedly invest in their social networks (1.08, 27 April 2016; 1.17, 5 May 2016). In other words, they relied on their social capital to build and to improve their housing and neighborhood. Evidence that residents of Catia have tapped into their social networks to improve their housing suggests that social network density was high at a certain point in the past, and as shown by the evidence below, social network density or connectedness of social links remains high. Connectedness or density of social networks in Catia was high at a structural level because the interviewed subjects showed significant interactions with weak ties. However, they responded to have relatively low involvement in community associations where overlapping ties between different groups can occur. Low participation in community organizations may point toward low social network density, but the category that is ease of movement suggests otherwise, as it was very favorable in this barrio. In other words, the evidence showed low transaction costs of individuals and groups to repeatedly interacting with a higher number and different types of interpersonal ties. I argue that social network density in Catia was qualitatively high, even if the different categories of this factor do not point in the same direction. 3 Its name comes from the date that Perez Jimenez’ dictatorship imploded. The original name of this

complex, given by the Perez Jimenez dictatorship was the “6 of December” neighborhood (Velasco 2015, 53–55; Brillembourg et al. 2005, 23).

3.3 Weak Tie Presence in Catia

85

Exploring the different categories studied of social network density shows the logic behind this interpretation. As one can appreciate in Table 3.1, about half of the interviewed partners who resided in Catia expressed that they seek the cooperation of links that are not strong ties—i.e., “friends of friends”—when they need help to resolve some personal problem or need. Similarly, about half of the interview partners claimed that other inhabitants of their barrio regularly—at least once a month—sought their cooperation or helped to resolve a personal problem. I categorized network interactions as primarily dealing with weak ties when the interviewed subjects either mentioned different people that they sought for help, and which these people at the same time were not the ones asking for the interviewed subject’s aid. Moreover, I chose to categorize interactions with links as strong instead of weak when the interviewed partners said that they sought the help of nuclear family members when they needed someone’s cooperation to resolve a problem of some kind. One must classify nuclear family members as strong ties since these social ties, in the vast majority of cases, are frequent, intense, and intimate interpersonal links. However, it is plausible that interview partners mentioned close family members as the network links that they sought in case of some type of need because it is a context-specific cultural practice. Sociologist and researcher of the barrios of Venezuela, Alejandro Moreno, explained in an interview (21 April 2016) that the family has historically been the main institutional source of solidarity and cooperation. The responses provided by the interviewed partners who mentioned close family members as the interpersonal links that they sought when they require someone’s cooperation may mask the existence of other weak ties. The possible masking of other weak ties is a limitation of conducting SNA through survey research; respondents may not have all links that they interact with in mind when they respond to the researcher’s questions (Wellman 1983, 174–175).4 However, the evidence provided by these two inquired categories did not show a high presence of strong leaks over weak links. Examining the categories relating to membership in community association sheds further light into the relative presence of weak ties in Catia. Membership in community organization by the interviewed subjects in Catia was low. Under one-third of interviewed partners responded that they regularly attended a religious organization—see Table 3.1. As one interview partner told me in a serious tone, “Soy católico…católico normal…no voy a la iglesia” (1.08, 26 April 2016).5 Such statement is not the product of cynicism, but of a cultural trend where the influence of the Catholic Church as a source of community organization in Latin America, and especially in Venezuela, diminished in the last decades even if the 4 Sociologist

Jeremy Boissevain (1974) developed the term “friends of friends” by analyzing the social networks of a small group of people in Malta through long-term participant observation and not through survey research. This argument does not aim purport that ethnographical methods such as participant observation are superior in comparison to survey research, or vice versa. Each has its strengths and limitations. In the case of ethnographic methods, the limitation is that they are timeintensive methods that do not allow compiling research on many subjects, thus providing limited cases, or data points, to conduct a comparative analysis. 5 In English: “I am Catholic…a normal Catholic…I do not go to Church”.

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3 High-Connectedness in Three Barrios of Caracas …

Table 3.1 Social network density indicators in Catia Catia

Friends of friends

Links seeking subject’s help

Member of religious org.

Member of social, sport, political org.

Public transport

Work far away

1.01

N/A

1

1

0

N/A

0

1.02

N/A

1

1

0

N/A

0

1.03

1

1

1

1

N/A

0

1.04

1

1

1

0

1

0

1.05

1

0

1

0

N/A

0

1.06

0

0

0

0

N/A

1

1.07

0

1

0

0

1

1

1.08

0

0

0

1

N/A

1

1.09

0

0

0

0

1

1

1.10

1

N/A

0

0

1

0

1.11

0

0

0

0

1

0

1.12

0

0

0

0

1

0

1.13

1

1

0

0

1

0

1.14

1

0

0

0

0

0

1.15

1

0

0

0

1

1

1.16

N/A

1

0

1

1

1

1.17

1

1

N/A

N/A

N/A

1

Source Table created by the author with original data

majority of the population identifies nominally as being Catholic. Protestant religious denominations have been filling the normative void left by the Catholic Church in Latin America; the only region in the world where they have been historically dominant. Only 6% of Catholics in Venezuela reported in 2014 to be involved in congressional life, compared to 41% of participants in Protestant denominations (Pew Research Center 2014, 4–5, 7). Moreover, membership in other forms of community associations such as social, political, or sports associations was just under one-fifth among the interviewed subjects (see Table 3.1). Low involvement in community associations tends to prevent the possibility of different social network participants in an urban neighborhood such as Catia to repeatedly invest in social relations with members or groups that they would not necessarily interact with daily. Hence, low participation in community associations impedes the formation of overlapping ties between groups in the urban neighborhood. Nonetheless, the findings of this category do not suffice to conclude that social network density in this barrio was low because of two reasons. First weak tie presence in Catia seems to have been relatively high. Second, the ease of movement reported by the interview partners suggests that transaction costs of repeatedly investing in interpersonal relations were low.

3.3 Weak Tie Presence in Catia

87

All the interviewed subjects except one responded that they had access to public transportation, as one can appreciate in Table 3.1. Moreover, almost 60% responded that their place of work was not far away from their homes in Catia. In other words, they did not have to invest substantial resources—time and money—in securing transportation. Los investment requirements in transportation mean that transaction costs for repeated investment in social relations, such as those that take place in community organizations were low, as far as costs of interpersonal movement concerns. As mentioned in the previous section, the barrio of Catia is one of Caracas’ oldest and has witnessed planned governmental intervention in its development along with unplanned development made by rural-to-urban migrants. This historical development explains to a large extent its favorable connectivity, and why the interviewed partners responded that they had access to public transportation. Moreover, Catia’s size is significant, but it is not extremely large, which explains why the workplaces of the interviewed partners were not very far from their households. However, some parts of the barrio were inaccessible to the author. The inaccessibility of some parts of Catia opens the possibility for a selection bias regarding these indicators; the level of ease of transportation could be more detrimental that observed in the collected data. Nonetheless, the interviewed subjects who claimed to have relatively low transportation costs should have had more opportunities to participate in community organizations, theoretically. However, the presence of high actual violence in this barrio could have created an endogeneity effect. In other words, the fear of victimization from violence could have reduced the routine activities of the interviewed partners (Rosas Meza 2015, 185–186). In Catia the presence of weak ties was qualitatively high. Low participation in community organizations contradicts this result. If participation in community associations was low, then the formation of overlapping ties between individuals of different groups was less likely. However, ease of transportation in this barrio was favorable, which in combination with the critical category of patterns of interpersonal aid shows that transaction costs for repeated investment in social networks were low enough to allow relatively high density in the social networks of this barrio. Hence, the evidence presented points to high social network density in Catia. The next sections examine social network density in the barrios of Petare and Baruta that allow identifying a correspondence between this factor of social capital and the presence of high urban violence.

3.4 Weak Tie Presence in Petare The barrio of Petare, located to the very east of Caracas, is a different urban space in comparison to Catia and Baruta because of its developmental history. This section shows significant evidence pointing toward high social network density after analyzing relative weak tie presence. As the discussion below narrates, this finding is somewhat paradoxical due to the socio-geographical marginality of this barrio. Petare’s high population density and geographical extent show adverse socioeco-

88

3 High-Connectedness in Three Barrios of Caracas …

nomic developmental conditions in comparison to the barrios of Catia and Baruta, which should have negatively affected social network density, but this appears not to have been the case. Social network density in Petare appears to have been high since, like in the case of Catia, strong ties dominated over weak ties in this barrio. To support this interpretation, the evidence provided by the interviewed subjects from Petare showed somewhat high regular participation in community associations of different types. However, the indicators of social network density in Petare showed a substantial difference in comparison to the barrio of Catia: Transaction costs on social network density created by the ease of transportation were highly unfavorable, which was due to Petare’s socio-geographic marginalization. According to the interviewed subjects, half of them resorted to weak ties in case they needed cooperation for their social network to resolve some problem, which one can appreciate in Table 3.2. Evidence on social ties shows that about half of the subjects interacted mainly with strong ties. As explained in the previous section, this could be the result of cultural practices, where subjects primarily seek social cooperation with strong ties such as family and they did not recall regular interactions with weak ties during the interview. Hence, weak ties presence is likely higher than just half of the interviewed subjects. On the other hand, almost two-thirds of the interviewed partners responded that other members of their social network regularly sought their cooperation to solve some problems that they encountered. This indicator shows a greater willingness by the interviewed subjects of Petare to honor interpersonal commitments. In social capital terminology, they reciprocate to invest in their social relations, which could indicate the dominance of weak ties over strong ones. Furthermore, participation in community associations would also suggest the presence of overlapping ties signaling that Petare inhabitants possess relatively high weak ties. Membership in community associations, according to the interviewed subjects—see Table 3.2—was high for nonreligious organizations. Almost 40% of them responded to participate in either a political, social, or sports organization in Petare. The rate of participation in community associations was even higher than in Catia, where membership in such community associations was lower. Regarding membership in religious organizations, out of 15 respondents, only one interview partners claimed to participate in one such association.6 This evidence might show a selection bias resulting from the fact that the studied sample was not statistically representative. Alternatively, it may show a low reach of religious organizations in a barrio that topographically extensive and geographically marginalized. One can appreciate the extent of Petare’s geographic marginalization by exploring indicators on ease of movement by its inhabitants. An important factor affecting social networks density is the costs brought by lack of adequate transportation and long distance to jobs. In other words, ease of movement. Unlike the other studied barrios, over half of the interviewed subjects said that 6I

interviewed 21 subjects in the barrio of Petare, but because of the semi-structured nature of the interviews, I did not get the chance to ask all questions to all the interview partners.

3.4 Weak Tie Presence in Petare

89

Table 3.2 Social network density indicators in Petare Petare

Friends of friends

Links seeking subject’s help

Member of religious org.

Member of social, sport, political org.

Public transport

Work far away

2.01

1

0

N/A

N/A

0

1

2.02

1

0

N/A

N/A

1

1

2.03

1

0

N/A

N/A

0

1

2.04

0

0

N/A

N/A

N/A

1

2.05

0

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

1

2.06

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

0

1

2.07

0

1

0

0

1

1

2.08

1

0

0

0

0

1

2.09

1

1

1

0

1

1

2.10

1

1

0

0

1

1

2.11

0

1

0

1

0

1

2.12

0

1

N/A

N/A

N/A

1

2.13

1

1

0

0

0

0

2.14

0

1

0

0

0

1

2.15

1

1

0

1

0

0

2.16

N/A

N/A

0

1

0

0

2.17

N/A

N/A

0

1

1

0

2.18

0

1

0

0

1

1

2.19

0

0

0

1

0

0

2.20

1

1

0

0

1

0

2.21

0

1

N/A

N/A

1

1

Source Table created by the author with original data

they did not have access to public transportation around where they lived in Petare (see Table 3.2). Some of them argued that the lack of public transportation was due to the size of this barrio, and the lack of formal urban planning that accompanies the design of such informal settlements. For example, one subject from Petare complained that public transportation is inadequate, not because it is absent, but because they must take several different public means of transport, mainly small buses, to get to work or to the food markets (2.14, 12 May 2016). Another one complained about their informality; they must take “pirata” or illegal public transports to reach desired destinations (2.01, 21 April 2016). Such illegal public transports, usually privately owned automobiles, typically engage in price gauging and one could be more exposed to violent crime. However, even if public transportation is formal or

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legal, fear of being criminalized, based on experiences from community members decreases the perception of its quality (2.11, 6 May 2016). Lacking or poor quality of public transportation in Petare increases the strains on social networks brought by long topographical distances to their places of employment. Additionally, almost three-quarters of the subjects interviewed said to spend too much time going to and coming back from work due to long distances. The geography of this barrio certainly contributes to long distances between households and employment. In the case of Petare, lacking or inadequate public transportation, which is often the only medium of transportation for most barrio inhabitants, increased the costs of reaching places of employment, among other social places such as community associations. Additionally, the evidence shown in Table 4.2 shows that Petare’s geography increased the spatial mismatch between labor and employment, which means that distance to formal employment sources is geographically significant. Considerable distance between employment sources and places of residence creates a similar impact on sociological distance: Social networks tend not to build overlapping network ties, which increases social distance between individuals and groups (Zenou 2013, 113–115). The geographical distance between their employment and places of residence should have increased transaction costs on creating weak ties and participating in community associations. However, this was not the case; weak tie formation and membership in community associations were high. High transaction costs on social networks created by difficulty in acquiring means of transportation and long topographical distances may explain low participation in religious community associations. Social network density in Petare was surprisingly high. It was surprising because socio-geographic marginalization did not create low transaction costs for weak tie formation. An explanation of this empirical paradox would require more in-depth study of this barrio; including replication of these findings with multiple research methods. A possible interpretation, however, is that the adverse socio-geographic marginalization of Petare forces high social network density because its inhabitants must rely on their neighborhood to pull resources together for the common goals of dealing with public threats such as natural disasters and urban violence. Since the private capital of its inhabitants was overall low, it makes bringing extra-local resources—privately—very costly and high social network density reduces these transaction costs. An interview partner provided evidence summarizing the above interpretation by describing social network dynamics after torrential rains in 2010 created a mudslide wrecking several barrio dwellings built on the side of a hill. Those affected rebuild their houses themselves; without any governmental assistance. However, the terrain remained unstable, and during the rainy season, the community comes together to prevent the loss of lives due to barrio dwellings crumbling under pressure created by the mudslides (2.07, 29 April 2016). This example showed a high social network density resulting from an external threat. Theories of state formation argue that external threats and limited living space are crucial for incentivizing socio-political organization (Tilly 1989, 1992; Carneiro 1970). In other words, there is a “thickening”

3.4 Weak Tie Presence in Petare

91

effect created by external threats to social networks in a community. Nonetheless, the same mechanism could also explain high social capital, i.e., collective efficacy—in networks producing net negative externalities, but this is a discussion for the forthcoming chapters. The next section discusses social network density in this study’s negative case.

3.5 Weak Tie Presence in Baruta The third and final barrio compared in this study is Baruta. This barrio, unlike the other two studied ones, showed comparatively lower urban violence rates, about a third of the rates found in Catia and Petare. Hence, Baruta was a negative case of comparison in this study. The qualitative categorization of Baruta as a negative case, however, does not lead to a “romantic” analysis of social capital in this barrio. This section finds that social network density in baruta was high, although the data provided by the interviewed subjects have certain limitations. In Baruta social network density, like in the other two analyzed barrios was high according to different indicators of this factor, which permits analyzing the structural composition of social capital. As one can appreciate in Table 3.3, I interviewed fewer subjects than in the other two barrios since Baruta is significantly smaller than Catia and Petare; the number of interview partners should not be over-representative. However, I was not able to ask all the questions to all interview partners, especially those indicating the relative presence of weak ties over strong ones. Despite this limitation, the results were robust in showing that weak ties dominated over strong ones. Moreover, participation in community associations was high; much higher than in the other two studied barrios, which suggests significant overlapping ties between groups. When the interview partners requested the cooperation of other community members, i.e., their social networks, they sought weak ties; interpersonal connections with whom they shared less frequent, intense, and intimate relationships (see Table 3.3), which shows the dominance of weak ties over strong ones according to this one indicator. On the question of whether people or links in their social networks regularly sought their help to solve the problem, most interviewed partners answered positively. Evidence showing multiple members of the community seeking the interviewees for aid indicated a high willingness to reciprocate in cooperative social actions and repeated investments in social relations. When one analyzes this along with the indicator of “friends of friends,” one can appreciate that the presence of weak ties has been higher relative to strong ones. High weak tie presence shows a dense social network in the barrio of Baruta. Evidence from the indicators of membership in community associations and the costs imposed on social networks by the ease of movements add further explanatory evidence to this finding. Membership in community association according to the interview partners who resided in Baruta was high. A telling indicator was membership in non-religious community associations such as political, social, and sports associations. As one can

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3 High-Connectedness in Three Barrios of Caracas …

Table 3.3 Social network density indicators in Baruta Baruta

Friends of friends

Links seeking subject’s help

Member of religious org.

Member of social, sport, political org.

Public transport

Work far away

3.01

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

1

0

3.02

N/A

1

1

1

1

0

3.03

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

1

0

3.04

1

1

N/A

1

1

0

3.05

0

N/A

N/A

0

1

0

3.06

N/A

1

1

N/A

1

0

3.07

N/A

N/A

0

1

1

1

3.08

1

0

1

1

1

1

3.09

0

1

0

0

1

0

3.10

1

1

0

0

1

0

3.11

1

1

0

0

1

0

3.12

1

1

1

0

0

0

Source Table created by the author with original data

appreciate in Table 3.3, over three-fifths of respondents said that they regularly participated in one such type of community association. Relatively high participation in community associations shows that there is the possibility for the formation of overlapping ties between individuals of different groups at the neighborhood level, and thus indicating high social network density. Nonetheless, the indicator of membership in religious organizations shows different results in the other two studied barrios. Half of the interviewed partners reported attending religious associations, which was comparatively higher than in Catia or Petare. Baruta deviates from the tendency found on the other two studied barrios of low participation in religious associations. It is important to discuss whether such community association is perverse or productive to interpret whether high involvement in religious organizations follows the results of the other indicators that point toward the relatively high presence of weak ties. In other words, whether it can create overlapping ties between individuals belonging to different groups or not. It is theoretically difficult to classify religious organizations as either productive or perverse because they can serve as spaces where individuals belonging to different social networks meet or they can inhibit the formation of overlapping network ties. Religious organizations are difficult to classify because the point of such organizations is not for their members to have repeated interactions with each other but to focus on the beliefs and values imparted by the priest or pastor. As Putnam et al. (1993) explained, religious organizations can make their members “more concerned with the City of God than with the City of Man” (107). For example, some of the

3.5 Weak Tie Presence in Baruta

93

interviewed partners regularly participate in Christian Evangelical churches (3.08, 21 May 2016; 3.12, 30 May 2016). These have stronger beliefs and values regarding social life than Catholic churches; the leading religious denomination in Venezuela. Hence, such organizations can create vertical structures where repeated investments in social relations do not occur. However, they can be spaces where a marginalized community can feel safe and comfortable, which allows fomenting interpersonal connections, and perhaps to repeatedly invest in them. There is evidence suggesting that religious organizations tend to increase the subjective well-being of its members, not because of their normative content, but because of the social networks that they create (Lim and Putnam 2010, 927–929). In other words, the context in which churches, frequently vertical and hierarchical organizations, may foster horizontal structures where overlapping network ties form. Nonetheless, I cautiously interpret those religious organizations can help foster weak tie formation while suggesting that one needs to conduct further research on this matter to offer a better-grounded interpretation. Furthermore, Baruta’s geography reduced transportation costs for its inhabitants, which reduced the costs of investing in social relations and increasing social network density. According to the interviewed subjects, all except one responded to have access to public transportation (see Table 3.3). The barrios geography helps in reducing transportation costs since there is a relatively short topological distance to main roads leading to downtown Baruta—the old town center of this formerly rural area—or to downtown Caracas like the old Baruta-Caracas road or the Prados del Este road. However, geography alone does not aid in reducing transport costs, but the existence of previous investments in transportation such as roads and public transport agencies. The forms of transportation are either small buses or jeep-like automobiles that can climb and descend the steep hills of the barrio. Moreover, most subjects reported having relatively easy access to their employment sources since they were not far away from their households. The availability of public transportation reduces the costs of investing in social relations, thus increasing social network density. The barrio of Baruta showed high social network density. The evidence gathered from the interviewed subjects showed that weak ties dominated over strong ones. Interactions appeared to be primarily with network ties that are less intimate, frequent, and intense, plus membership in community associations was even higher than in Catia and Petare. Ease of movement showed low transaction costs on social network density, as public transportation was widely available and topographical distance to their places of employment was short. Baruta’s favorable geography helped to show the results of these last indicators since the construction of roadways connecting the larger county of Baruta with the rest of the Caracas, and the growth of middle-class neighborhoods and tertiary industries shaped its favorable geographical growth.

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3.6 Explaining High Social Network Density in Catia, Petare, and Baruta The above-presented analysis showed high social network density in Catia, Petare, and Baruta. However, the former two barrios are positive cases of urban violence, while the latter most barrio is a negative one. From this finding, one can discard the absence of social capital as the cause of high urban violence in the barrios of Caracas. A possible explanation for this finding is that marginality led to high social network density. The barrio of Petare provided especially telling evidence that backed the above interpretation. In it, geographical and economic marginality seemed to have a “thickening” effect on social networks. One could observe such “thickening” effect of social networks because pulling extra-local resources to deal with threats to their livelihood required relying on their local social networks because household resources were low. In an interview with Alirio Perez Lo Presti (15 June 2016), a psychotherapist who worked in a barrio of Caracas pointed out the obvious to me: Barrios are social systems in equilibrium. They display structural problems such as poverty and urban violence, but they have stable social networks, and denser social network density would explain why these social systems that suffer from precarious conditions maintain social equilibria. However, to better trace the composition of social networks, and thus the structural composition of social capital, one needs to analyze further the factor that is collective efficacy, as explained by this study’s theoretical framework. The next two chapters focus on this analysis. Analyzing collective efficacy in detail helps to trace the causal process of what structural compositions of social capital moderates the effect between the rent-cum-marginality macrostructure and urban violence.

3.7 Interviews7 1.01 (16 April 2016) male, ~55, priest. 1.02 (18 April 2016) male, ~50, priest. 1.03 (19 April 2016) female, ~65, NGO worker. 1.04 (19 April 2016) male, 56, freelance teacher. 1.05 (19 April 2016) female, ~35, receptionist. 1.06 (21 April 2016) male, ~40, construction worker. 1.07 (26 April 2016) male, ~45, messenger. 1.08 (26 April 2016) male, 49, office assistant. 1.09 (30 April 2016) female, ~30, janitor. 7 Note:

First number code identifies the barrio where the interview partner resides. 1 stands for Catia/23 de Enero (Catia), 2 for Petare, and 3 for Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta (Baruta). After the interview date in brackets, the information provided refers to the sex, age, and occupation of the interview partner. For example, 1.01 came from Catia (interview conducted April 16, 2016) was a male, of about 55 years of age, and works as a priest at the time of the interview.

3.7 Interviews

95

1.10 (3 May 2016) female, 42, janitor. 1.11 (3 May 2016) female, 24, secretary. 1.12 (3 May 2016) female, 23, administrative worker. 1.13 (4 May 2016) female, 43, administrative worker. 1.14 (4 May 2016) female, 27, administrative worker. 1.15 (5 May 2016) male, 39, technician. 1.16 (5 May 2016) male, 49, secretary. 1.17 (10 May 2016) male, 45, administrative worker. 2.01 (21 April 2016) male, 30, construction worker. 2.02 (21 April 2016) male, 25, construction worker. 2.03 (22 April 2016) male, ~35, construction worker. 2.04 (23 April 2016) male, ~30, construction worker. 2.05 (23 April 2016) female, 40, secretary. 2.06 (24 April 2016) male, 57, construction worker. 2.07 (29 April 2016) female, 36, janitor. 2.08 (29 April 2016) female, 39, janitor. 2.09 (30 April 2016) female, 31, janitor. 2.10 (5 May 2016) female, 40, janitor. 2.11 (6 May 2016) female, 32, secretary. 2.12 (10 May 2016) male, 63, administrative worker. 2.13 (12 May 2016) female, 27, secretary. 2.14 (12 May 2016) female, 38, administrative worker. 2.15 (12 May 2016) male, 39, factory worker. 2.16 (13 May 2016) male, 37, factory worker. 2.17 (13 May 2016) male, 25, technician. 2.18 (16 May 2016) female, 26, administrative worker. 2.19 (16 May 2016) male, 38, factory worker. 2.20 (16 May 2016) male, 47, factory worker. 2.21 (25 May 2016) female, 41, janitor. 3.01 (11 May 2016) male, 52, street vendor. 3.02 (11 May 2016) male, 44, NGO worker. 3.03 (20 May 2016) male, ~45, cab driver. 3.04 (25 May 2016) male, 51, watchman. 3.05 (25 May 2016) female, 40, janitor. 3.06 (25 May 2016) female, 45, janitor. 3.07 (26 May 2016) male, 50, technician. 3.08 (21 May 2016) female, 45, realtor. 3.09 (30 May 2016) female, 48, janitor. 3.10 (30 May 2016) male, 39, school teacher. 3.11 (30 May 2016) female, 39, school teacher. 3.12 (30 May 2016) female, 34, school teacher. Moreno A (21 April 2016) Interviewed by the author, Caracas. Sociologist, Director of Caracas-based NGO Centro de Investigaciones Populares. Perez Lo Presti A (15 June 2016) Interviewed by the author, Universidad de Los Andes, Merida. Psycho-therapist who worked in a barrio of Caracas.

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References Boissevain J (1974) Friends of friends: networks, manipulators and coalitions. Blackwell, Oxford Borgatti SP, Halgin DS (2011) On network theory. Organ Sci 22:1168–1181 Brillembourg A, Feireiss K, Klumpner H (2005) Informal city: Caracas case. Prestel, Munich, Berlin, London and New York Carneiro RL (1970) A theory of the origin of the state. Science 169:733–738 Carreras Damas G (1969) Temas de Historia Social y de las Ideas. Ediciones de la Biblioteca de la Universidad Central de Venezuela Caracas Coase RH (1937) The nature of the firm. Economica 4(16):386–405 Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme (2012) Homicidios en Venezuela. In: Sentido e Impacto del Uso de Armas de Fuego en Venezuela. Caracas, pp 69–114 Elsenhans H (1996) State, class and development. Radiant, New Delhi El Universal (2013) Clausuradas Están Hoy las Tres Iglesias Rusas de Altavista. http://www. eluniversal.com/caracas/130411/clausuradas-estan-hoy-las-tres-iglesias-rusas-de-altavista. Accessed 11 Oct 2016 Fundación Jose Ángel Lamas (2016) Historia de Petare. https://fundalamas.wordpress.com/ contacto/historia-de-petare/. Accessed 11 Nov 2016 Granovetter MS (1973) The strength of weak ties. Am J Sociol 78(6):1360–1380 Goyal S (2007) Connections: an introduction to the economics of networks. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford Hausmann R, Rodriguez FR (2014) Why did venezuelan growth collapse? In: Hausmann R, Rodriguez FR (eds) Venezuela before Chavez: anatomy of an economic collapse. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, pp 15–50 Karl TL (1997) The paradox of plenty: oil booms and petro-states. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles Lim C, Putnam RD (2010) Religion, social networks, and life satisfaction. Am Sociol Rev 75(6):914–933 Lin N (2001) Social capital: a theory of social structures and actions. Cambridge University Press, New York Manzano O (2014) Venezuela after a century of oil exploitation. In: Hausmann R, Rodriguez FR (eds) Venezuela before Chavez: anatomy of an economic collapse. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, pp 51–89 Messner SF, Rosenfeld R (1997) Political restraint of the market and levels of criminal homicide: a cross-national application of institutional-anomie theory. Soc Forces 75(4):1393–1416 Mitchell JC (1969) Social networks in urban situations: analysis of personal relationships in Central African towns. Manchester University Press, Manchester Morenoff JD, Sampson RJ, Raubenbush SW (2001) Neighborhood inequality, collective efficacy, and the spatial dynamics of urban violence. Criminology 39(3):517–560 Perlman J (2010) Favela: four decades of living on the edge in Rio de Janeiro. Oxford University Press, New York Pew Research Center (2014) Religion in Latin America: widespread change in a historically Catholic region Putnam R, Leonardi R, Nanetti R (1993) Making democracy work: civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press, Princeton Ragin CC (1987) The comparative method: moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. University of California Press Berkeley, Los Angeles and London Rodriguez Sosa PL, Rodriguez Pardo LR (2013) El Petróleo como Instrumento de Progreso: Una Nueva Relación Ciudadano-Estado-Petróleo. Ediciones IESA, Caracas Rosas Meza I (2015) Trama Urbana y Violencia en un Barrio de Caracas. In: Briceño-Leon R (ed) Ciudades de Vida y Muerte: La Ciudad y el Pacto Social para la Contención de la Violencia. Alfa, Caracas, pp 155–193

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Sampson RJ, Stephen W, Raudenbush SW, Earls F (1997) Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multi-level study of collective efficacy. Science 277:918–924 Seers D (1964) The mechanisms of an open petroleum economy. Soc Econ Stud 13(2):233–242 Tilly C (1989) Cities and states in Europe, 1000–1800. Theor Soc 18(5):563–584 Tilly C ([1992] 2008) Coercion, capital, and European states: AD 990–1992. Blackwell, Cambridge Velasco A (2015) Barrio rising: urban popular politics and the making of modern Venezuela. University of California Press, Oakland Wellman B (1983) Network analysis: some basic principles. Socio Theor 1:155–200 Yanes O (2012) Así Son Las Cosas: Secretos de El Silencio. http://www.eluniversal.com/caracas/ 121012/asi-son-las-cosas. Accessed 8 Aug 2014 Zayerz Moitalta LG (2013) Expansão Urbana de Caracas e a Consolidação dos Barrios Populares: O Caso de Petare. Master thesis, Universidade do Minho Zenou Y (2013) Spatial versus social mismatch. J Urban Econ 74:113–132

Chapter 4

Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings on Collective Efficacy

Abstract Chapter 3 analyzed social network density in three barrios of Caracas: Catia/23 de Enero (henceforth, Catia), Petare, and Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta (henceforth, Baruta). It found that social network density was high in all three studied barrios. Such findings point toward some structural composition of social capital present in all the studied barrios. This factor of social capital is necessary for social capital to exist, as it lowers transaction costs of organization-building toward goals like imparting informal social control. The present chapter contributes to the discussion on social capital’s structural composition, and its moderating role of urban violence, by analyzing its second structural factor, collective efficacy, in these three studied barrios. However, two sub-factors compose collective efficacy: Social disorganization and collective action within the institutional context. This chapter shows that high social disorganization does not correspond with high violence rates. Hence, it is an irrelevant sub-factor of social capital. Regarding collective action within the institutional context, the chapter shows that in all the barrios attempts at collective action were not sustainable, likely because of rent-seeking organizations’ presence. This chapter found that only in the barrio of Baruta was there evidence of sustainable collective action. However, the evidence presented has some limitations. Keywords Violence rates · Collective efficacy · Social disorganization · Institutional context · Barrios

4.1 Introduction Collective efficacy can induce community organization to pull resources together to prevent or act against violent agents (Morenoff et al. 2001, 524–25; Sampson et al. 1997, 918–19). Hence, it is an important factor of social capital’s moderation of high urban violence rates. Two sub-factors compose collective efficacy: Levels of social disorganization and collective action within the institutional context. These two sub-factors explain increases or decreases in transaction costs that allow achieving collective efficacy in each urban neighborhood. The absence of neighborhood or barrio-wide collective efficacy, while social network density is high, can lead to a per© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. S. Leon, Violence in the Barrios of Caracas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5_4

99

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

verse composition of social capital. Perverse social capital occurs under a structural composition where transaction costs to organize informal social control in the barrio become high, but they become low for small groups like gangs to use urban violence as an instrument of economic resources predation (Browning et al. 2004, 511–12). A perverse structural composition of social capital reproduces the politico-economic rent-cum-marginality macrostructure, which moderates the presence of high urban violence. Social disorganization consists of three interrelated structural urban elements: Concentrated poverty or low socioeconomic status, high population turnover or migration, and high ethnic heterogeneity (Shaw and McKay 1942; Sampson and Groves 1989, 774–76; Parker 2008, 30–32). The presence of these aspects increases the transaction costs of a given urban neighborhood to pull resource together toward the effective achievement of a common goal. One way through which social disorganization increases such transaction costs is by lowering the willingness and ability of community members to intervene in the public sphere as to prevent or act against violence agents (Sampson et al. 1997, 918–19; Fang et al. 2013, 122; Putnam 2000, 314; Zinecker 2014, 83). High social disorganization can increase transaction costs on networks of trust and cooperation, and thus social capital is less likely to be productive (Fang et al. 2013, 122; St. Jean 2007, 4–5). The transaction costs imposed on networks of trust and cooperation lead to possible adverse effects on the second sub-factor that is the structuration of collective action within the institutional context. Collective action or “putting your money where your mouth is” (van Zomeren et al. 2004, 651), contributes to achieving collective efficacy if the norms established by the institutional context allow for its structuration or sustainability (Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004). These norms shape beliefs and values in social network interactions that provide cognitive heuristics of whether collective actions tend to lead to collective efficacy in goal-oriented community organization (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–68; Uphoff 1999, 218–19). Such instrumental community organization includes preventing or acting against violent individuals and groups (Sampson et al. 1997. Hipp and Wo 2015, 169–70). Certain norms rationalize the willingness of social network members to act toward common goals collectively. Hence, particular norms make expectations of future returns from repeated investments in social relations credible (Uphoff 1999, 218–19), which can place or remove transaction costs shaping socioeconomic organization (Piketty 1995; Di Tella and MacCulloch 2009). The transaction costs imposed by the institutional context could range from routine practices impeding agent empowerment and social relations with non-group members (Warren 2004, 17–18), to in-group biases creating groups with low radius of trust (Fukuyama 2001, 9, 16). Moreover, they can create vertical networks of dependencies that bridge insider networks promoting rent-seeking (Putnam et al. 1993, 88, 174–75; Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004, 17–18). Transaction costs placed or removed by the institutional context, and the norms structuralizing collective action, help explain why certain compositions of social capital enable or prevent a barrio from imparting informal social control. Regarding methodology, this chapter analyzes cross-sectional data of the 50 interviewed partners from the barrios of Catia, Petare, and Baruta. Catia and Petare showed

4.1 Introduction

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an urban violence rate for the year of 2011 of 105 and 93 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 84, 103). High homicide rates in Catia and Petare allows classifying both barrios as positive cases of urban violence. On the other hand, Baruta displayed in 2011 an urban violence rate of 35 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, which allows classifying this barrio as a negative case of urban violence (Ibid., 103). Comparing positive and negative cases of urban violence permits for a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), which is the primary method used to process data on collective efficacy at the suburban level of analysis (Ragin 1987, 82–94). This book used elements of social network analysis (SNA) to explore social disorganization and the institutional context from the interview partners’ perspectives (Boissevain 1979, 393; Scott 2000, 33; Wellman 1983, 170). This chapter presents an analysis of its three categories to identify different levels of social disorganization: Population turnover, ethnic heterogeneity, and socioeconomic status (Shaw and McKay 1942; Sampson and Groves 1989, 774–76). Regarding this last category, this chapter does not assess it through income data but through relational data to determine relative differences between the three barrios. Relational data does not examine properties of the interviewed subjects themselves like income or education, known as attribute data, but data showing ties and contacts binding groups of agents in a system (Scott 2000, 2–3). To operationalize the sub-factor that is the institutional context and community organization the chapter examines relational data. The kinds of relational data collected were on trust, community level, and state-led collective action, plus their perceived effectiveness by the interviewed subjects. However, one must clarify that the presented data is not a statistically representative model of collective efficacy. It provides information from several interviewed partners that lived in different geographical sectors of the studied barrios—an effort was made to acquire interview partners of most of the sectors in three barrios—to build a structural picture of this sub-factor. Hence, the data provides explorative information on collective efficacy. The finding social disorganization was that the presence of this sub-factor was qualitatively low in the barrios of Catia and Baruta, but high in Petare. In the case of Baruta, social disorganization was somewhat high because of significant population turnover and heterogeneity; there is a covariation between these two factors, as shown by the data. However, socioeconomic conditions and probably favorable geography showed low transaction costs on social networks, unlike the case of Petare. Hence, one can classify overall social disorganization in this barrio as low. Being a marginalized urban space, one should expect somewhat high levels of population turnover and heterogeneity. The challenging case to explain was Catia. It showed low levels of social disorganization. Since Catia was a definite case of urban violence, then this sub/factor of collective efficacy is likely irrelevant to the structural process allowing for high urban violence rates. However, low social disorganization in Catia occurred under an unfavorable institutional context for collective action. The institutional or political context in Catia was unfavorable to achieve collective efficacy out of what were plentiful attempts at goal-oriented collective action. The presence of perverse organizations tentatively explained this result, which could have

102

4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

prevented a collective action from becoming collectively efficient. In Petare the result was similar, although one can infer that in this barrio higher social disorganization increased the transaction costs of individuals repeatedly investing resources in their social networks, which negatively affected collective efficacy. In Baruta the indicators of this sub-factor seemed more favorable since collective action tended to lead toward collective efficacy, even if reports by the interviewed partners on collective action were qualitatively lower than in Catia. One could attribute this result to a lower presence of perverse organizations. Nonetheless, one should qualify the second sub-factor’s findings—collective action within the institutional context—on two accounts. First, levels of trust did not show any meaningful correspondence between the three studied barrios and favorability of the institutional context to achieve collective efficacy. Trust levels were overall lower on the contrary case of Baruta were the institutional context seemed favorable. Perhaps this shows more realistic expectations of the reliability of their social networks to repeatedly reinvest in social relations. In other words, interview subjects in Baruta have more realistic assessments on who honors their social commitments within their neighborhood. Second, these indicators concentrated on endogenous evidence of how the institutional context affects the likelihood that collective action leads to collective efficacy. One must analyze exogenous factors affecting the institutional context such as the effects of urban security policies and the social links or relations between barrio inhabitants and state security forces, which is an analysis left for the following chapter. Therefore, the findings on the favorability of the institutional context in this chapter are only partial. The chapter continues analyzing social disorganization and the institutional context—the two sub-factors of collective efficacy—in two separate sections. The first section on social disorganization analyzes Catia, Petare, and Baruta in separate subsections, and each examines population turnover, (ethnic) heterogeneity, and socioeconomic conditions. The section ends with a short subsection that comparatively analyzes the findings of social disorganization in the three studied barrios. After that, the second section discusses the indicators of the institutional context in each barrio. Finally, the last section offers a brief synthesis of both sub-factors’ findings, which provides preliminary conclusions on collective efficacy in the three studied barrios.

4.2 Social Disorganization According to the established literature, an important factor affecting the moderating role of this social capital on urban violence is the level of social disorganization. The reason being that social disorganization can impose transaction costs on social network interactions and thus make collective efficacy less likely (Bursik 1988; Messneret al. 2004; Shaw and McKay 1942; Parker 2008, 30–32; Rosenfeld et al. 2001; Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 61–66; Putnam 2000, 308–09). Resulting from this is that it is costlier for a community to pull resources together to prevent or act

4.2 Social Disorganization

103

against violent individuals or groups. To test the role of social disorganization in the barrios of Catia, Petare, and Baruta this section analyzes three dimensions of social disorganization as explained by the model of Shaw and McKay (1942). These are population turnover, heterogeneity, and socioeconomic conditions of the neighborhood. The present research analyzed relational attributes of interview partners to analyze the three dimensions of social disorganization (Scott 2000, 2–3). The analysis of social disorganization’s dimensions included examining patterns of migration by the interview partners and mentions of different ethnicities or nationalities represented in the barrio to categorize whether population turnover and ethnic heterogeneity are present in the barrios. The section explored relational data categories that compared the situation of a given agent in a social network instead of employing attribute data such as income or economic class to analyze socioeconomic status (Boissevain 1979, 393; Wellman 1983, 170). These categories allow examining social disorganization at the local level, but going beyond mere material deprivation (Alvarado Chacin 2006, 166). To analyze relational categories to interpret whether social disorganization was high or low in the studied barrios, the following subsections examine the ease of accessing nearby healthcare and education facilities, and the availability of grocery stores and of basic public services. The following subsections analyzed indicators on the three dimensions mentioned above of social disorganization using QCA. The last subsection offers a discussion comparing the findings of social disorganization in each barrio. Briefly, however, the evidence pointed out that only the case of Petare as displaying high social disorganization. In the cases of Catia and Baruta, the evidence is contradicting; Catia shows little social disorganization and high violence, while Baruta shows low violence and low levels of social disorganization.

4.2.1 Catia Catia grew into an established barrio of Caracas comparatively early. It established itself during the mid-twentieth century, because of rural-to-urban migration of people expecting to capture high wage jobs due to Venezuela’s oil-based rentier structure, which centered rent distribution on the capital city. It is because of this barrio’s early establishment that population turnover has been low for the last decades. As one can appreciate in Table 4.1, all interview partners under forty reported that their parents and they were born in Catia. They also report having about third fewer siblings and children that their counterparts in the other barrios studied, thus following the national trend regarding natural growth rate, as one can appreciate in Table 4.1. Overall, threequarters of the interviewed partners were born in the barrio, and over half of their parents were born there as well. Concerning population turnover, this shows that the social networks remained stable and did not increase. Low population turnover also meant low population or ethnic heterogeneity. These two dimensions of social disorganization seem to correlate, as discussed below. Nonetheless, the chapter finds no evidence in Catia of significant ethnic diversity.

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

Table 4.1 Indicators of social disorganization in Catia Catia

No. siblings

No. children

Parents from the barrio?

Subject from the barrio?

Medical centers

Grocery stores

Schools Public services

1.01

N/A

0

0

0

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

1.02

N/A

0

0

0

1

1

1

1

1.03

10

N/A

1

1

N/A

N/A

1

N/A

1.04

2

N/A

N/A

1

1

N/A

1

1

1.05

0

4

1

1

1

N/A

1

1

1.06

10

N/A

0

0

1

N/A

N/A

1

1.07

3

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

1.08

5

2

1

1

1

N/A

1

1

1.09

4

3

1

1

1

1

1

N/A

1.10

3

1

0

1

1

1

1

1

1.11

2

0

1

1

0

1

N/A

1

1.12

3

0

1

1

0

1

N/A

1

1.13

5

2

0

1

1

1

1

N/A

1.14

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

N/A

1.15

4

1

1

1

1

1

N/A

N/A

1.16

4

2

0

1

1

1

N/A

N/A

1.17

5

N/A

0

0

1

N/A

1

1

Source Table created by the author with original data

In the case of Catia, it is difficult to classify it as a barrio if one only analyzes the indicators on the socioeconomic conditions of this urban space, as they are overall very positive. All inhabitants of Catia reported to have schools, and grocery stores near to their households as appreciated in Table 4.1. Availability of basic services lowers transaction costs of accessing such basic sources needed for minimum human development, which impacts positively on their socioeconomic status. A vast majority of them, over four-fifths, reported having easy access to medical centers where they could acquire such services, which impacts positively on their socioeconomic status as well. Additionally, all interview partners responded to have access to basic public services such as electricity, clean water, and sanitation. This piece of evidence suggests that inhabitants of Catia tend not to spend a significant amount of time and other resources in acquiring basic services needed to meet minimum living standards. Therefore, the evidence collected pointed toward a relatively positive socioeconomic status of Catia’s inhabitants, thus contributing to categorizing its social disorganization as low. However, this is a barrio showing high violence rate, which means that this social outcome has increased under relatively positive socioeconomic fac-

4.2 Social Disorganization

105

tors. In other words, the empirical evidence from this barrio challenges classic social disorganization and perspectives on violence. The favorable socioeconomic conditions suggest low levels of social disorganization, which should impact positively on social capital. One could reach this interpretation because with low social disorganization social networks see lower costs of reinvesting in social relations. In other words, there should have been fewer transaction costs for trust and cooperation. However, in the present discussion on Catia, it is possible that this specific finding is a product of the data if the study failed to include more representative information on subjects living on more inaccessible, and thus more marginal, parts of Catia. I tried to reduce this type of measurement error by selecting interview subjects from different geographical locations in the barrio. Nonetheless, the findings of this subsection relating to the macroanalysis of the political economy of Venezuela and Caracas performed in chapter one: Marginality has decreased even though oil-based rentierism has remained significant, which lowers the susceptibility to violence. The other studied positive case of urban violence, Petare, told a different story regarding social disorganization, showing an essential variation in the structural composition of social capital in comparison to Catia.

4.2.2 Petare Petare was the only barrio studied were the evidence pointed toward high social disorganization. Its impressive size and socio-geographic marginalization were partly the reason why social disorganization was high. On the first dimension of social disorganization, population turnover was significant. Migration to Petare has continued until recently. As one can see in Table 4.2, over one-third of the interview partners migrated to Petare themselves. Moreover, half of those interview subjects who responded to have been born in the barrio reported that their parents migrated to it from outside Caracas. Given the age diversity among subjects, one can see continuing migration to this barrio, no qualitative variance between age groups (see interview data for Petare). In addition, natural growth aided the rise of Venezuela’s largest barrio and not only rural-to-urban migration. In this barrio, the interviewed subjects reported having on average 4.1 siblings, while having 1.4 children themselves, which follows the demographic tendencies of the country, as explained in Chap. 1.3.2. Given the age diversity among subjects, one can see continuing migration to this barrio. In other words, members of this subgroup were immigrants to Petare as well and coming from different places of origin. This pattern of migration shows high population turnover, as there was a constant influx of population, in economically depressed areas, where people of different backgrounds with different cultural identifications must coinhabit and try to cooperate to improve their self-built housing. The case of Petare stands in stark contrast to Catia. Its high population turnover has seen the constant migration of individuals with different regional origins, which increases cultural diversity, and thus heterogeneity. About a quarter of the interviewed sub-

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

Table 4.2 Indicators of social disorganization in Petare Petare No. siblings

No. children

Parents from slum?

Subject from slum?

Medical centers

Grocery stores

Schools Public services

2.01

4

2

1

1

1

1

1

0

2.02

4

0

0

1

1

1

1

N/A

2.03

5

0

1

1

0

1

0

0

2.04

0

0

0

1

1

N/A

N/A

0

2.05

6

N/A

1

1

1

N/A

N/A

1

2.06

5

N/A

0

0

1

0

1

0

2.07

11

5

0

1

1

1

1

0

2.08

0

3

0

1

1

1

1

0

2.09

8

3

1

1

1

0

1

N/A

2.10

14

1

0

0

1

1

1

1

2.11

1

0

1

1

1

1

1

1

2.12

4

N/A

0

0

1

N/A

1

0

2.13

6

0

0

1

1

1

1

1

2.14

1

N/A

1

1

1

0

1

1

2.15

7

N/A

0

0

1

0

1

0

2.16

1

2

0

1

0

0

1

N/A

2.17

3

2

0

0

1

1

1

0

2.18

12

N/A

1

1

1

0

1

1

2.19

N/A

1

0

0

1

1

1

1

2.20

2

6

0

0

1

1

1

N/A

2.21

11

2

0

0

1

1

1

1

Source Table created by the author with original data

jects responded that they, or their parents, came from abroad—most of them from Colombia, but one interview partner was Ecuadorian. This diversity can be a cost in trying to create productive social capital, as different habitual practices can delay trust-building in repeated social interactions. Although this is not a representative sample of the inhabitants of Petare, because of the relatively small number of interviewed subjects, the selection of interviewed subjects covered many geographical areas of Petare and shows that the portion of a culturally heterogeneous population is qualitatively significant. Cultural or ethnic heterogeneity increases the difficulty of building social connections where repeated investments occur. From a relational data point of view, inhabitants of Petare displayed low socioeconomic status. At least nine out of ten interviewed partners responded to have nearby access to schools and medical centers where they could get at least basic care, as one can appreciate in Table 4.2. Like in many barrios of Caracas, the medical centers available are the state-owned clinics known as CDIs (Centros Diagnosticos Inte-

4.2 Social Disorganization

107

grales), which provide basic healthcare services free of charge.1 However, the low presence of basic services created high costs of survival consumption and lowered opportunities to engage in non-survival or welfare enhancing activities. The basic services and products lacking in this barrio are nearby grocery stores and public services. Only two-thirds of interview subjects responded to have grocery stores nearby. Lack of grocery stores included local informal stores referred to in Spanish as abastos, which are present in all barrios and permit barrio inhabitants to acquire basic staples without having to spend more time and money by having to acquire them from formal market located far away from their homes. Regarding public services, subjects mainly referred to a lack of clean water and sanitation. Just over half of them reported one or more of such services as absent from their households. For example, one interview partner talked about having to buy sizeable clean water bottles from markets to bring them to the barrio since they did not have water services (2.01, 21 April 2016). Another subject described a housing situation where the infrastructure was present, but the provision of water remains interrupted for days at a time (Interview 2.15, 12 May 2016). Such socioeconomic services do not seem to lack in the other two studied barrios, but in Petare about half of the subjects interviewed talked about their lack and the socioeconomic difficulties that they bring. Households in the barrio of Petare were of relative negative socioeconomic status, as the lack of basic services such as clean water and nearby grocery stores created high costs for survival consumption. Petare’s peripheral location in the far-east of Caracas and the extension of barrio dwellings through two hills expanding outwards from the commercial center of Caracas and Petare itself toward nonurban terrain makes this barrio unattractive for investment by both public entities. Nonetheless, its low investment attractiveness explained the comparatively low availability of public services and nearby providers of basic services, which evidenced low socioeconomic status. Petare’s adverse geography, unattractiveness for investment, and high population turnover and heterogeneity lead to the finding of high social disorganization in Petare, which created costs on collective efficacy.

4.2.3 Baruta In the case of Baruta, social disorganization was low due to favorable socioeconomic conditions even though population turnover and ethnic heterogeneity were somewhat high. Nonetheless, these last two dimensions of social disorganization did not seem to have placed high transaction costs on social networks in this barrio, which would lower the likelihood of collective efficacy’s presence. Illustrated in Table 4.3, popu1 CDIs

are somewhat controversial. They provide only basic healthcare services and are usually staffed by undertrained physicians, many of them from Cuba. However, they provide healthcare services near within barrios, which increases the reach of this service at no costs. The data collected for this book shows that in many cases they are the only available source of medical services, even if their medical services were of limited quality.

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

Table 4.3 Indicators of social disorganization in Baruta Baruta No. siblings

No. shildren

Parents from slum?

Subject from slum?

Medical centers

Grocery stores

Schools Public services

3.01

8

N/A

0

1

1

1

1

1

3.02

0

0

0

0

N/A

N/A

1

N/A

3.03

N/A

2

0

0

N/A

1

1

1

3.04

9

1

0

1

1

N/A

1

N/A

3.05

1

3

1

1

1

1

1

N/A

3.06

5

3

1

1

1

3.07

5

3

0

0

1

3.08

2

1

1

1

3.09

7

1

1

1

3.10

3

0

0

3.11

8

4

3.12

2

4

1

1

N/A

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

0

0

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

Source Table created by the author with original data

lation turnover in this barrio was high. Additionally, based on the subjects’ data its demographic growth is comparable to that of Petare, most of the interview partners reported that their parents came from outside of Caracas and about a third of them are not native to this barrio. Almost six out of ten of the interviewed subjects’ parents migrated to the barrio, and a third of them are migrants themselves. The pattern of migration remained somewhat steady over time, as there is no qualitatively significant variation between younger and older migrants to this barrio. For example, one interview partner said that he and his family arrived from a rural state of Venezuela in the year 2000 (3.03, 20 May 2016). Another interview partner had only been a few months in this barrio and Caracas, at the time that I conducted the interview (3.02, 11 May 2016). The above evidence showed significantly high population turnover in this barrio, even though they tend not to move out of the barrio. This could be because once barrio dwellers have invested significant resources in their housing, they are unwilling to relocate elsewhere, as this would constitute a loss of valuable physical capital (Lincon and Batista 2006, 123). However, under a rentier structure, the capital city offers not only expected but higher wages. As the first mentioned interview partner (3.03, 20 May 2016) noted, “aquí [en Caracas] se ve el dinero,” shows that rural-to-urban migrants do perceive increased income, even if it is only in absolute and not in real terms.2 This is most likely due to the inflationary effect of Caracas place as the capital of an oil-based economy (Seers 1964, 233–235). Population turnover, moreover, displayed a co-interaction with ethnic heterogeneity. 2 In

English: “Here [in Caracas] you get to see [to earn] more money”.

4.2 Social Disorganization

109

Similarly, the barrio of Baruta showed some levels of heterogeneity, because of rural-to-urban migration from several regions of the country and from abroad. Many of the interview subjects noted the population heterogeneity of this barrio and especially the presence of migrants from countries such as Colombia (3.02, May 11, 2016). A school principal in Baruta (25 May 2016) stated that most of these migrants come from economically depressed and rural regions, like those coming from the Venezuelan countryside. However, from the evidence collected through the interviewed partners, ethnic heterogeneity did not seem to be high or harmful to collective efficacy. Migrants of similar regional origins tend to group their housings. An interview partner (3.03, 20 May 2016) explained that the street where he lives in the barrio was commonly referred as “la calle de los gochos” because its inhabitants have been primarily from the Venezuelan Andes, Barinas state, and Colombia.3 These are all neighboring regions in southwestern Venezuela. Therefore, it is likely that grouping of migrants with a similar regional background facilitates cooperation to build and improve their housing and environment, thus lowering its negative impact on collective efficacy. Contrastingly, the socioeconomic status of Baruta inhabitants was favorable in comparison to the other two studied barrios. The basis for this interpretation is that all interviewed subjects of this urban area—see Table 4.3—reported having access to all basic services needed for basic socioeconomic welfare: Nearby medical centers, schools, grocery stores, plus basic public services such as clean water, electricity, and sanitation. Inhabitants of this barrio spend fewer amounts of time and resources in acquiring services needed for basic survival, which had positive effects on investment in social relations, as barrio dwellers had lower transaction costs, and thus more opportunities, to repeatedly engage in such investment. Hence, the availability of the services as mentioned earlier is positive for collective efficacy since they reduce the costs of network interactions. Regarding social disorganization overall in Baruta, once could interpret it as low due to the positive evidence on socioeconomic status, even if population turnover and to a lesser extent ethnic heterogeneity, were somewhat high.

4.2.4 Findings on Social Disorganization As mentioned before, there is a theoretical relationship between social disorganization and urban violence, as low social disorganization reduces transaction costs for 3 In English: “the street of the gochos”. Gocho is a Venezuelan term—sometimes used pejoratively—used to describe people from the Venezuelan Andes. This term, and its pejorative use, was originally a label for supporters and henchmen of Venezuela’s longtime caudillo, General Juan Vicente Gomez, who came from Tachira state in the Venezuelan Andes. It gains a pejorative normative charge because Gomez only appointed people from his native state to positions of power. In fact, the process of democratization after 1958 was a process of getting rid of Andeans from power networks since Venezuela’s caudillos for more than half a century were all from the Venezuelan Andes (Bruni-Celli, 19 May 2016).

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

social networks to pull resources together to achieve common goals. These common goals include resisting or preventing violent groups and individuals, which reduces urban violence (Bursik 1988; Messner et al. 2004; Shaw and McKay 1942; Parker 2008, 30–32; Rosenfeld et al. 2001; Rosenfeld and Messner 2013, 61–66; Putnam 2000, 308–09). The opposite logically results in increased urban violence. The findings from the three dimensions of social disorganization—population turnover, heterogeneity, and socioeconomic conditions—revealed some puzzling results: Only Petare is a “textbook” case of social disorganization, while Catia and Baruta exhibited low overall social disorganization. In other words, a positive and a negative case showed low social disorganization. Population turnover could negatively affect investment in social relations, ties, and connectedness, thus negatively collective efficacy. By comparing the three studied barrios only Petare and Baruta show significant population turnover. Catia, due to its early consolidation as a barrio of Caracas shows comparatively low levels of population turnover. In the other two barrios, continued migration created a high population turnover. Regarding ethnic heterogeneity, it was only qualitatively significant in Petare due to high migration from abroad, especially Colombia. Catia, due to being consolidated as a barrio much earlier than Petare or Baruta shows comparatively low levels ethnic heterogeneity as rural-to-urban migration to this barrio has decreased in recent the last decades. On socioeconomic status, this dimension of social disorganization places costs on social networks that can give way to low collective efficacy. The findings from the comparative discussion above regarding this dimension were that in the barrios of Catia and Baruta socioeconomic status did not place high costs on social networks, while this appeared to be the case in Petare. Inhabitants Catia and Baruta spent fewer amounts of time and resources in acquiring services needed for basic welfare and survival consumption, freeing opportunities to invest resources in social relations in these two barrios repeatedly. On the other hand, Petare’s socioeconomic indicators were unfavorable due to a relative higher lack of basic public services such as clean water and sanitation, plus low availability of nearby grocery stores. The lack of basic services reflects a sort of “governance gap” (Marx et al. 2013, 196–97) probably due to the unattractiveness of Petare as a large and impoverished barrio in an isolated periphery of Caracas. This created high transaction costs that could negatively impact on collective efficacy. By comparing the different dimensions of social disorganization—population turnover, ethnic heterogeneity, and low socioeconomic status—one finds that this sub-factor of social capital showed qualitatively low presence in Catia and Baruta, but high in Petare. The barrio of Petare was the only one to have shown high population turnover, high ethnic heterogeneity, and low socioeconomic status from relational data’s point of view. Catia showed precisely the opposite results in all three dimensions of social disorganization in comparison to Petare. Baruta showed high population turnover, but low ethnic heterogeneity and favorable socioeconomic status. This evidence allows one to categorize social disorganization in this barrio as low because high population turnover did not correspond with other dimensions of this sub-factor that would have imposed high transaction costs on its social networks.

4.2 Social Disorganization

111

However, the evidence on social disorganization only shows low or high transaction costs allowing for collective efficacy. To analyze whether collective efficacy was present in the three studied barrios one must examine collective action within the institutional context and its effects on community organization, which is the goal of the following section.

4.3 Collective Action Within the Institutional Context The institutional context shapes some of the cognitive heuristics allowing for collective action to become collective efficacy when transaction costs are low (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–68; Uphoff 1999, 218–19). These cognitive heuristics are norms—beliefs and values—rationalizing the willingness of social network members to organize toward common goals (North et al. 2009, 14–16). Norms can further place or remove transaction costs shaping socioeconomic organization (Piketty 1995; Di Tella and MacCulloch 2009). The structuration of norms—a product of the overarching political economy shaping believes and values enshrined in norms (Di Tella et al. 2014, 408–09)—can reproduce routine practices—e.g., cultural norms—impeding agent empowerment and social relations with non-group members (Warren 2004, 17–18). The structuration of norms can also create in-group biases creating groups with low radius of trust—i.e., low risk-taking with perceived outsiders. They can create vertical networks of dependencies that bridge insider networks promoting rent-seeking (Fukuyama 2001, 9, 16). In other words, the institutional context helps explaining why a specific structural composition of social capital leads to low or high violence rates. This section compares in separate subsections the institutional or political context and community organization in Catia, Petare, and Baruta through QCA truth tables by examining categories such as within an extra-community trust, goal-oriented informal community organization along with its perceived effectiveness, and membership in perverse community associations along with its perceived effectiveness. It is important to restate that the category of trust is an indicator of externalities and not a sub-factor of social capital. Trust is epiphenomenal to social capital and helps indicate whether expectations of future returns from repeated investments in social relations are credible (Ibid., 7, 14). The final subsection not only offers a comparative discussion of the findings reached on the institutional context and community organization in the three studied barrios.

4.3.1 Catia The institutional or political context in Catia placed high transaction costs for the structuration of collective action. This subsection shows that instrumental community organizations have had difficulties in translating repeated attempts at collective

112

4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

action into collective efficacy. Partly to blame are state-funded formal community organizations, such as concejos comunales or community councils, tending to be vertical and closed, reducing collective efficacy. The category of trust in the community and noncommunity members appears to indicate the sharing of positive externalities since trust levels are overall high. However, this could be the product of high social network density and not of net positive externalities created by collective efficacy. In Catia trust of the community and noncommunity members is on average about the same; about two-thirds of interviewed partners expressed trust of network participants living inside and outside their communities—see Table 4.4. Just under half of the respondents claimed that they either trusted community or noncommunity members, but not both. This category, trust, corresponds with the indicator of collective action in this barrio, which was the question on collective action through participation—by the interviewed subjects or their neighbors—in goal-oriented community organizations. Three-quarters of the interviewed subjects asserted such type of organization, which was primarily informal, took place in the part of the barrio where they lived. One could interpret qualitatively high collective action as an explanation for high trust levels. However, it does not explain low perceived efficacies of attempts at collective action to achieve common goals in Catia. Although informal organization in Catia has been relatively higher than in other barrios, its perceived effectiveness was low. As one can appreciate in Table 4.4, six out of the ten interview subjects who affirmed to have taken part, or have witnessed, the goal-oriented community organization in their neighborhood perceived such organization as inefficient. In other words, they claimed that the community in their attempt at collective action did not achieve the stated goals. For example, one Catia’s interviewed subject explained that he participated with his neighbors to get the local government to install an ad hoc national police station after the government built an official one in 2011, but rural-to-urban migrants squatted it shortly after (1.01, April 16, 2016).4 This example of goal-oriented collective action was initially successful, but the community has had difficulty in finding a long-term space for the small ad hoc police station–and thus police presence–to operate. Hence, the community tried to pull its resources together to fill a governance gap concerning social control and public safety, but it was not sustainable according to the interviewed subject. Another interviewed subject told of community attempts to deal with accumulated waste in public spaces of the barrio, as the quality of waste management services provided by the local government decreased over the years. Collective action to deal with waste management was initially successful (1.17, 10 May 2016), but it has been challenging to maintain its effectiveness over time, which hints at an inability to structuralize 4 The

use of the verb “squat” has a rather strong negative normative charge. However, it is the appropriate translation for the verb used by the interviewed subject, “invadir.” The referred squatters, due to the time frame of the events, are likely barrio-dwellers from coastal towns not too far away from Caracas displaced by the torrential rains of late 2010. This interview partner elaborated that, “aquí se organizan…entre ellos mismos se organizaron, ellos no son nada, ellos no son ONG, y se organizaron, y por eso la policía está aquí [de nuevo]” (1.01, 16 April 2016). In English: Here they organize…between them they organize themselves, they are not NGOs or anything similar, but they organized and because of that the police is here [once again]”.

4.3 Collective Action Within the Institutional Context

113

Table 4.4 Indicators of institutional context and community organization in Catia Catia

Trust in community links

Trust in noncommunity links

Informal community org.

Effective community org.

Member of Concejo Comunal

Effectiveness of Concejo Comunal

1.01

1

1

1

1

0

N/A

1.02

1

1

1

0

0

0

1.03

1

1

0

0

0

0

1.04

1

1

N/A

N/A

0

N/A

1.05

N/A

1

N/A

N/A

0

N/A

1.06

1

0

N/A

N/A

0

N/A

1.07

1

1

N/A

N/A

0

0

1.08

1

1

1

1

1

1

1.09

0

1

1

0

0

1

1.10

1

0

1

1

1

1

1.11

0

0

1

0

0

0

1.12

0

0

0

0

0

0

1.13

1

0

1

1

0

1

1.14

1

0

0

0

0

0

1.15

0

1

1

0

0

0

1.16

0

1

1

0

0

1

1.17

1

1

1

1

0

0

Source Table created by the author with original data

repeated investments in social relations with the expectation of future returns leading to more collective efficacy. The findings of this category make it challenging to explain the high trust levels of both community and noncommunity members by the interview partners who lived in Catia. Although collective action was high, low perceived effectiveness should correspond with low levels of trust, as it should discourage continued risk-taking. Perhaps high trust levels—and thus apparently shared positive externalities—could be a product of high social network density and not of collective efficacy. To further analyze these results, examining formal or state-led organizations provides evidence of how the institutional context places transaction costs on community organization. The most commonly found form of state-led community organizations is the concejos comunales or community councils. Since 2009 they have been an attempt by the Venezuelan national government of microlevel participatory governance where a community, of between 150 and 400 households in urban areas, could administer and monitor community-level projects that are approved by the national government. Moreover, the national government directly funds community councils and their community-level projects and authorizes their establishment as well. The amount of funds directed at these funds has made them the central formal community organi-

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

zation in all Venezuelan barrio and non-barrio areas (Goldfrank 2011, 44). However, the fact that they are funded and approved by the national government has made them a source of clientelistic networks of patronage, which tends to create vertical and closed community organizations and thus social networks. Only two out of 17 interview partners in Catia asserted to have participated in their respective community councils (see Table 4.4). They both claimed that goal-oriented community organization through these councils was effective. Three other interview partners—in total over one-third of them—claimed that community councils achieved the stated goals for the community. However, some of Catia’s interviewed partners detailed the clientelistic network structure of the community councils, creating limits for membership and engagement in this type of formal organization. One interview partner elaborated that, “el quehacer político se hace desde los concejos comunales…es difícil que un consejo comunal no sea del oficialismo [simpatizantes del gobierno]…porque lo aprueban ellos…ese es el problema de los concejos comunales, o eres de ellos [del gobierno] o no eres” (1.02, 18 April 2016). Another interviewed partner provided more insight into the clientelistic workings of community councils. He told that community councils were, “la bujía del sector” (1.08, 27 April 2016).5 They managed to complete several community projects, resolving infrastructure issues due to direct contact between members of the community council with a high-profile politician the governing socialist party (Ibid.). The evidence provided by this last interview partner showed that direct funding and authorization of community councils by the national government turns the prescribed horizontal structure of this formal community organization into a vertical one, based on political alliances and contacts. Limited participation, due to political institutional arrangements created vertical and closed network structures. This interpretation follows the conceptual framework of the Limited Access Order developed by North et al. (2009, 18–21; 2013, 3–5). Clientelistic networks require vertical and closed organizations to increase rentseeking opportunities so that the elite or state class can garner political support from certain sectors of the population. If rent-seeking opportunities are available to communities at large, then there the perceived costs of dissenting support for the state class are low (Robinson and Verdier 2013, 261–263). Resulting from this are perverse rent-seeking networks (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 968), which tend to prevent collective efficacy. In Catia high and repeated attempts at collective action did not lead to collective efficacy even if most interview subjects reported that they trusted both community and noncommunity members. Evidence of low collective efficacy was in part due to the high presence of community councils, which fostered vertical and closed clientelistic social networks of community organization. Such presence, a product of the constitutional context, showed perverse network structures that unfavorably affected collective efficacy.

5 In

English: “The sparkplug of the community.”

4.3 Collective Action Within the Institutional Context

115

4.3.2 Petare In Petare goal-oriented collective action showed qualitatively similar composition to that found in Catia, as its structuration was qualitatively low. It appeared that the institutional context was unfavorable for goal-oriented collective action to have yielded collective efficacy. It is possible that high social disorganization in this neighborhood increased transaction costs to the point that it became difficult for collective action to become collective efficacy, as it became costly to pull local and extra-local resources together for specific goals repeatedly. In Petare trust levels in topographically nearby community members were comparatively high. As one can appreciate in Table 4.5, six out of ten interviewed partners said that they trusted the members of their immediate community. Contrarily, trust on noncommunity members was very low; less than three out of ten interview subjects said their trusted noncommunity members. High trust of community members could explain why in this barrio attempts at collective action were qualitatively high like in Catia. Informal attempts at a community organization in Petare were plentiful. Almost seven out of ten interviewed subjects said that they either participated in or witnessed goal-oriented community organization in their neighborhood (see Table 4.5). However, their perceived effectiveness—whether the local community achieved its collective goals—was inadequate. Only four in ten interviewed subjects responded that they perceived the stated community goals as achieved. Additionally, four out of the eleven subjects that responded affirmatively on the presence of goal-oriented community organization told that such collective action was not effective. To explain low collective efficacy in Petare, one ought to consider the institutional context under which repeated attempts at collective action take place. Participation by the interviewed subjects in Petare in their local concejos comunales or community councils was low. Only about one in ten participated in one, as one can appreciate in Table 4.5. When the interviewed inhabitants of Petare responded to the question of the perceived effectiveness of such formal organizations at achieving collective goals, the responses were overwhelmingly negative. Only two in ten said that goal-oriented collective action through community councils was effective. As discussed in the case of Catia, membership and resource allocation in community councils tends to be based on personal connections to the governing political party. One interview partner, on the question of the effectiveness of the community council in his neighborhood, responded that “son solo los miembros que ven beneficios” (2.19, 16 May 2016).6 Other interview partners qualified the functioning of community councils as ineffective because quarrels over the administration of financial resources, which are distributed by the national government, have prevented collective efficacy in the community (2.12, 10 May 2016; 2.18, 16 May 2016). Moreover, one interviewed partner who was an active member in one of the councils and has participated in another state-funded social organization evaluated the work of the formal organiza6 In

English: “Only the members [of community councils] reap any benefits.”

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

Table 4.5 Indicators of institutional context and community organization in Petare Petare Trust in community links

Trust in noncommunity links

Informal community org.

Effective community org.

Member of Concejo Comunal

Efectiveness of Concejo Comunal

2.01

1

0

0

0

0

N/A

2.02

0

0

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

2.03

1

1

N/A

N/A

0

N/A

2.04

0

0

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

2.05

1

0

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

2.06

0

0

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

2.07

1

0

1

1

0

0

2.08

1

0

1

1

0

0

2.09

1

0

0

0

0

0

2.10

1

0

1

1

0

1

2.11

1

0

1

1

1

1

2.12

1

0

1

0

0

0

2.13

0

1

1

1

0

1

2.14

0

1

0

0

0

0

2.15

0

0

1

0

0

0

2.16

0

1

1

N/A

0

0

2.17

1

0

1

1

0

0

2.18

0

1

1

0

1

0

2.19

1

0

1

0

0

0

2.20

1

1

0

0

0

0

2.21

1

0

0

0

0

0

Source Table created by the author with original data

tions as useful; they successfully engaged and complemented community projects (2.11, 6 May 2016). However, this subject was an active member of these organizations and of the governing political party, which according to this subject it has allowed her to build a network of contacts where she constantly connected people who needed some help from the community with those that might have the resources to help them (Ibid.). Barrio inhabitants whose social networks do not include connections with vertical clientelistic networks of patronage find it more challenging to pull resources needed to achieve common goals, which provides further evidence of the perverse structure of such formal community organizations. Community organization in Petare followed a similar pattern as in Catia. There were many attempts at collective action, but without achieving collective efficacy. One reaches this interpretation because most interviewed subjects reported that such attempts at collective action were either unsuccessful in achieving the communities’

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117

goals. To explain this one must consider the presence of perverse community organizations like community councils, which were community organizations creating vertical and closed social network structures. Moreover, low trust in noncommunity members could indicate negative externalities produced by the presence of perverse organizations. Alternatively, it could indicate high transaction costs of pulling extralocal resources together due to high social disorganization and socio-geographical marginalization. One requires further evidence to conclude the effect of the institutional context on collective efficacy and social capital more broadly.

4.3.3 Baruta The institutional context in Baruta appeared to place relatively low transaction costs for collective action, thus impacting positively on collective efficacy. The findings in this barrio differ qualitatively from those of Catia and Petare because of attempts at goal-oriented collective action, which were relatively lower than in the other two studied barrios, corresponded with perceived collective efficacy. This barrio showed the presence of perverse community organizations as well. However, the correspondence of trust levels appeared to indicate that they did not produce negative externalities, as in Catia and Petare. Low negative externalities arising out of community organizations like community councils was perhaps due to more realistic expectations on which connections of the interviewed partners within their network will honor reciprocal commitments—i.e., assessment of risk-taking—that give way for collective efficacy. In other words, the interviewed subjects in Baruta know which people “put their money where their mouth is” (van Zomeren et al. 2004, 651). In the barrio of Baruta, trust levels are not qualitatively higher than in other barrios. On average half of the interviewed partners trusted and distrusted community and noncommunity members, without any discernible pattern—see Table 4.6. Furthermore, the interviewed subjects perceived goal-oriented community organization or collective action has been significantly more effective than in the other two barrios. Collective action in Baruta was not necessarily higher than in Catia or Petare. The evidence presented in Table 4.6 showed slightly fewer attempts at goal-oriented community organization by the interviewed partners, which just under six in ten of them affirming that they participated or where witnesses to such collective action in the part of the barrio where they lived. What was telling is that collective action corresponded with collective efficacy. The interviewed subjects in Baruta that responded affirmatively to the presence of goal-oriented community organization perceived such collective actions as effectively achieving their stated goals. Community members in Baruta pulled resources together to solve common problems such as lengthy interruptions in water services and waste management (3.03, 20 May 2016; 3.04, 25 May 2016; 3.10, 30 May 2016). In addition, inhabitants of this barrio have organized themselves for the improvement of their housing. For example, one interview subject said that she moved within the barrio in recent years where family members and neighbors erected relatively new informal housing (Interview

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

Table 4.6 Indicators of institutional context and community organization in Baruta Baruta Trust in Community Links

Trust in NonCommunity Links

Informal Community Org.

Effective Community Org.

Member of Concejo Comunal

Efectiveness of Concejo Comunal

3.01

1

0

1

1

N/A

N/A

3.02

0

1

0

0

0

N/A

3.03

1

0

0

0

0

0

3.04

0

0

1

1

0

0

3.05

1

0

0

0

0

1

3.06

1

1

1

1

1

1

3.07

0

1

0

0

0

0

3.08

0

1

1

1

0

0

3.09

1

0

1

1

1

1

3.10

1

1

1

1

0

1

3.11

1

1

0

0

0

0

3.12

0

0

1

1

0

0

Source Table created by the author with original data

3.06, 25 May 2016). Another example of goal-oriented community organization was to safeguard a part of the neighborhood against violence. One interview partner explained that she and her neighbors organized themselves to fence off the entryways into the ally of Baruta where they live (Interview 3.12, 30 May 2017). This example shows pulling of resources, achieved through repeated interactions within their social network, and allowed to achieve the common goal of increasing security measures against violent agents. Moreover, this subject explained that through their informal community organization they were able to successfully achieve other common goals such as doing maintenance to public lighting and repairing water leaks (Ibid.). The perceptions mentioned above of collective action allowed for collective efficacy because it showed low costs of accessing extra-local resources. Evidence of low costs to achieve collective efficacy was perhaps due to a favorable institutional context where established norms on reciprocal relations helped create a productive structural composition of social capital that produced low transaction costs for such instrumental actions in the barrio. However, Baruta saw the presence of perverse formal organizations, as in the other two studied barrios, but their unfavorable effect on community organization appeared to be lower. In Baruta only two interview partners out of 12 said that they participated in a consejo communal or community council. Regarding the perceived effectiveness of these formal or state-led community organizations two-fifths of the interviewed partners, including those who participated in community councils, perceived them as effective in achieving their stated goals (see Table 4.6). However, community councils in Baruta did show vertical and closed organizational structures, as in the

4.3 Collective Action Within the Institutional Context

119

other two studied barrios. For example, an interview partner, on the question of formal organization, elaborated that, Allí lo que hay son concejos comunales y tú sabes eso no funciona, funciona para un grupo muy pequeñito y la mayoría de la gente que vive en el barrio no se beneficia de nada de esos concejos comunales. Ellos se reparten [recursos] entre cinco y siete familias y los demás quedan desamparados…eso pasa igual con los bombillos, igual con todo los que da el gobierno, igual con los Mercales [tiendas de comida estadales], compran ellos primeros y los demás quedan frito [por fuera] si no eres pana de ellos (3.07, 26 May 2016).7

Other interview partners echoed the same sentiment toward community councils (3.03, 20 May 2016; 3.08, 21 May 2016; 3.12, 30 May 2016). Evidence from an interview partner who benefited from her local community councils as she participated and had built connections in it shows the clientelistic functioning of such formal organization (Interview 3.06, 25 May 2016). Therefore, the vertical organization of social networks made this form of organization perverse (Fukuyama 2001, 18; Putnam et al. 1993, 174–75). Interestingly though, it appeared that their presence did not help create an unfavorable institutional context, as perceived effectiveness of collective action corresponded with its attempts. Like in all the studied barrios, initiations of collective action to address common public problems had been high, but this barrio showed a correspondence between attempts at goal-oriented community organization and the effectiveness in achieving their instrumental goals. Hence, Baruta showed an institutional context favorable for collective efficacy, even if perverse state-led community organizations were present. Based on the evidence regarding trust of the community and noncommunity members in this barrio, interviewed subjects appeared to show realistic norms on the extent that they–and the neighborhood in general—could risk investing time and resources in collective action with the expectation of future returns. Similar research performed in a small barrio in central Caracas found that collective efficacy in a specific community organization to prevent violence in their neighborhood was “utilitarian” (Zubillaga et al. 2015, 244–45). By this, the authors of the referred study meant that there was no change in the underlying institutional beliefs and values, but a cost-benefit rationale by members of the community to willingly repeatedly intervene in the public sphere for the goal of imparting informal social control. Perhaps the findings of structuralized collective action in Baruta may follow a similar dynamic despite the presence of perverse organizations such as community councils. Nonetheless, one must warn against strong causal inferences from these findings since it provides only some endogenous evidence of how the institutional context affected community organization. To reach a more theoretically sound conclusion one should explore further this sub-factor of social capital. 7 In English: “What there is are community councils and you that they don’t work, it works for a tiny

group and he majority of people living in the barrio don’t get any benefits from community councils. They distribute [resources] between five and seven families and the rest remain helpless…that same thing happens with the light bulbs, and the same goes for everything distributed by the government, same with Mercales [government-owned grocery stores], they get to buy first, and the rest get fried [or left out] if you are not their friend”.

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4 Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings …

4.3.4 Findings on Collective Action Within the Institutional Context The discussions in the three previous subsections indicated that the institutional context placed low transaction costs for effective goal-oriented collective action in Baruta, as perceived by the interviewed subjects. In the barrios of Catia and Petare, however, the institutional context placed high transaction costs on goal-oriented collective action, even though the evidence suggests higher instrumental community organization than in Baruta, but its perceived effectiveness was relatively lower; goal-oriented collective action did not correspond with its perceived effectiveness. The institutional context appeared to have placed high transaction costs for the structuration of collective action in Catia and Petare. Interestingly, trust levels in Baruta were lower than in Catia and Petare, even though trust of noncommunity members in Petare was low. More realistic expectations of collective efficacy in the negative case of Baruta could explain this indicator. Additionally, high levels of trust in Catia should point toward the sharing of net positive externalities, the significant presence of state-led community councils points in the opposite direction since their vertical organizational structure impedes the formation of reciprocal networks that make collective action sustainable, as they foster clientelistic rent-seeking (Fukuyama 2001, 9, 16; Putnam et al. 1993, 88, 174–75; Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004, 17–18). Their presence appeared to have created an unfavorable institutional context for effective community organization. However, one cannot draw conclusive findings from the above evidence, as one should consider exogenous institutional contextual factors to help determine the presence or absence of collective efficacy in the studied barrios. More importantly, this section provided evidence of the institutional context’s effect on endogenous community organization, but it was not definitive. One requires further exploration of exogenous effects of the institutional context on community organization, and thus collective efficacy, to reach a better conclusion on the findings of this sub-factor of social capital.

4.4 Conclusions on Collective Efficacy in Catia, Petare, and Baruta After testing social disorganization and collective action within the institutional context in the barrios of Catia, Petare, and Baruta, the findings revealed significant variances between the two sub-factors of collective efficacy. The sub-factor of social disorganization was found to be qualitatively low in the barrios of Catia and Baruta, but high in Petare. On the second sub-factor, collective action within the institutional context was found effective only in Baruta, and ineffective in Catia and Petare. These findings require some discussion before continuing with the empirical analysis of social capital’s moderation of urban violence in Venezuela.

4.4 Conclusions on Collective Efficacy in Catia, Petare, and Baruta

121

The main conclusion provided by this chapter is that social disorganization was not a consistent sub-factor of social capital’s moderating effect between the rent-cummarginality macrostructure and urban violence. Even if high social disorganization was present in Petare, it was absent in Catia, and both barrios are positive cases of urban violence. In Baruta, the negative case of urban violence, social disorganization was higher than in Catia because of significant population turnover. However, relatively high socioeconomic status and an apparent absence of qualitatively significant ethnic heterogeneity allow for the classification of social disorganization in this barrio as absent. Because there was no correspondence between high social disorganization and the presence of high urban violence one can interpret that social disorganization did not exert qualitatively significant influence, following this study’s theoretical model. Regarding the second sub-factor of collective action within the institutional context, the findings were less conclusive. It was clear that only Baruta saw a structuration of goal-oriented collective action, as such attempts corresponded with their perceived efficacy according to the interviewed partners. What the above analysis pointed to the constitutional context as having created high transaction costs for the structuration of collective action, and thus of collective efficacy. However, the analysis of the negative case of Baruta could not trace a lower presence of perverse community organizations. Hence, it is essential to analyze other factors leading to transaction costs on collective efficacy such as the critical effect that state security policies have on social networks in barrios. The following chapter performs a longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of urban security policies toward the barrios of Caracas, which helps further tracing the causal process leading, or not, to collective efficacy. The analysis of urban security policies’ effects on collective efficacy helps to explain further the ability of barrio inhabitants to organize and impart informal social control, which moderates violence rates.

4.5 Interviews8 1.01 (16 April 2016) male, ~55, priest. 1.02 (18 April 2016) male, ~ 50, priest. 1.03 (19 April 2016) female, ~65, NGO worker. 1.04 (19 April 2016) male, 56, freelance teacher. 1.05 (19 April 2016) female, ~35, receptionist. 1.06 (21 April 2016) male, ~40, construction worker. 1.07 (26 April 2016) male, ~45, messenger. 1.08 (26 April 2016) male, 49, office assistant. 8 Note First number code identifies the barrio where the interview partner resides. 1 Stands for Catia/23 de Enero (Catia), 2 for Petare, and 3 for Santa Cruz Del Este /Minas de Baruta (Baruta). After the interview date in brackets, the information provided refers to the sex, age, and occupation of the interview partner. For example, 1.01 came from Catia, (interview conducted 16 April 2016) was a male, of about 55 years of age, and works as a priest at the time of the interview.

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1.09 (30 April 2016) female, ~30, janitor. 1.10 (3 May 2016) female, 42, janitor. 1.11 (3 May 2016) female, 24, secretary. 1.12 (3 May 2016) female, 23, administrative worker. 1.13 (4 May 2016) female, 43, administrative worker. 1.14 (4 May 2016) female, 27, administrative worker. 1.15 (5 May 2016) male, 39, technician. 1.16 (5 May 2016) male, 49, secretary. 1.17 (10 May 2016) male, 45, administrative worker. 2.01 (21 April 2016) male, 30, construction worker. 2.02 (21 April 2016) male, 25, construction worker. 2.03 (22 April 2016) male, ~35, construction worker. 2.04 (23 April 2016) male, ~30, construction worker. 2.05 (23 April 2016) female, 40, secretary. 2.06 (24 April 2016) male, 57, construction worker. 2.07 (29 April 2016) female, 36, janitor. 2.08 (29 April 2016) female, 39, janitor. 2.09 (30 April 2016) female, 31, janitor. 2.10 (5 May 2016) female, 40, janitor. 2.11 (6 May 2016) female, 32, secretary. 2.12 (10 May 2016) male, 63, administrative worker. 2.13 (12 May 2016) female, 27, secretary. 2.14 (12 May 2016) female, 38, administrative worker. 2.15 (12 May 2016) male, 39, factory worker. 2.16 (13 May 2016) male, 37, factory worker. 2.17 (13 May 2016) male, 25, technician. 2.18 (16 May 2016) female, 26, administrative worker. 2.19 (16 May 2016) male, 38, factory worker. 2.20 (16 May 2016) male, 47, factory worker. 2.21 (25 May 2016) female, 41, janitor. 3.01 (11 May 2016) male, 52, street vendor. 3.02 (11 May 2016) male, 44, NGO worker. 3.03 (20 May 2016) male, ~45, cab driver. 3.04 (25 May 2016) male, 51, watchman. 3.05 (25 May 2016) female, 40, janitor. 3.06 (25 May 2016) female, 45, janitor. 3.07 (26 May 2016) male, 50, technician. 3.08 (21 May 2016) female, 45, realtor. 3.09 (30 May 2016) female, 48, janitor. 3.10 (30 May 2016) male, 39, school teacher. 3.11 (30 May 2016) female, 39, school teacher. 3.12 (30 May 2016) female, 34, school teacher. Bruni-Celli J (19 May 2016) Interviewed by the author, IESA, Caracas. Professor of Public Policy. School principal (25 May 2016). Interviewed by the author, Baruta, Caracas.

References

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Sampson RJ, Raudenbush SW, Earls F (1997) Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multi-level study of collective efficacy. Science 277:918–924 Scott J (2000) Social network analysis: a handbook, 2nd edn. Sage, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi Seers D (1964) The mechanisms of an open petroleum economy. Soc Econ Stud 13(2):233–242 Shaw CR, McKay HD (1942) Juvenile delinquency in urban areas. University of Chicago Press, Chicago St. Jean PK (2007) Pockets of crime: broken windows, collective efficacy, and the criminal point of view. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago Uphoff N (1999) Understanding social capital: learning from the analysis and experience of participation. In: Dasgupta P, Seragelding I (eds) Social capital: a multifaceted perspective. The World Bank, Washington, D.C., pp 215–252 van Zomeren M, Spears R, Fischer AH, Leach CW (2004) Put your money where your mouth is! Explaining collective action tendencies through group-based anger and group efficacy. J Pers Soc Psychol 87(5):649–664 Warren ME (2004) Social capital and corruption. Democr Soc 1(1):1, 16–19 Wellman B (1983) Network analysis: some basic principles. Sociol Theor 1:155–200 Zinecker H (2014) Gewalt im Frieden: Formen und Ursachen der Gewaltkriminalität in Zentralamerika. Nomos, Baden-Baden Zubillaga V, Llorens M, Souto J (2015) Una Tregua Posible: La Violencia y el Pacto de Cese al Fuego entre Mujeres y Jóvenes Armados. In: Briceño-Leon R (ed) Ciudades de Vida y Muerte: La Ciudad y el Pacto Social para la Contención de la Violencia. Alfa, Caracas, pp 225–253

Chapter 5

Urban Security Policies and Their Effects on Collective Efficacy

Abstract This chapter aims to overcome the analytical limitations of Chap. 4. Specifically, it aims to trace the institutional factors external to the barrios, which contribute to impeding sustainable collective action in the barrios of Catia (henceforth, Catia), Petare, and Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta (henceforth, Baruta). The structuration of collective action is what allows for collective efficacy at the urban neighborhood level. It helps to explain social capital’s moderating effect between the politico-economic macrostructure and urban violence. To this end, it provides a longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of urban security policies and its effects on the factor of collective efficacy. Urban security policies led to a practice of “conditional impunity” since at least the late 2000s, as the criminal justice system severely enforced the law on some crimes, like drug crimes, but not on others like violence between gangs in the barrios. After analyzing the impact of urban security policies on the studied barrios, the low violence barrio of Baruta shows that inhabitants view tough law enforcement favorably, and it positively impacted collective efficacy when there is the possibility of social relations between barrio inhabitants and security forces. However, one did not find the conditions allowing for relatively positive state-barrio relations in the high violence barrios of Catia and Petare. Hence, urban security policies helped create perverse social capital by reducing collective efficacy. Keywords Security policies · Conditional impunity · Urban violence · Institutional-history · Barrios

5.1 Introduction This chapter focuses on urban security policies, an exogenous element of the institutional context and its impact in producing transaction costs for collective efficacy—and thus social capital (Kubrin and Weitzer 2003, 383–384; Zinecker 2014, 83). To the end of determining this, the present chapter complements the discussion started in chapter four on collective efficacy by analyzing the important exogenous effects that are urban security policies, a part of the institutional context, on the structuration of collective action. Following from this book’s theoretical framework on © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. S. Leon, Violence in the Barrios of Caracas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5_5

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social capital the institutional context shapes norms contributing to the structuration of collective action or “putting your money where your mouth is” (van Zomeren et al. 2004, 651). Hence, the institutional context is an essential factor to allow, or not, collective efficacy to be qualitatively high at the neighborhood level. The qualitatively high presence of collective efficacy allows urban neighborhoods to achieve common goals like acting or preventing violence by creating organizations that impart informal social control (Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004). Urban security policies impact collective efficacy by affecting the norms rationalizing the willingness of social network members to act toward common goals collectively. They produce a significant influence on whether neighborhood inhabitants can credibly expect reciprocity in goal-oriented community organization. The goal-oriented organization in barrios includes preventing or acting against violent individuals and groups. The institutional context shapes beliefs and values in social network interactions that provide important cognitive determinants of whether collective actions lead to collective efficacy in goal-oriented community organization (Di Tella and MacCulloch 2009; Di Tella et al. 2014, 408–409; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968; Uphoff 1999, 218–219; Piketty 1995). Alternatively, they can create vertical networks of dependencies that bridge insider networks promoting rent-seeking, thus helping to create a perverse structural composition of social capital (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968, Putnam et al. 1993, 88, 174–175; Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004, 17–18). The political economy of security policies in Venezuela has seen a significant degree of institutional continuity from the 1960s until 2011 following a mano dura or zero tolerance paradigm. The continuity of urban security policies followed a historical-institutional path where the military was dominant in establishing urban security policies and practices (Velasco 2015, 134–135, 208; Lopez Maya 2003, 135; Ungar 2003)—effectively enforcing the law where the opportunities outweigh the costs, such as enforcing Draconian drug laws, following the so-called “War on Drugs” (Bagley and Rosen 2015, 412–416; Rodrigues and Labate 2016, 11–13. The state withdrew from engaging perverse groups such as urban gangs1 if it did not provide higher politico-economic opportunities than costs. The urban security policies enacted by the Venezuelan state created a “cockroach effect”, which refers to the spreading of gangs in the marginalized barrios (Bagley 2015, 10–13; Wolf 2012, 72). The persistence of Venezuela’s urban security policies, viewed from a political economy perspective, rested on rent-seeking organizational arrangements. One example discussed below was the Guardia Nacional or National Guard’s rent extraction mechanism from a swelling penal system. By privatizing or outsourcing security inside many prisons from the National Guard to an inmate-operated governance 1 Following social network theory gangs are not groups, but a type of social network (Wellman 1988,

37–38). However, one can categorize a certain network as a gang when it is durable overtime even if turnover is high, street oriented, composed primarily of young people, and sharing a collective identity via some form of illegal activity (Klein 2014, 41–42). Young men tend to be the members of violent gangs because the life expectancy of gang members is rather short. Gang members die violently on average in their mid-20s (Levitt and Venkatesh 2000, 783–786; Zinecker 2014, 236).

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structure allowed for the collection of “taxes”—i.e., rents—from a growing prison population (Antillano et al. 2016a, 207–209). Such urban security practices negatively impacted collective efficacy, and thus productive social capital, in the barrios of Caracas and of Venezuela more broadly, since the source of prisoners feeding such political economy came from these marginalized urban areas. In other words, these security policies indirectly criminalized poverty (Wacquant 2001, 401–404). More specifically, such institutional context increased transaction costs on the structuration of collective action and promoted the sharing of negative externalities. This discussion sheds light on the variation of collective efficacy’s presence in the three studied barrios of Caracas. The following analysis found that the Venezuelan state practiced a form of “conditional impunity”. Some scholars put forward impunity or the withdrawal of the state as an explanation of high actual urban violence (Briceño-Leon 2005, 1641–1642; Briceño-Leon 2015a, 124; Ehrlich 1996, 43; McIlwaine 2012, 20). The theoretical shortcoming of such perspective is that it does explain cases with low actual violence and weak state structures not being able to assert its presence effectively (Zinecker 2014, 116–117). State intervention has historically been critical in controlling the sharing of negative externalities by private actors, as the state can pull more resources together to achieve such goal-oriented collective action (Fukuyama 2014, 54–55). However, the way state institutions have intervened can impact whether they bring negative externalities under control or allow them to propagate further (Kubrin and Weitzer 2003, 383–384; Zinecker 2014, 83). The analysis presented below borrows Benjamin Lessing’s (2018) framework for analyzing state-cartel violence in Latin America. He argues that security policies can condition crackdowns by security forces to avoid violence between the state and criminal organizations (Lessing 2018, 7–9, 84–87). In Venezuela, urban security policies have sought to avoid crackdowns on violent gangs if they conducted their violent businesses in the barrios and if they avoided confrontations with the state. In doing so, the state focused crackdowns by security policies mainly around the enforcement of drug prohibition laws, as such law enforcement increased rent-seeking opportunities to security organizations. This chapter found that urban security policies and practices produced by negative externalities because of poor state-barrio relations, due to such policies, created high transaction costs for the structuration of collective action. There was a correspondence between qualitatively poor state-barrio relations, through urban security policies’ point of view, and the positive cases of urban violence. These barrios were Catia and Petare, as both barrios showed an urban violence rate for the year of 2011 of 105 and 93 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 84, 103). Baruta was a negative case of urban violence, displaying an urban violence rate of 35 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011 (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 103), and it exhibited qualitatively positive state-barrio relations. Moreover, this negative case of urban violence permits tracing the adverse exogenous effect of the institutional context on collective action, and thus collective efficacy, because the interviewed subjects in this barrio showed greater trust of state security agents due to the more significant presence of police stations.

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To analyze the effect of urban security policies on collective efficacy the chapter makes use of two research methods. It examines the evolution of urban security policies in Caracas, and Venezuela, through a structural politico-economic analysis following the new institutional economics school’s methodology (Coase 1998, 72–73; North et al. 2009, 2013). Additionally, this chapter analyzes cross-sectional data of the 50 interviewed partners from the barrios of Catia, Petare, and Baruta through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) (Ragin 1987, 82–94). To operationalize data on urban security policies and their exogenous effects on collective efficacy, this chapter used elements of social network analysis (SNA) to explore the diversity of social links, studied from the point of view of the interview partners (Mitchell 1969, 15, 17–18; Borgatti and Halgin 2011, 1171; Goyal 2007, 64). The chapter continues with two main sections analyzing the effects of urban security policies on collective efficacy in Sect. 5.2 with the examination of Venezuela’s political economy of urban security policies from the 1960s until 2011. This politicoeconomic institutional analysis discusses why public security in cities remained highly militarized (Sect. 5.2.1), and the reasoning behind centering urban security policy on the so-called “War on Drugs” after the 1980s (Sect. 5.2.2). After that, Sect. 5.3 compares and discusses how urban security policies affected state-barrio relations, and thus its adverse effect on collective efficacy. The cross-sectional comparison of state relation with the three studies barrios helps to trace the structural process leading to actual urban violence, even if the susceptibility to urban violence—created by the rent-cum-marginality macrostructure—had decreased in the years leading to 2011. The comparative analysis of state-barrio relations helps explain the creation of a perverse structural composition of social capital among the studied positive cases of urban violence that were Catia and Petare. Finally, Sect. 5.4 offers a short concluding discussion.

5.2 The Political Economy of Urban Security Policies in Venezuela from the 1960s Until 2011 From the period of the 1960s until the end of the 1980s the focus of Venezuelan urban security policy was the control of political violence by Cuban-inspired guerrilla movements. The epicenter of this struggle was the veintitrés de Enero. One finds this barrio next to Catia, and their social networks interact heavily. Until 1974 violence rates in Caracas remained under ten homicides per 100,000; spiking above this threshold between 1958 and 1963 since this was the main period of political violence (see Fig. 1.1). It occurred after the ousting of General Perez Jimenez’ rightwing dictatorship in 1958, and the exclusion of the Venezuelan Communist Party from the new elected elite coalition known as the pact of Punto Fijo. This pact—named after the villa in Caracas where political opposition leader, military brass, and Catholic Church leaders met to discuss a transition deal—framed the political transition to an elected government that was exclusionary of non-pact members (Karl

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1997, 110–111). As a result, the exclusion of significant political actors like the Communist Party prompted attempts at armed insurrection by urban guerrillas in western Caracas, which is the area of the city where one finds barrios such as the veintitrés de Enero and the presidential palace. To deal with this security threat the newly elected government made use of both police and the military to quell this security threat that largely dissolved after 1963 (Velasco 2015, 142). However, employing the military to deal with urban security threats remained a consistent security policy, even if security threats were low, as evidenced by the low violence rates of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s (Velasco 2015, 135; Fig. 1.1).

5.2.1 Unsuccessful Attempts to Demilitarize Urban Security Since 1969 The Policía Metropolitana (PM), created by the first government of Rafael Caldera (1969–1974) in 1969 had the objective of providing demilitarized law enforcement and preventive security to the urban space of the Caracas Metropolitan Area, and other large cities of Venezuela. The PM was to replace the role of Guardia Nacional or National Guard—Venezuela’s militarized national police with broad judicial jurisdiction—as the main security force. Moreover, demilitarization of security forces aimed at allowing the capital city and the country to move on from the political violence era of the early 1960s and the country’s dictatorial past. Policymakers created an academy for the PM to train agents in urban civilian police practices. Unfortunately, like many well-intentioned policies, the PM’s implementation was mostly unsuccessful as an attempt to demilitarize urban security policy. Although security agents training in civilian policing constituted the PM’s rank and file, its leadership from the start was almost exclusively composed of officers from the National Guard (Velasco 2015, 134–135, 208; Lopez Maya 2003, 135; Ungar 2003, 208). Hence, the PM maintained many repressive military practices that its leaders brought from the National Guard. These military practices have deep historical-institutional roots, as the military was the only security institution until the mid-twentieth century (Ungar 2003, 207–210). In 2011 the Chavez government officially disbanded the PM and replaced it with the Policía Nacional Bolivariana (PNB) or Bolivarian National Police. The PM started to be faced out after 2002 due to its support of the 2002 coup d’état against Hugo Chavez. This renewed attempt at urban security policy reform did not create a caesura in security policy, as the militarized police practices of the National Guard remained the norm (Carrillo et al. 2015, 288–289, 296). Like security policy reforms in the second half of the twentieth century, civilian-centered security practices did not accompany reforms of urban security forces. Moreover, during the PM’s transitioning period from 2002 until 2011 the National Guard strengthened its position as the main security force at the urban and national level (Antillano et al. 2016b, 112–113; Briceño-Leon 2015b, 68–69). The strengthening of the National Guard’s position

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was relative to the state and local police forces. In Caracas, a city with a fractured or “balkanized” political administration resulting from the decentralization efforts of the early 1990s, seven different civilian and military security forces—including the national guard—operated in different jurisdictions of the city (Ungar 2003, 208). The Chavez administration renamed the National Guard to the Guardia Nacional Bolivariana during the period mentioned above as it rebranded the country’s institutions around Chavez’ so-called “Bolivarian revolution”. Therefore, even though different security forces were operating in Caracas, many of them civilian-led, the primacy of the National Guard as the primary security force resulted from in the continuity of military practices in urban security policies, which show significant historical-institutional path dependence (North 1991, 108–111). Since the transition to elected government rested on an alliance of political parties—spearheaded by the social democratic Acción Democrática party—and the military, this latter group increased its role in the formulation and execution of security policies, which increased the scope of action of the National Guard. Moreover, the military has historically been the only state institution that follows a bureaucratized pyramidal structure, and that receives any training to meet the goals of the bureau. As the economist and former researcher at the Armed Forces University in Caracas Josefina Bruni-Celli explained to me in an interview, this has increased the conviction among its leadership that they are the only institution capable of efficiently running security policy, among other areas of public policy (19 May 2016). Such an argument has resonated among civilian policymakers that have not protested the militarization of security policies before or during the Chavez government. The lack of a bureaucratic or professional civil service permits for the path dependence of inefficient institutions, as they cannot adjust policies more rationally, but merely reproduce practices that may or may not achieve the desired policy goals (Fukuyama 2014, 38). This historical development corresponds with not only the continuity but with the deepening of the “war on Drugs” during the Chavez government after 1998.

5.2.2 Centering Urban Security Policies Around the “War on Drugs” Venezuela has followed the global “War on Drugs” security policy started by the United States during the administration of Richard Nixon. This so-called war placed the eradication of drugs such as marihuana, cocaine, and heroine as a priority of security policy by making the retail chain—production, distribution, and consumption—of such substances illegal, and strictly enforcing drug laws. In the United States and in every country that implemented this security policy experienced increased violence as a result (Bagley and Rosen 2015, 412–416; Rodrigues and Labate 2016, 11–13). The reason was that having made the retail chain of drugs illegal—i.e., prohibition—increased the financial opportunities of meeting demand for them (Becker et al. 2006). Large organizations, such as drug cartels rose financed by the illegal drug

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trade, which produced revenues that had exceeded opportunities—read, economic rent—to operate elaborate distribution networks to bypass law enforcement agencies of different countries (Poret 2003, 465–468; Poret and Tejeredo 2006, 112). These organizations engaged in violence with each other to control a greater share of drug trafficking revenues. Hence, the strict prohibition policies of the “War on Drugs” increased drug-related violence that disproportionally affected urban areas. One also finds the adverse effects of drug-focused security policies in the Venezuelan case where security forces joined the transnational security policies of the United States, even if the official discourse was anti-hegemonic and anti-American in content. During the decade of the 2000s, administered in its entirety by the Chavez government, security policy regarding the role and enforcement of drugs were highly paradoxical, as it had mixed an anti-American discourse with mano dura enforcement of drug prohibition. The official security discourse was a mixture of situational and dispositional explanations for the occurrence of urban violence. The Chavez government blamed a structure of poverty and inequality left by the previous governments that enacted neoliberal economic policies, but at the same time blaming individualistic motivations of greed and want by both drug traffickers and consumers (Antillano 2012, 706–715; Antillano et al. 2016b, 114–116). The official discourse by the Chavez government has been squarely anti-neoliberal. Following the antiAmerican rhetoric of the Chavez government, it suspended in 2004 cooperation with the American DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and expelled its operatives stationed in Venezuela (Antillano et al. 2016b, 107–108). However, political behavior and policy calculations have followed free market or neoliberal precepts of cost and benefits due to the country’s economic dependence on oil rent windfalls (Fernandes 2010, 2–3; Velasco 2015, 235). Therefore, security policies and practices maintained the “War on Drugs” as a law enforcement priority, and even deepened it despite the official discourse. The Chavez government amended the country’s drug law of 1984 in 2005 and 2010 to increase the severity of prison sentences for drug traffickers. The 2005 amendment established a prison sentence for convictions on drug trafficking counts ranged from 3 to 20 years in prison depending on the amount and type of drug in question. The 2010 amendment increased such penalties to a range of 8–30 years of imprisonment (Antillano et al. 2016b, 109–110). It is noteworthy that during this period, 2005–2010, Chavez’ ruling party had complete control of the national legislature, as opposition parties boycotted the 2005 legislative election. These practices do not conform to the official discourse that distanced Venezuelan policies from that of the United States and the neoliberal paradigm. Notwithstanding the paradox in discourse and practice, the “War on Drugs” deepened in Venezuela. This resulted in significant part because the institutions conducting security policies have benefitted from the continuity of mano dura or zero tolerance policies toward drug-related offenses. Giving priority to drug-focused security policy provided state institutions with increased sources of rent accumulation. Among these sources, one finds rent extraction from the penal system. This form of resource extraction is a less-discussed and in some ways more complex mechanism of rent

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procurement by security institutions. Drug-focused security policies premised such rent extraction, which adversely impacts collective efficacy in the barrios of Caracas. The penal or prison system is a source of resource extraction by security institutions as the swelling of prisons with detainees and informal self-rule by prisoners created vertical governance structures allowing for rent production and accumulation. Although the Venezuelan prison had never been a space of criminal rehabilitation (Moreno et al. 2009, 194), the state had lost control of the prison environment in the Weberian sense; it had lost the monopoly of force in the control of the prison population during the 2000s. For example, after a fire that killed 22 inmates in La Planta, one of Caracas’s prisons—started by National Guard after firing tear gas grenades to quell a riot of 50 inmates housed in a four by four meter cell—prison authorities searched the inmate population and found six firearms (Antillano et al. 2016a, 196). In 2012 another clash between inmates of La Planta prison and the National Guard—they are the state institution tasked with the armed security of prisons in Venezuela—occurred. In this other occurrence violence was not one-way, from the state to the prison population as has been the norm for decades, but two-way and with both sides heavily armed with military-grade weapons. An intense firefight lasted for more than three weeks and ended with all 2,600 inmates—the prison was originally built to house 350 inmates—surrendering and being transferred to another more massive Caracas-based prison, Yare penitentiary. After that the government closed La Planta prison permanently and reported to have confiscated 87 firearms—many of them assault rifles and machine guns—plus over 60,000 bullets and 19 hand grenades (Antillano et al. 2016a, 196). The amount of firepower in inmates’ hands in this prison was commonly found in other prisons and evidenced a shift in the political economy of the prison as the state lost the monopoly of force within the confines of the prison because it is economically rational to do so. The state’s loss of Weberian control within its prisons during the 2000s is mostly due to increased rent predation by parallel governance structures formed inside prisons, which increases revenues for National Guardsmen stationed in the prisons and at the same time reduces their risk-exposure inside the prison grounds. The state, through the National Guard, has had control over the perimeter of all Venezuelan prisons, but inside many Venezuelan prisons, the inmates themselves were in control of such spaces and not the state (Antillano et al. 2016a, 204–207). They do so, not as the end itself, but as the means to an end: Profiting from rent extraction. The carro or the informal governance structure of the Venezuelan prison allows the extraction of rents in mainly two ways. The first one is the smuggling of forbidden goods such as alcohol, drugs, women, and firearms. Like the drug market, the smuggling of forbidden goods has a higher “market value” within the prison because of greater costs and risks such as bribing an entire network of National Guardsmen to look the other way. According to sociologist and NGO director Luis Cedeño (14 April 2016) firearms and ammunition, inside a Venezuelan prison these cost about ten times the price of the legal retail set by CAVIM, the Venezuelan state-manufacturer of military equipment such as bullets. The second source of rent is the Causa. This is a fee that inmates must pay to be able to live in minimally humane conditions inside the prison. The informal governance structure of the prison forces inmates

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450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 2001

2002 2003 Drug Charges

2004 2005 2006 IncarceraƟon

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

Fig. 5.1 Annual drug charges and prison incarceration rates per 100,000 inhabitants in Venezuela from 2001 to 2011

that cannot afford to pay this fee to live in marginalized and inhumane conditions and could endure violence for their inability to afford them (Antillano et al. 2016a, 207–208). Furthermore, a larger inmate population increases the demand for smuggled goods. In the case mentioned above of La Planta, rent extraction according to the Venezuelan Justice Ministry was of about 3.7 million U.S. dollars a year (El Universal 2012; InSight Crime 2012). As one can see in Fig. 5.1, the Venezuelan prison population exploded. This political economy likely contributed to such high imprisonment rates. In 2001, the incarceration rate was 67.6 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants, and this figure jumped to 170 in 2011. In absolute terms, the prison population increased from under 17,000 inmates in 2001 to more than 50,000 in 2011 (Antillano et al. 2016b, 200–201). Overcrowding in prisons reduces the elasticity of demand for prohibited goods smuggling and causa payment, as the threat of violence or being incarcerated in unbearable inhumane conditions maintained their demand high even if their price increased. This occurred during a decade when socioeconomic indicators at the macro-level improved significantly. To understand this paradox the intensification of the “War on Drugs” helps explain the swelling of the prison population and the politico-economic logic of maintaining a security policy from the so-called neoliberal era even if the official discourse changed with the Chavez government. Institutionally, the “War on Drugs” has been very beneficial for the military-led security apparatus. It provided a raison d’être for the militarized police institutions such as the National Guard by creating a “public enemy” (Antillano et al. 2016b, 117–118). This is not to say that drugs play an actual role in the rise of urban violence rates. As explained in an interview by sociologist and NGO director Luis Cedeño (14 April 2016), micro-trafficking of drugs has been present in the Venezuelan barrios, but it has only been a minor factor in the presence of high violence rates.

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Nonetheless, the security policies mentioned above have hurt barrios disproportionally, as impoverished individuals from these urban areas are more likely to be persecuted by security institutions. Some of the persecuted individuals are violent criminals that the justice system is legitimately trying to exclude from society. However, security institutions imprison other nonviolent individuals from barrios such as drug consumers or micro-drug sellers because they are easier to catch in the act of committing a crime. These practices are standard in the barrios of Caracas and Venezuela. Drug charges by the Venezuelan prosecutor’s office increased from 3,374 in 2001 to 112,010 in 2011, as one can see in Fig. 5.1, which was a period when Venezuela’s population growth rate decreased (see Fig. 1.4). Security institutions, moreover, chose not to enforce the law on violent gangs by arguing that most violence occurs between them (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 86). Although such reasoning seems to be objectively true, and putting ethical arguments aside, this choice by security institutions shows that they withdrew from enforcing the law were the costs of doing so were higher than the opportunities. In other words, tackling violent gangs was costly for security forces, and it did not provide substantial benefits. Additionally, state institutions are not electorally affected by high violence rates in urban spaces, as the population does not blame governmental ineffectiveness for this socially undesirable outcome (Corrales 2014, 397–398; Hanson and Smilde 2013; Kronick 2014, 2–3). The lack of electoral pressure to deal with public security problems in Venezuela’s cities further lowered the opportunities of risking human and economic resources in engaging gangs. Opportunities for state institutions in engaging violent gangs are low because the population tends not to punish incumbent politicians for high violence rates. They blame high violence rates on private factors such as the decline of the family and not state inefficiency (Hanson and Smilde 2013; Kronick 2014, 2–3). The electoral success of the Chavez government relied on a strategy of political polarization, to create a sizeable political enclave, and a series of policies to sway ambivalent voters that included clientelistic patronage, cronyism, and public sector employment patronage that discriminated beneficiaries based on the continued political support of the government.2 On the other hand, enforcing other types of policies, such as Draconian drug laws, permits security institutions to maintain their raison d’être of enforcing the law and swelling the prison system, which is a source of rent extraction,

2 Polarization strategies, through radicalization, allow a political party to create an electoral enclave

that will support them at the polls. However, such strategy has the pitfall that it not only creates strong opposition, but an ambivalent group of voters not clearly aligned with any political pole. For a political polarization strategy to create a majoritarian block of voters, the government must sway a large portion of the ambivalent group. To achieve this, the Chavez administration employed clientelistic programs of oil-rent redistribution (e.g., Misiones), cronyism and impunity with certain business elites and the military (which explains the governments tolerance of the penal system as a rent-producing system) and discriminating political opponents from public sector jobs (Corrales 2014, 397–398). The strategy of political polarization is economically inefficient, which it must be for clientelism to become politically efficient (Robinson and Verdier 2013, 261–263).

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while minimizing confrontations with violent agents. Such security policies likely resulted because they brought high opportunities and low costs in return. Urban security practices showed that state institutions were not necessarily unable but unwilling to engage violent perpetrators. Evidence of the Venezuelan state’s unwillingness to engage in confrontations in violent gangs was the fact that in 2013, 70% of security agents violently killed in Caracas was off-duty at the time of the incident and without uniform. Hence, only 30% of security agents violently killed were casualties of some form of confrontations with violent agents while on-duty (Avila 2016, 56). Hence, practices by security forces applied a sort of conditional impunity. Law enforcement occurred primarily toward criminal agents that would provide opportunities and reduce costs to security organizations.

5.2.3 Findings on the Political Economy of Urban Security Policies in Venezuela Continuity in urban security policies from the 1960s to 2011 where militarization and mano dura or zero tolerance law enforcement dominated had adverse effects on transaction costs on collective efficacy, which likely allowed perverse social capital clusters to spread. Perverse social capital clusters like street gangs spread mainly because of conditional impunity by security forces, which heavily enforced the law on crimes that provided high economic opportunities like drug crimes and not on the ones that provided high costs like engaging violent gangs. It is possible that such security policies and practices led to a “cockroach effect”, which refers to the fragmentation and dispersion of violent groups such as gangs (Bagley 2015, 10–13; Wolf 2012, 72). Enforcing the law disproportionally on individuals and groups, mainly from the barrios, engaged in micro-drug trafficking following the global “War on Drugs” paradigm gave security forces a raison d’être. Moreover, it swelled the penal system that served as a lucrative, even if illegal, rent extraction mechanism (Antillano et al. 2016b). Therefore, these urban security policies over-proportionally affected impoverished urban areas such as barrios, thus negatively impacting collective efficacy and creating perverse social capital. The next section explores this connection further by analyzing barrio relations with state institutions and its impact on collective efficacy.

5.3 Urban Security Policies and State-Barrio Relations Interpersonal links between barrio inhabitants and security institutions show an important dimension of collective efficacy, and thus social capital, as they indicate exogenous effects of the institutional context on the structuration of collective action at the urban neighborhood level (Zinecker 2014, 83; Kubrin and Weitzer 2003, 383–384). Links with security institutions fall within the category of state-barrio

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relations. The following analysis gives special attention to the comparative levels of security force’s presence and practices, which develop under the institutional security policies examined in the previous section. The main findings in this second section are that there is a positive correspondence between overall police presence and trust in state institutions because of the higher the presence of security forces, the lower the endogenous effect of urban violence. In other words, the presence of security forces makes individuals feel safer, which enabling cognitive heuristics that structure collective action (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968; Uphoff 1999, 218–219). This correspondence was mainly due to a historical-institutional context making mano dura policies socially desirable among barrio inhabitants. The following subsections compares the impact of urban security policies on the structuration of collective action—meaning collective efficacy—in the barrios of Catia, Petare, and Baruta; each in a separate subsection. Briefly, the main findings were that the institutional context provided by urban security policies increased transaction costs for collective efficacy in Catia and Petare, but not in Baruta.

5.3.1 Catia Urban security policies negatively affected the structuration of collective action, and thus collective efficacy, in Catia because they propagated the sharing of net negative externalities. Police presence, examined through both perceptions of the regularity of police patrols and reports of nearby police stations by the interviewed subjects was somewhat high, but the presence of nearby police stations was low. Evidence on the presence of security agents led to the telling indicator of trust in state security agents, which was very low. According to the evidence gathered from the interviewed subjects, it is likely that such indicators were the product of high gang presence. Police, or security force’s, presence was somewhat high in Catia, which is not the same as to conclude that it was absent. As one can appreciate in Table 5.1, about onethird of interviewed partners said that they witnessed regular police patrols in the part of the barrio where they lived. This indicator showed the qualitatively high presence of security forces since one would not expect regular contact between police and most inhabitants in a densely populated urban area. Regular contact between a third of interviewed partners and security forces is significantly high. For example, according to an interview subject, in 2011 some sectors of Catia saw improved police presence after one of the more meaningful attempts by the government to reform police forces, leading to the creation of the Policía Nacional Bolivariana or Bolivarian National Police (1.02, 18 April 2016). In Catia there is no municipal police force since it is part of the capital district, and the judicial jurisdiction fell to the National Guard and the National Bolivarian Police. However, the presence of nearby police stations, from the interviewed subjects’ places of residence, was qualitatively low. Only two out of 17 interviewed subjects confirmed their presence. From these two indicators, one cannot infer that security forces were absent. Lack of nearby police stations

5.3 Urban Security Policies and State-Barrio Relations

137

Table 5.1 Indicators of state-barrio relations in Catia Catia

Police patrols

Police stations

Trust in state security agents

Special police operations

Violence from organized gangs

1.01

0

0

0

0

0

1.02

1

0

N/A

0

0

1.03

0

0

0

0

1

1.04

0

0

0

0

1

1.05

0

0

0

0

0

1.06

1

N/A

0

N/A

0

1.07

1

0

0

0

1.08

1

0

N/A

N/A

1

1.09

0

1

N/A

0

1

1.10

1

0

0

N/A

0

1.11

0

1

1

0

0

1.12

0

0

0

0

1

1.13

0

N/A

0

0

1

1.14

1

N/A

0

0

0

1.15

0

0

0

0

1

1.16

0

0

0

0

1

1.17

0

0

N/A

1

0

Source Table created by the author with original data

suggests high response times by security forces, which lowers their presence in the barrio but does not allow for one to interpret their absence. A more telling indicator, nonetheless, was low trust in state agents by the interviewed partners. Trust by the inhabitants of Catia toward state security agents was qualitatively low. As shown in Table 5.1, only one out of 17 interviewed subjects affirmed to have trust in state agents. Part of the mistrust toward security institutions is perceived corruption by police forces. As one interview partner said, “a nosotros si nos visita la policía [en la comunidad]…pero los malandros son ellos.” (1.14, 6 May 2016).3 Another interviewed subject explained that certain security forces, such as the National Guard, extort businesses such as transport trucks (1.16, 5 May 2016). A further interview partner described security forces as, “polijuguetes” or “toy cops” due to their inefficient tackling of violence and crime during the late 2000s and early 2010s (1.03, 19 April 2016). She, a woman of advanced age, remembered fondly the pre-Chavez administrations that engaged in more “Mano Dura” or Zero Tolerance security policies that included more police presence and stricter law enforcement. Fond memories of mano dura security policies show the interaction effect between 3 In

English: “The police does come by [to our community]…but they are the thugs.”

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urban violence and corruption produced by norms resulting from state-barrio relations (Di Tella et al. 2014, 418–421). Regarding special police operations, only one interviewed subject out of seventeen affirmed to have witnessed one—see Table 5.1. The term special police operations refer to massive roundups of actual and suspected criminals by the police and National Guard, which occurred primarily in barrios and in some cases these roundups become violent. These police operations were supposed to be “extraordinary.” However, they have become standard procedures by security forces since the second half of the twentieth century (Hernandez 1991, 157). Such types of operations have been rather common in Venezuela’s police history and are the result of a militarized security policy because officers of the National Guard have led the leadership of Venezuelan urban police forces, such as the Metropolitan Police (Lopez Maya 2003, 135; Ungar 2003, 207–210; Velasco 2015, 208). Such indication corresponds with the overall low presence of security forces in Catia. However, the evidence suggests the influence on this indicator by the high presence of gangs, measured through their perception by the interviewed subjects. Close to half of them assure that violence in Catia derived from gangs. In this barrio, subjects described violence from organized gangs, “bandas” or “colectivos armados”, (gangs or armed collectives) as more significant than from individual criminals or “hampa común” (the Venezuelan term used to describe petty or individual violent criminal). The narrative surrounding the presence of armed collectives was particularly important. Armed collectives are different from traditional street gangs since they have vertical networks to policymakers in state institutions (Blanco Rangel 2014, 65). Armed collectives used vertical informal networks to supply them with access to rent-seeking opportunities of financial resources and firearms. For example, armed collectives developed such networks from finding work as bodyguards with government officials (InSight Crime 2014). However, social networks coalescing state institutions and criminal organizations are neither unique to the Venezuelan urban environment nor a novel phenomenon (Naim 2012). Once an armed collective becomes established in a part of the barrio state security forces ceded jurisdictional control to avoid conflicts higher up the chain of command (InSight Crime 2014; International Crisis Group 2011, 17–18). For example, an interview partner explained that the police were unwilling to intervene in the part of the barrio where she lived because of the presence of collectivos armados or armed collectives (1.13, 6 May 2016). Nonetheless, armed collectives have limited spatial reach because in certain spaces established traditional street gangs have violently prevented their establishment. As one interview partner put it when asked about the presence of armed collectives in his community explained that “los delincuentes [“tradicionales”] los corrieron” (1.15, 5 May 2016).4 The Venezuelan interior ministry’s reasoning for not engaging in greater preventive law enforcement on gangs in barrios—both armed collectives and traditional gangs—was “ajuste de cuentas” or reckonings between violent gangs was the cause of violence, which privatizes security (Aguillon Vale 2010, 92, 97; El Espectador 4 In

English: “The [traditional] criminals forced them out.”

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2014). This description was factual; around 70% of homicides in Venezuela for the year 2011 were ajustes de cuenta, according to official sources (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 86). This reasoning was consistent with the political economy of urban security policy in Venezuela discussed in the previous section. The state security apparatus withdrew from enforcing the law proactively when the costs outweighed the opportunities. Enforcing the law against certain gangs like armed collectives, which have vertical networks with certain people in state institutions, involves significant costs. In addition, violent gangs assert themselves because of the possibility of violently predating on rents from drug micro-trafficking, known in Venezuela as fighting for “la plaza” or in Venezuelan urban Spanish or “turf” in American urban English (Zubillaga et al. 2015, 238–239; Bourgois 2003). Drug-trafficking practices by street gangs in Caracas does not include transnational trafficking of high-revenue drugs like cocaine, but relatively inexpensive drugs such as “crispy”, which is a modified marihuana and cocaine paste with more stupefacient effect than natural marihuana, but with a much lower retail price than cocaine (1.16, 5 May 2016; Cedeño 14 April 2016). Such type of drug is primarily sold and consumed within the barrios, as a stupefacient used to reduce the straining effects of the marginalized and poor social environment. Those involved in violence tend to consume drugs, but they are not violent due to consumption. The consumption of drugs within violent individuals and groups serves the purpose of stupefacient and a cultural symbol of power acquisition (Moreno et al. 2009, 867–868). Another form of resource predation by gangs has been “vacunas” or protection money extorted from small businesses (Cedeño 14 April 2016). This form of resource predation was only found in Catia, and it was the only barrio where interview partners informed about such type of violent resource predation (1.01, 16 April 2016; 1.02, 18 April 2016). Another higher ordered factor explaining why gangs assert in barrios like Catia is because the urban neighborhood cannot pull resources together to effectively act against such groups, which points to a perverse composition of social capital allowing groups like gangs to take advantage of opportunities to use violence as an instrumental mechanism of resource predation. Perverse social capital formed, in part, because of policies that privatize responsibility for urban security. Urban security policies created costs for the structuration of collective action in Catia because trust levels of state security agents by the interviewed subjects—thus, state-barrio relations—were low, while police presence was somewhat high. Low presence of nearby police stations to the interviewed partners’ places of residence likely produced long response times, thus withering trust in state agents even further. However, the main factor influencing low trust of state agents was the high perceived presence of gangs, especially of armed collectives. This analysis backs the interviewed partners’ perceived unwillingness by national security institution to engage perverse groups. Such institutional context increased transaction costs for achieving collective efficacy.

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5.3.2 Petare Like the barrio of Catia, Petare showed unfavorable state-barrio links, which helped to share net negative externalities. However, there were some variances in comparison to the other positive case of urban violence. Presence of security forces was qualitatively high. The indicators of this category were like the ones in Catia. Trust of state security agents was somewhat higher than in Catia, but it was nonetheless qualitatively low. The main variation was regarding special police operations and perception of violence emanating from gangs. The presence of former indicator was qualitatively high, while the latter was low. However, one cannot infer that gang presence was low from this last indicator. This variation was likely the result of varying narratives resulting from the effects of urban security policy. Petare exhibited qualitatively high levels of security force’s presence. As one can appreciate in Table 5.2, just under two-fifths of the interviewed partners asserted that they witnessed regular police patrols in their community. Police station presence nearby to the interviewed partners’ place of residence presence was qualitatively low, with only two in ten of them asserting to their existence within their households’ proximity. For the category of security force’s presence, one must consider Petare’s size and geographical marginalization, which produces low incentives of investing state resources in such a topographically difficult barrio. For example, two interview partners tell of the destruction by gangs of the only police stations near to where he lived. The government did not replace it afterward, leading to a decreased presence of security forces (2.06, 24 April 2016; 2.14, 12 May 2015). Given the size and difficult geography of Petare, one would expect relatively lower police presence, but this was not the case. Furthermore, like in Catia, high presence of security forces corresponded with low trust in them by Petare’s interviewed subjects. Trust in security agents in Petare was qualitatively low. Just over two in ten interviewed partners said that they trusted state agents—see Table 5.2. Low trust in security agents was not due to the absence of police presence, but because experiences by interview partners with security institutions had been negative. Many view security forces not necessarily as inefficient, but as corrupt and abusive, which was likely due to an interaction effect between exposure to violence and the perception of corruption and the effectiveness of security forces (Di Tella et al. 2014, 418–421). This indicator, along with the ones on the category of police presence, was like those resented for Catia. However, about one-fifth of the interviewed subjects said to have witnessed special police operations. This indicator does not seem high in absolute terms, but in qualitative terms, one can classify it as high since such type of operations should be exceptional (Hernandez 1991, 157), which was not the case if about two in ten interviewed subjects affirmed their presence. In Petare the perception of violence as being a product of organized gangs was somewhat high. Two in ten interviewed subjects said that they perceived violence as coming from gangs. Although many interview subjects perceived high violence in Petare as being a product of hampa común or low organized criminals, it was not an indicator of gangs’ absence from the barrio. One can interpret that high

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Table 5.2 Indicators of state-barrio relations in Petare Petare

Police patrols

Police stations

Trust in state security agents

Special police operations

Violence from organized gangs

2.01

1

0

0

N/A

0

2.02

1

0

0

N/A

0

2.03

0

0

N/A

0

0

2.04

0

0

0

N/A

0

2.05

0

0

0

0

1

2.06

0

0

N/A

N/A

0

2.07

0

1

0

0

0

2.08

0

0

0

0

0

2.09

1

N/A

0

1

1

2.10

1

1

1

N/A

1

2.11

1

1

1

0

0

2.12

0

0

N/A

0

0

2.13

0

0

N/A

1

0

2.14

1

0

0

0

0

2.15

0

0

0

0

0

2.16

0

0

N/A

0

0

2.17

0

0

N/A

0

0

2.18

0

1

0

0

0

2.19

0

0

N/A

0

0

2.20

1

0

N/A

0

0

2.21

1

0

1

1

1

Source Table created by the author with original data

violence leads to high gang presence because it is through such perverse groups that the necessary socialization to become successful violent agents occurs. Perverse social capital clusters such as gangs allow agents to overcome the fear and tension barrier that humans possess, which makes it difficult to successfully dispense violence (Collins 2008, 8, 20; 2009, 10–11). Moreover, gangs provide agents motivated to use violence as an instrumental means of resource predation with security—among gang’s members and the community—to engage in such activities (Venkatesh 1997, 107–108). Nonetheless, a lower perception of gang-produced violence, in comparison to Catia, was likely due to their low overall scales of organization and high atomization. For example, an interview partner viewed the presence of violent gangs in her neighborhood as absent, even if her statements said otherwise because she viewed their presence as socially desirable. She vividly elaborated that:

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5 Urban Security Policies and Their Effects on Collective Efficacy

¡¿Qué si hay malandros [en el barrio]?! claro que hay malandros amiguito! Hay malandro para tirar pa’l techo!…La cosa es que uno va creciendo y uno los va conociendo…se meten a malandro y uno los va conociendo…[la violencia] no es organizada…nadie se mete [de afuera] a robar, nadie se mete a echar broma por ahí, por qué ellos [los malandros de su barrio] están allí; se meten de otros barrios y ellos salen, salen a defender el barrio…se caen a tiro y todo, [por qué] se meten de otros barrios a echar broma (2.05, 23 April 2016).5

Perception of organized violent gangs was low for this interview partner probably because of their relatively low sizes in terms of members and horizontal organization structures. Additionally, such statements show that the presence of gangs sometimes filled the gap left by absent state security forces. Urban security policies created costs for the structuration of collective action in Petare because special police operations were high along with qualitatively high police presence, while trust levels of state security agents by the interviewed partners—thus, state-barrio links—were low. The evidence provided in this section on state/barrio relations in Petare exemplified the political economy of urban security policy in Venezuela. The evidence in Petare showed the practice of conditional impunity or conditional mano dura policies where the state applies in security practices with higher opportunities than costs. Urban security policies applying practices of conditional impunity likely led to a “cockroach effect” where violent groups such as gangs spread throughout the barrio. They became atomized producers of violence as they engaged in violence over la plaza or turf to predate on economic resources (Zubillaga et al. 2015, 238–239). A “cockroach effect” would explain relatively low perceptions of violence emanating from gangs by the interviewed subjects; they probably did not consider low scale organized violent groups as gangs, but as hampa común, even if the presence of such perverse groups was high.

5.3.3 Baruta Baruta, this study’s negative case of urban violence, saw a more favorable institutional context for the structuration of collective action, after analyzing the exogenous effects of urban security policy. Police presence was qualitatively high. More interestingly, however, trust in state agents was qualitatively very high, which was a noteworthy finding since special police operations, according to the interviewed partners, were qualitatively high as well. Moreover, no interviewed subject classi5 In

English: “You are asking me if there are thugs [in the barrio]?! Of course, there are thugs my friend! There are plenty of thugs to go around!… But one grows up, and one gets to know them…they become thugs and one knows them…[violence] is not organized…nobody comes in [from outside] to steal, nobody comes into make trouble there, because they [the thugs of her barrio] are there; If somebody comes in from other parts of the barrio, they [the thugs] come out too, they come out to defend the barrio. They shoot at each other, [because] they come into make trouble”. By the term “echar broma,” or making trouble, the interview partner meant to commit some form of violent crime such as armed robbery or killing a rival gang member to gain more control over territory.

5.3 Urban Security Policies and State-Barrio Relations

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Table 5.3 Indicators of state-barrio relations in Baruta Baruta

Police patrols

Police stations

Trust in state security agents

Special police operations

Violence from organized gangs

3.01

1

1

1

1

0

3.02

1

1

1

1

0

3.03

0

0

N/A

0

0

3.04

N/A

N/A

1

N/A

0

3.05

0

0

0

0

0

3.06

1

N/A

1

0

0

3.07

1

0

1

0

0

3.08

0

0

N/A

0

0

3.09

0

0

1

0

0

3.10

0

1

0

1

0

3.11

0

1

1

0

0

3.12

0

1

0

0

0

Source Table created by the author with original data

fied violence as being a product of organized gangs, suggesting their low scale and probably comparatively lower presence. Police or security force’s presence in Baruta was qualitatively high according to both indicators of this category. Like in the other two studied barrios, just over onethird of Baruta’s interviewed subjects reported to have seen regular police patrols (see Table 5.3). However, the number of police stations, nearby to the households of the interviewed subjects, was comparatively high, with half of the respondents affirming that at least one police station was present in their household’s proximity. More police stations near to the interviewees’ households was a qualitatively different finding than in Catia and Petare and showed greater security investments in Baruta. More investments in public security were perhaps due to its smaller size and favorable topography, which likely made public investments in Baruta more attractive and less costly. Nonetheless, a substantial variation in comparison to Catia and Petare was significantly higher trust of state security agents in this barrio. Trust of state security agents in Baruta was qualitatively high, with seven out of ten interviewed partners responding affirmatively (see Table 5.3). For example, one interview partner, on the question of police presence and trust, explained that “aquí hay un módulo [policial] …cuando los van rotando [los policías] sí [los confía], si los dejan permanente ya no hay confianza. Sí hay policías honestos, buenos” (3.11, 30 May 2016).6 One can interpret this subject’s statements as indicating repeated links 6 In English: “Here there is a [police] station …when they are being rotated [the policemen] yes [she

trusts them], but if they are permanently stationed somewhere there is no trust. There are honest cops, good ones.”

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with state security agents since she could identify the “honest” and “good” policemen and policewomen when they shifted different police stations or checkpoints. In addition, an important difference in comparison to Catia and Petare is the understandings of subjects living in Baruta of why security forces cannot effectively reduce violence levels by themselves. One interview partner said that “lamentablemente los malandros están mejor armados que la policía” (3.10, 30 May 2016).7 Similarly, another interview partner elaborated that “hay presencia policial chamo, pero acuérdate que la policía está más desarmada que los malandros…tú también tienes hijos como policía, y tú tienes familiares, tienes hijos, tienes esposa y ellos no se van a arriesgar, olvídate de eso, ellos no son Rambo ni nada de eso” (3.07, 26 May 2016).8 It is substantial that most interview partners named the local municipal police as the one showing more significantly present in this barrio, and not the National Guard. Following political decentralization reforms in the 1990s that led to the “balkanization” of districts in Caracas, municipal police forces in counties with higher economic productivity—with Baruta being a relatively high-income county—had many times more police agents than lower productivity sectors of Caracas like Catia (Ungar 2003, 208, 218). Since one finds the barrio of Baruta in a comparatively wealthier county, it allowed such barrio of Caracas to provide higher security forces’ presence in the form more police stations to the barrio of Baruta in comparison to Catia and Petare. Moreover, municipal police forces, according to a police commander, have strict limitations on weaponry and rules of engagement. For example, the national government only issues municipal police forces one shotgun for every ten officers, and they do not have access to tactical weapons (25 April 2016). The lack of high-power armament probably increases the need for local municipal security forces to increase community outreach and rely less on mano dura strategies. Such conditions help elucidate how the indicator of the trust on state agents was necessary given the accompanying indicators of high police presence and high presence of special police operations. The interviewed partners of Baruta reported the high presence of special police operations in their barrio. Table 5.3 shows that over almost three in ten of the respondents affirmed that some form of special police operations has occurred in Baruta. This indicator along with the ones on police presence showed significant interventions of security forces in this barrio, but without negatively affecting perceptions of trust between the interviewed partners residing in Baruta and state security agents. Perhaps this resulted from qualitatively low urban violence in Baruta in comparison to the other two studied barrios. Two different interviewed partners succinctly described the barrio of Baruta by saying that “[Baruta] No es Petare” (3.01, 11 May 2016; 3.07, 26 May 2016)9 and thus differentiating this urban space with the notoriously violent and giant barrio to the northeast of Caracas. 7 In

English: “Unfortunately, thugs are better armed than the police.” English: “There is police presence dude but remember that the police are more disarmed than the thugs…as a policeman you also have kids, you have family, you have kids, you have a wife, and they are not going to risk it, forget it, they are no Rambo or anything of the sort.” 9 In English: “[Baruta] is not Petare.” 8 In

5.3 Urban Security Policies and State-Barrio Relations

145

Another possible influence of Baruta’s comparatively low urban violence is the absent perception of violence emanating from organized gangs by the interviewed subjects; none of them asserted this. Such indicator did not show an absence of violent gangs, but that the description of such groups does allow classifying them as gangs probably due to their low scales. For example, a reference made by several interview partners was the migration of violent gangs from other parts of Caracas, especially the extremely violent south-western barrios, to the barrio of Baruta (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 84). The geographic location of the barrio, and the roads that connect it to other parts of Caracas very possibly allow gangs from other barrios to go through the barrio of Baruta and even hide in it from security forces (3.10, 30 May 2016; 3.07, 26 May 2016). Violent encounters result, as small drug-selling gangs in Baruta perceive non-barrio gang members as threats to their “plaza” or “turf”. Urban security policies did not create significant costs for the structuration of collective action in Baruta even though because special police operations were high because trust levels of state security agents by the interviewed partners were qualitatively very high. It appeared that the presence of nearby police stations created an essential qualitative difference in state-barrio relations, perhaps even more important than regular police patrols. Nearby police stations likely created assurances of responses by state institutions in case of violent events. Thus, this element allowed for repeated interactions between barrio inhabitants and security institutions to appear. Moreover, the interviewed partners in Baruta did not attribute violence to the presence of gangs. These indicators showed an interaction effect between the enforcement of mano dura security policies and trust of state agents. In other words, the interviewed partners of Baruta perceived urban security policies in their barrios positively, which did not produce institutional cognitive determinants creating high costs for achieving collective efficacy.

5.3.4 Findings on State-Barrio Relations Urban security policies created high transaction costs for collective efficacy in the barrios of Catia and Petare—both positive cases of urban violence—as this exogenous effect produced an institutional context making the structuration of collective action difficult. However, one observed the opposite result in Baruta. In this negative case of urban violence, urban security policies did not produce cognitive determinants leading to higher transaction costs for the structuration of repeated attempts at collective action. One can infer from the information gathered that greater relations between the interviewed partners of Baruta and state security agents and a favorable view of mano dura security practices gave way to a more favorable institutional context in this barrio, which created low transaction costs for collective efficacy. Moreover, these findings showed a correspondence between poor state-barrio relations and high transactions costs for achieving collective efficacy and thus allowing for a perverse structural composition of social capital.

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5 Urban Security Policies and Their Effects on Collective Efficacy

Comparing the categories of state-barrio relations reveals the logic behind the findings mentioned above. In all the studied barrios, the presence of regular police patrols was high; with one-third of interviewed subjects in all barrios saying that security forces regularly patrolled near their households. However, only in Baruta one found that interview subjects responded that they perceived the high presence of police stations within close distance to their places of residence. This latter finding showed that in Baruta repeated investment in social relations between barrio inhabitants and state security agents was likelier. Such finding partly explained the correspondence between police presence and trust of state security agents, which was low in Catia and Petare, but high in Baruta. One must qualify such statements by adding that Baruta County had higher resources to finance higher police presence. Furthermore, for a complete explanation of barrio inhabitants’ perceptions of trust toward security agents one needs to compare results on the presence of special police operations in the studied barrios. Special operations by security forces were more frequent in the barrios of Baruta and Petare than in Catia. In Baruta the presence of security forces created trust toward state institutions, improving state-barrio relations, probably because such policies lower fears of victimization due to a popular discourse correlating mano dura or zero tolerance policies with decreased urban violence. One did not observe the same result in Petare, where the presence of special police operations was high, likely because of the low presence of nearby police stations. Nonetheless, in Petare, but especially in Catia, perceptions of violence emanating from gangs was high, while in Baruta such perception was qualitatively low. Perceptions of gang presence by the interviewed partners say little about rates of gang presence. However, one can infer that urban security policies have caused a “cockroach effect” of perverse social network groups such as gangs, producing the negative externality or unintended consequence of atomizing and making them spread (Bagley 2015, 10–13; Wolf 2012, 72). After comparing all indicators holistically, one can appreciate a correspondence between mano dura security policies and their perceived effectiveness at reducing violence. Very low trust of state security agents in Catia corresponds with low presence of nearby police stations, the absence of special police operations, and high perception of violence emanating from gangs. In Baruta one found the opposite set of indicators. Therefore, one can interpret that urban security policies in the negative case of Baruta did not create high transaction costs for collective efficacy by producing norms not adversely affecting the structuration of collective action.

5.4 Conclusions: Urban Security Policies and Transaction Costs on Collective Efficacy The political economy of urban security policy created practices of “conditional impunity” where the state enforced the law on certain illegal activities depending

5.4 Conclusions: Urban Security Policies and Transaction Costs …

147

on an opportunity-cost calculation.10 As mentioned in this chapter’s first section, enforcement of the so-called “War on Drugs” was a source of rent production by security institutions. Security policies and practices became more punitive during the decade of the 2000s following and deepening the so-called “War on Drugs”. Charges by state prosecutors of drug-related offenses increased dramatically from 3,374 in 2001 to 112,010 in 2011 (Antillano et al. 2016b, 110–111). The increase in drug charges occurred during a period when Venezuela’s population growth rate was descending, and thus one can not blame the observed increase in population growth (see Fig. 1.4). Actively protecting the urban population, especially barrio residents, from violence seems to produce greater costs than opportunities from the state. The government argued “ajuste de cuentas” or reckonings between violent gangs and not the withdrawal of the state from barrios was the cause of urban violence (Aguillon Vale 2010, 92, 97; El Espectador 2014). This reasoning was not entirely false, but not completely true either. It had certain empirical support since around 70% of homicides in Venezuela for the year 2011 were “ajustes de cuenta”, according to official sources (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 86). Nonetheless, the government’s reasoning blamed the victims of violence for their cause, thus privatizing responsibility for security—a public good—from the state to the inhabitants of the marginalized barrios because the costs of engaging gangs were higher than the politico-economic opportunities provided. State security policies then sought not to apply mano dura policies against violent agents that increased the costs—like the lives—of security forces. Hence, impunity was not only partial but conditional (Lessing 2018, 7–9, 84–87). The political economy of the Venezuelan prison provides an example of privatizing security policies to increase rent-seeking opportunities and reduce costs of engaging perverse groups (Antillano et al. 2016a). This explained why security forces had been enforcing the law, but selectively. Moreover, urban security policies in Venezuela created high transaction costs for collective efficacy, and this study’s negative case of Baruta helped to trace this causal process by showing how a favorable institutional context created reduced transaction costs for the structuration of collective action. 10 The case for a connection between increased impunity and increased urban violence is made by, for example, Briceño-Leon (2015b, 64), who argued that the coming of the Chavez government shifted the state’s priority to electoral success in barrios and retreated police operation from these impoverished urban areas, which eroded its role of being “a preventive force of law and order”. An example given by the impunity-violence perspective is the procedural penal code of 2000, which tried to reduce human rights violations by the criminal justice system through creating stricter procedural rules such as only admitting cases to court where criminals were caught flagrantly or limiting incarceration without a finished trial process to a maximum of two years. Critics of such legal reform said that although its intentions were good, it increased the impunity of violence (Briceño-Leon 2015b, 60–61) . The argument of increased impunity after the implementation of the procedural penal code of 2000 rests on the assumption that these reforms led to a reduction of the role of the law enforcement agencies, and the judicial system’s loss of independence. Evidencing this is that in 1998 there were 118 arrests per every 100 reported homicides, while in 2010 the arrest rate decreased to 9 per 100 homicides (Briceño-Leon 2012, 3239). However, evidence on state behavior regarding security policy does not support the impunity-violence perspective as elaborated in this chapter.

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Evidence from the interviewed subjects in Baruta suggested that mano dura security policies, a product of Venezuela’s historical-institutional context, provided cognitive heuristics lowering transaction costs for achieving collective efficacy when state-barrio relations were qualitatively high. As an interviewed partner from Baruta said that, to reduce violence in the barrios, “necesitamos un Pérez Jiménez” (3.01, 11 May 2016).11 He referred to the Venezuelan military dictator who ruled the country from 1948 until 1958, which was a time of very low actual violence in Venezuela and Caracas (see Fig. 1.1). According to the popular discourse, violence rates remained suppressed during this political regime due to this government’s heavy-handed law enforcement against all actors who disrupted public order such as actual and wouldbe criminals—along with political dissidents. The mano dura policies of the Perez Jimenez dictatorship were a continuation of security policies by other military juntas, enshrined in the Ley de Vagos y Maleantes or “Law of Idlers and Criminals” implemented in 1939 gave security forces wide-ranging powers to prevent crime and violence, such as incarcerating individuals deemed as “potential” criminals. Venezuelan lawmakers copied from a law previously drafted by Francisco Franco’s dictatorial government in Spain. The legal framework created by the Law of Idlers and Criminals resulted in over-proportional law enforcement in economically depressed barrios (Ungar 2003, 211). It was under this legal framework that the abovementioned special police operations had taken place (Hernandez 1991, 158). Not all interviewed subjects referred to this military dictatorship, but many conflated repressive mano dura policies with social order and thus reduced urban violence. As one interview subject from Petare crudely explained when asked about trust of security forces, “hay mucha democracia, [los policías] tienen que apretar, [y] no aprietan por los derechos humanos, ¿solo los delincuentes tienen derechos humanos? No!…Si un delincuente tiene muertos encima, ¿por qué está vivo?” (2.21, 25 May 2016).12 The term “apretar” translates to “tighten up”, but referred to repressing violently against presumed criminals. This subject lived in a violent part of Petare where there have been special police operations and multiple shootouts between police and violent gangs and shows why mano dura security policies are politically popular. Moreover, a former Caracas policeman shared his negative opinion on penal law reform and told me with a great sense of frustration that, “varios de mis compañeros están presos por matar delincuentes, por lo de los derechos humanos. ¡No se puede disparar [a delincuentes] por la espalda!” (Former police officer 12 May 2016).13 Such little reflected view reproduces the historical-institutional context that conflated heavy-handed repression by the state with low violence rates. The above-presented statements echoed an approval of mano dura policies against presumed violent individuals in the barrios, as it confirms the—likely illusory—cor11 In

English: “We need a Perez Jimenez.” English: “There is too much democracy, [the police] needs to repress more, [and] they don’t repress more because of human rights, only criminals have human rights? No!…If a criminal has killed before, why is he alive?” 13 In English: “Several colleagues of mine are in prison for killing criminals, because of the thing about human rights. You cannot shoot [criminals] in the back.” 12 In

5.4 Conclusions: Urban Security Policies and Transaction Costs …

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respondence between repressive security policies and low urban violence, which increases links or ties between barrio inhabitants and security institutions. However, as Simon Rodriguez said, “Para quien no ha visto desorden, cualquier tumulto es anarquía” (Quoted in, Carreras Damas 1969, 169).14 The notion of “order” in the Venezuelan popular discourse seeks to legitimize violence as an “ordering” mechanism. Following this logic, dictatorial repression from a caudillo—e.g., Pérez Jiménez—is the work of the “necessary gendarme” (Carreras Damas 1969, 170–172). One can appreciate this “ordering” mechanism with the political violence imparted by special police operations that provided legitimacy to the state and helping to improve state-barrio relations in Baruta (Hernandez 1991, 161–164). Nonetheless, one should not leave aside the importance of a high presence of nearby police stations in this barrio, which allowed for repeated investment in social relations between barrio inhabitants and state security agents. The high presence of nearby police stations further helped to lower exogenous transaction costs for collective efficacy by creating cognitive heuristics that allow for sustainable or structured collective action. Such an important factor was absent in the positive cases of Catia and Petare, which increases exogenous transaction costs for achieving collective efficacy. This difficulty, even while having exhibited high social network density, creates a perverse composition of social capital (Browning et al. 2004, 509–511). Such structural composition helped reproduce and reinforce institutional-anomie created by the rent-cum-marginality macrostructure, even if susceptibility to violence had declined up to the year 2011, and thus increasing the opportunities to specific individuals and groups of using urban violence as an instrumental and effective mechanism of resource predation.

5.5 Interviews15 1.01 (16 April 2016) male, ~55, priest. 1.02 (18 April 2016) male, ~50, priest. 1.03 (19 April 2016) female, ~65, NGO worker. 1.04 (19 April 2016) male, 56, freelance teacher. 1.05 (19 April 2016) female, ~35, receptionist. 1.06 (21 April 2016) male, ~40, construction worker. 1.07 (26 April 2016) male, ~45, messenger. 1.08 (26 April 2016) male, 49, office assistant. 1.09 (30 April 2016) female, ~30, janitor. 14 In English: “For those who have not seen disorder, any disturbance is anarchy” Rodriguez was a Venezuelan writer and founding father; best known in Venezuela’s historiography for his role as the educator of Simon Bolivar. 15 Note: First number code identifies the barrio where the interview partner resides. 1 stands for Catia/23 de Enero (Catia), 2 for Petare, and 3 for Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta (Baruta). After the interview date in brackets, the information provided refers to the sex, age, and occupation of the interview partner. For example, 1.01 came from Catia (interview conducted 16 April 2016) was a male, of about 55 years of age, and works as a priest at the time of the interview.

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1.10 (3 May 2016) female, 42, janitor. 1.11 (3 May 2016) female, 24, secretary. 1.12 (3 May 2016) female, 23, administrative worker. 1.13 (4 May 2016) female, 43, administrative worker. 1.14 (4 May 2016) female, 27, administrative worker. 1.15 (5 May 2016) male, 39, technician. 1.16 (5 May 2016) male, 49, secretary. 1.17 (10 May 2016) male, 45, administrative worker. 2.01 (21 April 2016) male, 30, construction worker. 2.02 (21 April 2016) male, 25, construction worker. 2.03 (22 April 2016) male, ~35, construction worker. 2.04 (23 April 2016) male, ~30, construction worker. 2.05 (23 April 2016) female, 40, secretary. 2.06 (24 April 2016) male, 57, construction worker. 2.07 (29 April 2016) female, 36, janitor. 2.08 (29 April 2016) female, 39, janitor. 2.09 (30 April 2016) female, 31, janitor. 2.10 (5 May 2016) female, 40, janitor. 2.11 (6 May 2016) female, 32, secretary. 2.12 (10 May 2016) male, 63, administrative worker. 2.13 (12 May 2016) female, 27, secretary. 2.14 (12 May 2016) female, 38, administrative worker. 2.15 (12 May 2016) male, 39, factory worker. 2.16 (13 May 2016) male, 37, factory worker. 2.17 (13 May 2016) male, 25, technician. 2.18 (16 May 2016) female, 26, administrative worker. 2.19 (16 May 2016) male, 38, factory worker. 2.20 (16 May 2016) male, 47, factory worker. 2.21 (25 May 2016) female, 41, janitor. 3.01 (11 May 2016) male, 52, street vendor. 3.02 (11 May 2016) male, 44, NGO worker. 3.03 (20 May 2016) male, ~45, cab driver. 3.04 (25 May 2016) male, 51, watchman. 3.05 (25 May 2016) female, 40, janitor. 3.06 (25 May 2016) female, 45, janitor. 3.07 (26 May 2016) male, 50, technician. 3.08 (21 May 2016) female, 45, realtor. 3.09 (30 May 2016) female, 48, janitor. 3.10 (30 May 2016) male, 39, school teacher. 3.11 (30 May 2016) female, 39, school teacher. 3.12 (30 May 2016) female, 34, school teacher. Antillano A (20 April 2016) Interviewed by the author, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas. Criminologist, Professor at the Institute of Penal Sciences. Bruni-Celli J (19 May 2016) Interviewed by the author, Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración, Caracas, Professor of Public Policy.

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Cedeño L (14 April 2016) Interviewed by the author, Caracas. Sociologist, Director of Caracas-based NGO “Paz Activa.” Former police officer (12 May 2016) Interviewed by the author, Petare, Caracas. Police commander (25 April 2016) Interviewed by the author, Caracas.

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World Bank (2017) Population, total: Venezuela. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP. TOTL?end=2011&locations=VE&start=2001&view=chart Accessed 1 Mar 2017 Zinecker H (2014) Gewalt im Frieden: Formen und Ursachen der Gewaltkriminalität in Zentralamerika. Nomos, Baden-Baden Zubillaga V, Llorens M, Souto J (2015) Una Tregua Posible: La Violencia y el Pacto de Cese al Fuego entre Mujeres y Jóvenes Armados. In: Briceño-Leon R (ed) Ciudades de Vida y Muerte: La Ciudad y el Pacto Social para la Contención de la Violencia. Alfa, Caracas, pp 225–253

Chapter 6

Conclusions: Perverse Social Capital as a Cause of High Violence in the Barrios of Caracas

Abstract Venezuela’s politico-economic macrostructure puzzled the explanation of violence—measured through annual homicide rates per 100,000 inhabitants—in the barrios of Caracas because this outcome behaved pro-cyclically from the early 2000s until 2011. Urban violence rates behaved pro-cyclically during this time because homicide rates rose or remained extremely high, while socioeconomic indicators improved. High urban violence rates under improving socioeconomic conditions created a theoretical puzzle for the structural analysis of violence rates in the barrios of Caracas, as its behavior countered the mechanism established by the relevant literature (Cook and Zarkin 1985; Florence and Barnett 2013, 307–309; Rosenfeld et al. 2013, 2–3; Zubillaga 2013, 108–109). To explain this puzzle, the theoretical model proposed by this book followed Heidrun Zinecker’s distinction between the macrostructures making cases like the barrios of Caracas susceptible to high urban violence and the substructures leading to actual high urban violence rates (Zinecker 2014, 42–43). Therefore, this book abductively analyzed the moderating role of social capital between the politico-economic predictor variable of institutional-anomie created by rent-cum-marginality and the outcome of urban violence (see Chaps. 1 and 2). The main conclusion of this book is that a perverse composition of social capital—due to high social network density in all studied barrios and low collective efficacy in the high violence barrios—explained high urban violence rates while socioeconomic indicators behaved pro-cyclically. Keywords Perverse social capital · Violence rates · Barrios · Caracas · Nonlinear model Regarding the moderating role of social capital, my book attempted to explain why its structural composition removed or imposed transaction costs for working-age adult barrio inhabitants to build organizations to prevent or act against violent individuals and groups. Such organization-building does not refer to creating lynch mobs that perversely enforce para-state justice as is sometimes the case in many violenceridden countries.1 It refers to informal institutions of social control like the presence 1 Lynchings, and the organization of lynch mobs in Venezuela grew significantly after 2015 and espe-

cially during 2016 (Observatorio Venezonalo de Violencia, “Linchamientos en Venezuela aumentan © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. S. Leon, Violence in the Barrios of Caracas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5_6

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of viejas chismosas, or “gossiping old ladies”, (Zubillaga et al. 2015, 163–165), fencing off an alley of the barrio and installing light bulbs (3.12 30 May 2016), or lobbying to get a small police station in a part of the barrio where there was none (1.01 16 April 2016). This present book tested three theory-based hypotheses through the qualitative comparative analysis of three barrios in Caracas to achieve the objective of analyzing social capital’s moderating role. The main finding was that a perverse structural composition of social capital moderated the effect of the politico-economic macrostructure to produce high violence rates by increasing transaction costs of effective informal social control. In addition, perverse social capital reduced transaction costs for small groups of violent individuals to use violence as an instrument of economic resource predation. In other words, social capital becomes a mechanism that reproduced high urban violence rates in the barrios of Caracas, even if socioeconomic conditions had improved. This concluding chapter begins by reviewing the findings on the three theorybased hypotheses constructed by this book (see Sect. 2.5), which helps to explain, to a certain extent, the puzzle of violence in the barrios of Caracas. After that, the second section discusses the contribution of these findings to the literature on urban violence and security studies. It also briefly discusses the main policy recommendations that one can draw based on this book’s findings. The third section points toward some directions for future research, which can potentially further explain the pro-cyclical behavior of urban violence. The last section briefly discusses the politico-economic changes to Venezuela’s economic conditions after Venezuela’s economic collapse after 2014 and its implications for this book’s theoretical model.

6.1 Explaining the Puzzle of Violence in the Barrios of Caracas To explain violence rates’ pro-cyclical behavior in the barrios of Caracas my book abductively tested three theory-based hypotheses—elaborated in Sect. 3.4. These hypotheses guided the qualitative comparison of social capital as a moderating variable of urban violence in three barrios of Caracas. These barrios were Catia/23 de Enero (henceforth, Catia), Petare, and Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta (henceforth, Baruta). The two former barrios were positive cases of urban violence, as they showed suburban annual homicides rates per 100,000 inhabitants of 105 and 93 respectively, while the latter barrio was negative case with a violence rate of 35 in 2011 (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 650% en 2016,” http://observatoriodeviolencia.org.ve/linchamientos-en-venezuela-aumentan-650en-2016/). Lynchings affect primarily marginalized urban spaces, as people use perverse social capital as a scape valve to the presence of high crime. I reach this observation from talking with interviewed partners that witnessed lynch mobs (1.04 19 April 2016), and after witnessing a lynching myself during fieldwork on May 4, 2016. Lynched alleged criminals not always die; severe battery is common though. However, lynched people are almost exclusively petty thieves, which commit crimes without the possession of a firearm. Hence, lynchings are an escape valve of popular frustration, and not an example of collective efficacy against violent agents.

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84, 87, 103). This qualitative variable-oriented comparison followed John Stuart Mill’s combined method of causal inference, which examines qualitative variations in both the independent and dependent variables. By adopting Mill’s combined method of causal inference, this present book analyzed variations between social capital and urban violence in the studied barrios (see the methodological discussion in Sect. 1.4). Identifying correspondences—and not correlations—between the two variables aided tracing the causal process of substructural variables allowing for high violence rates during a time period when socioeconomic conditions improved. Through this process tracing, I reached the finding that a perverse composition of social capital increased transaction costs for organization-building in the studied barrios to prevent or act against violent agents. Hence, perverse social capital acts as a cause for high violence rates in the barrios of Caracas. This study’s findings do not argue that a perverse or a productive structural composition of social capital are different variables; the distinction is only nominal. The conceptualization that social capital may lead to socially desirable and undesirable social outcomes is not new, as the literature has discussed its perverse side in detail (Browning et al. 2004, 523–524; Browning 2009, 1559–1561; Field 2008, 98–99; Fukuyama 2001, 8; Rubio 1997, 815; McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968; Portes 1998, 18; Warren 2004, 17–18). What is novel about my book’s conclusion is an explanation to why perverse social capital reinforces institutional-anomie in the barrios of Caracas, while socioeconomic conditions improved, thus allowing for a pro-cyclical behavior of urban violence rates. The qualitative comparative analysis conducted in this present study developed three hypotheses around the theory-guided combinatorial variation of two factors of social capital, which allowed explaining the moderating role of this substructural variable. The two factors of social capital were social network density and collective efficacy. Social network density refers to the connectedness of an urban neighborhood like a barrio (Mitchell 1969, 15, 17–18; Borgattin and Halgin 2011, 1171; Goyal 2007, 64), which one analyzes through the relative presence of weak ties. These are social ties that are less intimate, frequent, and intense than strong ties like the nuclear family, which counterintuitively allow for denser or more connected barrios (Granovetter 1973, 1983). High social network density lowers transaction costs like information costs and increases the likelihood of risk-taking, which translates to interpersonal trust, to pull local and extra-local resources together to achieve collective efficacy. On the other hand, collective efficacy refers to the ability of barrio inhabitants to achieve sustainable or structuralized collective action to tackle community problems (Morenoff et al. 2001, 524–525; Sampson et al. 1997, 918–919). The presence of high social network density is a necessary factor for the structuration of social capital, as a relatively high presence of weak ties allows for achieving collective efficacy. However, high social network density is not a sufficient factor for the formation of social capital because high collective efficacy does not follow automatically from dense social networks (Morenoff et al. 2001, 547–548). Low transaction costs are essential for collective efficacy to be high, but it also requires that the institutional context permits for beliefs and values allowing barrio inhabitants to expect future returns from their repeated investments in collective action (Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004;

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Wickes et al. 2013, 124–125). Such investments are what allow social resources to become social capital (Lin 2001, 19). The factors affecting the willingness and ability of barrio inhabitants to repeatedly invest in collective action speaks to the structural and cognitive elements of social capital (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 3–4; Uphoff 1999, 218–219), which allow barrio inhabitants to effectively organize toward the goal of imparting informal social control, and thus prevent and act against individuals using violence as an instrument of resource predation. Three hypotheses were possible following from the above-explained theoretical model of social capital. The first one stated that low urban violence rates resulted from a productive structural composition of social capital. Productive social capital refers to the presence of high social network density and high collective efficacy, which allow barrio inhabitants to sustainably and effectively impart informal social control. The second hypothesis stated that high urban violence rates resulted from the absence of social capital, which occurs when one finds low social network density, which does not allow for the structuration of social capital. Under absent social capital, one finds low transaction costs for barrio inhabitant to organize toward the goal of imparting informal social control. The third and final hypothesis stated that a perverse structural composition of social capital leads to high urban violence rates. Perverse social capital takes place when social network density is high, but collective efficacy is low. Under such a structural composition of social capital community organization toward the goal of imparting informal social control becomes unlikely. Moreover, perverse social capital lowers transaction costs and increases economic incentives for groups of violent individuals like gangs to instrumentally use violence to predate on economic resources. Hence, this last hypothesis stated that social capital becomes a mechanism that reproduces high urban violence rates. This book’s findings, which one can appreciate in Table 6.1, led to reject the second hypothesis but confirmed the first and third hypotheses. One can display social capital’s moderating effect of high urban violence in the Boolean solution formulas below. These formulas illustrate the theoretical conclusion of the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) after testing the hypotheses (Ragin 1987), and one should not confuse them with linear algebra equations (Schneider and Wagemann 2010, 17–18). They succinctly state the qualified causal arguments emanating from this book’s findings as:

Table 6.1 Findings of social capital’s qualitative comparative analysis in three barrios of Caracas Violence rate

Social network density

Collective efficacy

Social disorganization

Catia

High

Petare

High

Baruta

Low

High

Low

Low

Low

High

Low

High

Low

High

High

Low

High

Source Table created by the author Note Results in italics are sub-factors of collective efficacy

Structuration of collective action

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High urban violence rates ← high social network density AND low collective efficacy Low urban violence rates ← high social network density AND high collective efficacy

These solution formulas show that high urban violence rates result from the presence of high social network density and low collective efficacy. Similarly, low urban violence rates result when collective efficacy is high in socially dense networks. The first solution formula discussed above, nevertheless, provides the main finding of this book. It illustrates a moderating effect of social capital changing the direction and increasing the strength between the predictor and outcome variable (Baron and Kenny 1986, 1174). Social capital, a substructural variable, reinforces institutionalanomie created by the rent-cum-marginality macrostructure, even though Caracas and Venezuela had shown reduced susceptibility to urban violence. Therefore, the above-discussed moderating effect explained why urban violence rates behaved procyclically, as these rates increased while macroeconomic conditions improved. Additionally, my book’s findings argue in favor of the need to move away from social disorganization as a theoretical assumption of marginalized and violent urban neighborhoods and stresses the importance of analyzing neighborhood or barrio-wide collective efficacy as a factor of social capital and its effects on urban violence. The basis for rejecting the second hypothesis was that, as shown in Table 6.1, all three studied barrios, both the two positive and the negative cases of urban violence, displayed high social network density. Relational data on social networks indicated that the interviewed subjects in all three barrios possessed a more significant amount of weak than strong social ties. In the studied barrios, and perhaps in all barrios, it would be logical for social networks to be dense, as their inhabitants rely on their networks to improve their general welfare under conditions of economic marginality. High social network density shows that there is some structural composition of social capital, which can be either productive or perverse. The negative case of Baruta allowed confirming the first hypothesis, which stated that a productive composition of social capital helps reduce urban violence rates by increasing the ability of an urban neighborhood to impart informal social control. As illustrated in Table 6.1, in Baruta social network density was high, while social disorganization was low, and the institutional context allowed for the structuration of goal-oriented collective action. These last two factors indicated the presence of collective efficacy in this barrio. Baruta was the only barrio with significant evidence of collective efficacy at the barrio level, which refers to structuralized or sustainable collective action. Trust of community and noncommunity members in Baruta was lower in comparison to Catia and Petare. Because perceptions of effective community organization in Baruta were higher than in Catia and Petare, such result likely shows more informed expectations of investment in future returns due to higher collective efficacy. Less overall trust in Baruta and higher collective efficacy might seem to be a somewhat counterintuitive relationship, but the data on trust and experiences with collective action (see Sect. 4.3.3) revealed higher consistency between these theory-guided categories (Grofman and Schneider 2009, 665). This likely shows that interviewed subjects

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in Baruta had more information on which community members will pull resources together and act in favor of the community (van Zomeren et al. 2004, 651). An additional element of Baruta helping to remove transaction costs for collective efficacy was that trust in state security agents was much higher than in Catia or Petare. High trust in security agents in the barrio of Baruta was likely due to the comparatively high presence of nearby police stations from the interviewed partners’ households. Higher trust in state security agents was not due to the higher presence of regular police patrols, as they were qualitatively high in all barrios. Repeated social interactions between inhabitants of Baruta and security forces appeared to be higher than in Catia and Petare, which could explain high trust while special police operations were high, as a result of mano dura or zero tolerance security policies discussed in Chap. 5. Urban security policies placed transaction costs on barrio-wide collective efficacy, particularly in Catia and Petare, because of a political economy of “conditional impunity”. This political economy of urban security policy was one where the state secularly enforced the law heavily on crimes that brought the security apparatus greater opportunities over costs and not due to an absence of security forces in the studied barrios. With urban security policies based on a political economy of enforcing the law on certain crimes like drug offenses, the Venezuelan government had in effect privatized responsibility for urban violence to the inhabitants of violent barrios. It referred to violent deaths between gangs in barrios as ajustes de cuentas or reckonings (Comisión Presidencial para el Control de Armas, Municiones y Desarme 2012, 86). Moreover, special police operations, which supposedly were extraordinary, allowed the state to enforce drug laws while reducing costs of engaging micro-traffickers, as police entered the barrios in large numbers and often carrying military-grade equipment (Hernandez 1991, 157; Lopez Maya 2003, 135; Ungar 2003, 207–210). Mano dura or zero tolerance policies that were selectively enforced by security forces allowed perverse groups like neighborhood gangs to become atomized and to spread; what the literature calls a “cockroach effect” of street gangs (Bagley 2015, 10–13; Wolf 2012, 72). Enforcing drug laws, instead of engaging violent gangs, fed a rent-seeking political economy, thus offering high opportunities while the opposite was true of enforcing the law on violent gangs. Enforcing the law on street gangs risked the lives of security agents for relatively little political and economic returns, which follows from an urban security policy that I term “selective impunity” as elaborated in Chap. 5. The security policy of “selective impunity” practiced by state security forces in the barrios of Caracas placed high transaction costs on collective efficacy because the exogenous effects of security policies made risk-taking to achieve goal-oriented collective action repeatedly less likely. In Baruta, however, my book’s findings allow one to infer that the more significant presence of links between inhabitants of Baruta and state security agents, which reduces the privatization of public security in this barrio, and thus the transaction costs on collective efficacy imposed by urban security policies. As explained in Chap. 5, urban security policies in part privatized security—a public good—by not enforcing the law on violent gangs. This evidence helped to trace a relatively more productive

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structural composition of social capital in the barrio of Baruta. The evidence provided by Baruta highlights an opposing moderating role of social capital in comparison to its perverse moderating role found in Catia and Petare. In other words, barrio inhabitants of Baruta had greater possibilities to organize toward the goal of imparting informal social control, which likely helped to prevent or act against violent agents. In addition, this book found evidence supporting the third hypothesis, which articulated that a perverse structural composition of social capital likely led high urban violence rates by increasing transaction costs for informal social organization and reinforcing institutional-anomie due to the absence of barrio-wide collective efficacy while social network density was high (see Table 6.1). Social capital becomes a mechanism leading to high violence rates. Hence, the use of perverse as an adjective to describe social capital. Under a perverse structural composition of social capital transaction costs for informal social control were high in the barrios of Catia and Petare while subneighborhood groups like gang saw increased incentives for the use of violence as an instrument of economic resource predation. As discussed in Chap. 5, these barrios did not show a lack of collective action, as attempts at goal-oriented collective action were higher in these barrios than in Baruta. However, their perceived effectiveness was significantly lower. Contributing to this was the presence of perverse community associations like concejos comunales or community councils, which are state-funded community associations (Goldfrank 2011, 44). These state-led community associations created vertical rent-seeking networks, which contributed in placing transaction costs on repeated collective action because they diverted resources from other community associations and projects and likely fomented in-group biases, which likely bridged insider networks and promoted rent-seeking (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 967–968; Putnam et al. 1993, 88, 174–175; Field 2008, 98; Warren 2004, 17–18). Hence, barrio inhabitants take fewer risks in social relations investments as they are unsure of whether their actions will likely see future returns. The discussion above, however, shows that the state—at local and national levels—had an ambivalent impact on social capital and its moderation of violence in the barrios of Caracas. State interventions as in the creation and funding of community associations like community councils harmed collective efficacy, and thus the ability and willingness of barrio inhabitants to continually cooperate toward goals like imparting informal social control. However, urban security policies had positive and negative effects on collective efficacy. As discussed above, in Baruta higher presence of police stations nearby to the interviewed partners households positively impacted collective efficacy. Moreover, interactions between barrio inhabitants and state security agents were higher, which showed evidence of better state–barrio relations. Relative better state–barrio relations improve expectations of future returns of repeated collective action and helped explain higher perceptions of collective efficacy in this negative case of urban violence. Therefore, state interventions were not automatically responsible for low collective efficacy. A further example of the state’s ambivalent influence on social capital was that urban security policies likely led to vigilante practices. Urban security policies led to a privatization of security, as the state reduced law enforcement on violent gangs.

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However, the abovementioned “cockroach effect” resulting from these policies not only promoted the spreading of groups like street gangs, which use their social capital perversely to increase incentives and means of violently predating on economic resources. The “cockroach effect” also likely created groups that defended themselves or their communities from other gangs. Hence, gangs acted as vigilantes, even if many of these groups used violence as a tool of resource predation as well. One interviewed partner from Petare illustrates vigilante practices by explaining that: nadie se mete [de afuera] a robar, nadie se mete a echar broma por ahí, por qué ellos [los malandros de su barrio] están allí; se meten de otros barrios y ellos salen, salen a defender el barrio…se caen a tiro y todo, [por qué] se meten de otros barrios a echar broma (2.05 23 April 2016).2

As documented in the relevant literature, gangs form and spread not only for the instrumental purpose of economic resource predation but as an instrument of personal security (Venkatesh 1997, 95, 107–108). In Colombia, increased violence from paramilitary groups was to a large extent the product of the privatization of security resulting from reduced law enforcement by the state (Hunt 2009, 65–66). Therefore, gangs are partly a product of policies that privatize public security. The evidence discussed above shows that the way the state intervenes, and not merely its absence or presence, impacts the structural composition of social capital, and thus the moderating effect on urban violence rates. Additionally, Chap. 4 found that social disorganization did not play a role in social capital’s moderating effect on urban violence, as it was only present in Petare. Catia displayed significantly low social disorganization while at the same time showing low structuration of goal-oriented collective action, leading to a lack of collective efficacy. Low presence of social disorganization should have removed endogenous transaction costs for collective efficacy, and thus for the structuration of productive social capital (Fang et al. 2013, 122; St. Jean 2007, 4–5; Zinecker 2014, 83). Urban sociologist Sampson (2002) once quipped when discussing the Chicago school of urban sociology that he was tired of hearing about Shaw and McKay (1942), the fathers of social disorganization theory. One of this book’s conclusions provides evidence to Sampson’s view of putting Shaw and McKay’s classical work aside in favor of other approaches, as the presence of social disorganization did not correspond with high violence rates. Furthermore, scholars have mainly tested theoretical assumptions in the relation between social capital and urban violence, like social disorganization, in industrialized countries like the United States (Fang et al. 2013, 122; Parker 2008, 30–32). This book provides evidence from a developing country 2 In

English: “You are asking me if there are thugs [in the barrio]?! Of course, there are thugs my friend! There are plenty of thugs to go around!… But one grows up, and one gets to know them…they become thugs and one knows them…[violence] is not organized…nobody comes in [from outside] to steal, nobody comes in to make trouble there, because they [the thugs of her barrio] are there; If somebody comes in from other parts of the barrio, they [the thugs] come out too, they come out to defend the barrio. They shoot at each other, [because] they come in to make trouble”. By the term “echar broma,” or making trouble, the interview partner meant to commit some form of violent crime such as armed robbery or killing a rival gang member to gain more control over territory.

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setting, and particularly from the barrio of Catia, which points toward a theoretical counter-narrative regarding social disorganization. To interpret the result on the exclusion of social disorganization as a factor of social capital’s moderating effect, the study follows a similar theoretical logic as Browning, Feinberg, and Dietz’s negotiated coexistence model, which attempts to explain violent crime in socially organized and dense urban communities (Browning et al. 2004, 523–524; Browning 2009, 1559–1561). Their model states that social network density and collective efficacy behaves paradoxically. Both factors of social capital reinforce each other to create endogenous social control mechanism, but they compete as well. Therefore, collective efficacy in a barrio can produce “informal social control orientations” and the willingness of community members to pull resources together to enforce these informal norms. Similarly, collective efficacy can “generate network-based social capital for offenders that may inhibit more consequential forms of social control” (Browning et al. 2004, 52). Hence, this study points toward the importance of identifying the presence of collective efficacy neighborhood-wide and at sub-neighborhood levels. For social capital to become productive and allow for informal social control in barrios collective efficacy must be present neighborhood-wide. Its absence tends to prevent meaningful forms of social control, as transaction costs for organizationbuilding toward such a goal become too high. Informal organizations observed in the three studied barrios could not economize transaction costs imposed by the institutional setting. Organizations economize transaction costs by suspending costly market mechanisms (Coase 1937, 387–393). However, the Chicago school tradition emphasizes the importance of institutional contexts, which can further place transaction costs that impede the formation of organizational arrangements (Sampson 2002, 217). The institutional context can not only help prevent collective efficacy neighborhood-wide, which removes informal social controls on violence agents. The absence of collective efficacy can strengthen social capital for groups at subneighborhood levels to organize more effectively toward the goal of violently predating on economic resources by reproducing and strengthening the importance of meeting economic goals through violent predation of resources. In short, a perverse structural composition of social capital can reproduce institutional-anomie. Perverse social capital reproduces and strengthens institutional-anomie by producing differential social organization, which means that one finds social capital in different dimensions between different urban neighborhoods (Browning 2009, 1559–1561; Sampson and Graif 2009, 1580–81). Moreover, a rentier economic structure like Venezuela—even if economic marginality is low—exacerbates the need to achieve valued economic norms because low empowerment of labor can increase emotional frustration and aggression (Zinecker 2014, 514–517). In turn, this can increase the attractiveness of “tournament” organizational design of violent groups like gangs. A tournament organizational design refers to an organizational design where agents’ economic motivation is to achieve upward social mobility by surging in a hierarchical organization, even if their scale is rather small like street

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gangs (Levitt and Venkatesh 2000, 757–758, 786–787). Such organizational design allows social capital to lower transaction costs of using violence as an instrument of economic resource predation. Therefore, sub-neighborhood groups likely use social capital in a perverse manner, which leads to high urban violence rates.

6.2 Contributions to the Literature and Policy Implications The findings of my book provide two contributions to the literature on the political economy of urban violence and security studies. First, this present study shows the theoretical value of disaggregating or disentangling structural from substructural variables, like social capital, to analyze the causes of urban violence without having to resort to post-structural explanations. Second, to explain the structural composition of goal-oriented social organization, like informal social control, the analysis of the institutional context at subnational levels of analysis becomes critical. As criminologist Antillano argues (2016, 38–40), high violence rates in Caracas during a period of improving socioeconomic conditions seems paradoxical only if one considers macroeconomic indicators. Focusing on the analysis of substructural variables like social capital reveals different causal mechanisms. This book’s main finding explains perverse social capital as a plausible cause of high violence in the barrios of Caracas. However, such a causal explanation is not conclusive, but it shows the need and the value of moving beyond methodological nationalism to explain the causes of a phenomenon like urban violence (Agnew 1994, 59). In global studies terms, place and space matter in explanations of urban violence because global processes produce variation between cities and neighborhoods (Sampson 2002, 216). Disaggregating substructural variables from macrostructural ones helps to take the analysis of urban violence beyond “methodological nationalism,” and also shows the importance of “bringing positivism back in” (Zinecker 2014, 530–531). Poststructural perspectives that emanate out of the difficulty of reconciling macrostructural conditions and outcomes often lead to viewing the phenomenon of urban violence as the product of socially constructed hegemonic discourses (Hume 2006, 74–77). The contribution of this book in analyzing social capital provides a positivist, but a pragmatic alternative to post-structural explanations (Maxwell 2012, 656–658; Ragin 1987, 82–94), which has repercussions beyond theoretical debates within universities and conference halls; it impacts policy design. Former President Chavez and other high government officials put into question national homicide rates presented in media sources—without providing official counter evidence—and denied that violence was an actual problem outside of public discourses (Acosta 2011, 85–86). In July 2009, the government-appointed people’s ombudsman, Gabriela Ramirez, classified high violence rates in Venezuela as a public “sensation” and not as an actual problem (Valery 2010). One could argue that the use of post-structuralist or postmodernist reasoning by the Chavez government regarding high violence rates was because this public concern carried few electoral costs (Corrales 2014, 397–398; Hanson and Smilde 2013; Kronick 2014, 2–3). The argument above shows the impor-

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tance of furthering developing positivist, but pragmatic, theoretical models of urban violence that cut through simplistic political and theoretical discourses. The main policy implication emanating from this book’s findings is that policymakers ought to tailor the design of policy interventions for the meso- and microconditions of each barrio or urban neighborhood. One can draw this policy recommendation out of this book’s conclusions because the composition of substructural variables like social capital behaved largely independent from politico-economic structures at the macro-level. Social capital not only helped to impede barrio-wide informal social control but also incentivized the use of violence to achieve culturally valued goals like resource accumulation. In Venezuela, removing all military influence from police institutions and citizen security policies along with the elimination of Draconian drug laws increasing the revenues, and thus opportunities, of illegal drug markets has become a standard policy recommendation (Labate et al. 2016, 1–3). However, these kinds of macro-level policy design and implementation, like investing in educational institutions,3 are unlikely to be effective in reducing urban violence rates without tailored micro-interventions because they do not consider the effects at the substructural level. Another contribution to the literature, with important policy implications, by this present book, was in further explaining the role of the institutional context in organization-building at the urban neighborhood level. The institutional context played a critical role in explaining variations in the ability of barrio inhabitants to organize toward goals like imparting informal social control. It showed that attempts at goal-oriented community organization were not sufficient to lower transaction costs to allow for collective efficacy. I reached this interpretation as the institutions found in the studied barrios framing the norms under which organization-building takes place impeded sustainable or structuralized collective action, and affected the formation of social capital. For example, all studied barrios showed that state-funded organizations like community councils negatively impacted the expectation of future returns of investing resources in community organizations. In Baruta, urban security policies, due to the high presence of police stations nearby to the inhabitants’ households contributed to greater willingness by barrio inhabitants to repeatedly invest in social relations, and thus to allow for productive social capital. Therefore, further theory-building on social capital or other concepts of institutional economics ought to consider to the socialization of individuals, as this affects whether their collective actions produce sustainable and successful organizations. Furthermore, the need to tailor urban security micro-interventions to the substructural compositions found in each barrio or urban neighborhood speaks to the benefits of political decentralization, which allows implementing bottom-up urban security interventions. Political decentralization refers to the design and implanta3 Investments

in high quality and inclusive education, especially primary and secondary, can foster heterogeneous social networks (Fukuyama 2001, 17–18). This strengthens productive social capital, as it lowers transaction of urban communities to pull local and extra-local resources together. Moreover, educational organizations are a good field to implement social mixing policies, especially targeting young males (Imbusch 2010, 22–24, 31–35; Auyero and Kilanski 2015, 189–191). Such policy can disrupt the presence and development of street gangs (Patacchini and Zenou 2009, 23).

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tion of urban security policies at the local level, which allows for bottom-up instead of top-down approaches to the urban security policy (Zinecker 2014, 539). Topdown or centralized approaches tend to ignore substructures like the composition of social capital found in each barrio or neighborhood. Public policies like concejos comunales or community councils were centralized political organizations, as their approval and funding came from the national government, which had detrimental effects on producing barrio-wide collective efficacy, and thus productive social capital. As elaborated in Chap. 4, these organizations created patronage networks that incentivized rent-seeking over horizontal networks of cooperation. Avoiding state interventions creating clientelistic networks of patronage removes transaction costs on collective efficacy, which allow for productive social capital. However, this is not to say that avoiding patronage-inducing policies creates collective efficacy neighborhood-wide or that the withdrawal of the state is desirable. The state can positively impact social capital only through public policies tailored to each urban neighborhood. The structuration of collective action leading to goaloriented organization-building—i.e., collective efficacy—is an endogenous process that is difficult to produce and reproduce. A possible policy regarding urban security policies that remove transaction costs for collective efficacy is gaining widespread support for security interventions, followed by state penetration. Empirical evidence forwarded by this book shows that barrio inhabitants approve of mano dura or heavy-handed security policies. The popularity of mano dura security policies among inhabitants of the barrios of Caracas is understandable as the presence of violence hinders their possibilities of upward social mobility and inhabitants see such policies as a way to expediently remove violent agents. However, such policies will keep on producing counterproductive results, like increasing transaction costs for collective efficacy, which helps to reproduce urban violence, if their practices are perceived as illegitimate by the urban inhabitants as shown by the example of Italy’s fight against the Sicilian Mafia. In the Sicily, a successful Anti-Mafia movement and subsequent state penetration became possible at the end of the 1980s when popular support for security interventions and prosecution of Mafia families gained ground (Paoli 2001, 176–177). This example shows the importance of state penetration—or executive presence—along with urban security enforcement. State penetration leads to the bureaucratization of political institutions, which is vital so that security interventions do not place further transaction costs on collective efficacy. Cries about corrupt security forces by barrio inhabitants of Caracas evidence the exact opposite of bureaucratization, namely patrimonialism. Patrimonial institutions exist when personal alliances create governmental norms—and this can change as alliances change or at the whim of the ruler, while bureaucratic institutions are the ones based on impersonal collectively agreed norms that agents with authority cannot be easily changed (Fukuyama 2014, 10, 59–60; North et al. 2009, 18–21). Corruption is, therefore, patrimonial practices within bureaucratic institutions (Collins 2011, 19). Patrimonial practices increase transaction costs, as their arbitrary nature prevents barrio inhabitants from discerning whether their invest-

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ments in social networks will provide future returns and impedes the formation of productive social capital. Further research on institutional variables like social capital and their contextual compositions, however, ought to tackle the methodological consideration of employing historical instead of Newtonian conceptualizations. Newtonian conceptualizations of variables like social capital mean treating them as ahistorical concepts, which assumes its theoretical mechanism to be right at every point in time and unaffected by structural changes over time. However, historical processes matter because the evolution of the institutional context is critical to changes in substructural variables like social capital and their outcomes like urban violence rates.

6.3 Calls for Research This book offered a plausible explanation of violence in the barrios of Caracas, which are far from conclusive. Hence, this present study’s findings call for further research to explain and understand urban violence. This book discussed the relationship between social network density and collective efficacy to the point that the former factor is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of the latter. This relationship requires further insights and analysis (Wickes 2010, 439–440). One recommendation on how to go about further exploring the relationship between these two factors is to extrapolate neighborhood-wide social ties from a statistically representative sample, and thus mapping social network compositions that analyze both density and collective efficacy (Hipp et al. 2013, 616–619). The representative accuracy of this simulation depends on previous qualitative and survey empirical work performed in the studied neighborhoods, which speaks to the need of a mixed-method research design, which triangulates quantitative and with qualitative analyses (Jick 2008, 3, 49; Babones 2015, 9–10). Moreover, this study should further dispel concerns of the inadequacy of qualitative research methods in hypothesis testing, and especially in the explanations of socioeconomic phenomena (Starr 2014, 243–244, 256–258). Another aspect in the relationship between social network density and collective efficacy, which future research ought to explore, is further disentangling the relationship between the structural and cognitive elements of social capital (McIlwaine and Moser 2001, 3–4; Uphoff 1999, 218–219). Both elements lead agents to be able—the structural elements—and willing—the cognitive elements—to engage in repeated and sustainable collective action toward community goals like imparting informal social control. This book focused primarily on the structural side of social capital to avoid dwelling into the disciplinary territory of behavioral scientists. However, part of the findings like the importance of the institutional context in placing or removing transaction costs points to cognitive elements, which contribute to the creation of productive or perverse compositions of social capital. The importance of researching cognitive elements for the successful socioeconomic organization to take place has now become mainstream economic research (Piketty 1995, 551–555; Di Tella et al. 2014, 408–409). The usefulness of cognitive

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research, nonetheless, does not mean a return to methodological individualism. On the contrary, research drawing from the behavioral sciences can enrich the conceptual frameworks of macro or collective approaches (Thaler 2000, 136–138). One example is the study of how political polarization—a convoluted institutional condition leading to different and unexpected outcomes (Hetland 2014, 396–398)—poses cognitive effects on collective efficacy, and thus the formation of social capital. Because of the convoluted nature of political participation on collective efficacy, or participation (Ibid.), this element of the institutional context requires separate and careful analysis.4 Moreover, researchers ought to test these new and promising conceptual frameworks on the study of urban violence through intercity comparisons, which can further explain the pro-cyclical behavior of this socially undesirable outcome. Comparing barrios or neighborhoods from different countries may provide for more theoretically rich insights into the pro-cyclical behavior of urban violence. As far as possible cases for selection, comparing cities or barrios in so-called developed and developing countries would yield richer explanations on urban violence. In Latin America, for example, the city of San Jose, Costa Rica, exhibited a similar theoretical puzzle as the Venezuelan case, as urban violence rates behaved pro-cyclically (Morales Gamboa 2015; Zinecker 2014, 167–175). However, the macro politicoeconomic conditions would require adaptations, as this Central American country is not a rentier state. Additionally, the city of Managua, Nicaragua provides for another negative case of urban violence—due to relatively low violence rates—that has behaved largely pro-cyclically as well (Zinecker 2014, 466–470). In a developed context, the city of Chicago may provide for fruitful comparison. Even if studies on violence and crime in this city are plentiful (Sampson et al. 1997; Morenoff et al. 2001; St. Jean 2007; Rhineberger-Dunn and Carlson 2011), comparisons between it and cities or barrios in developing countries are scant. The work of Auyero et al. (2015) provides valuable ethnographic analyses of how marginalized urban inhabitants respond to the presence of violence in the United States and Latin America. However valuable such work is, it does not provide a comparative inferential analysis to improve theories of urban violence, which remains a gap in the literature. Further explaining the pro-cyclical behavior of urban violence not only allows refining theoretical models but provides more efficient policy recommendations to tackle the problem of high urban violence rates. The last call for research emanating from this book is the analysis of gang structure. Groups employing perverse social capital to use violence as an instrument of resource predation, like gangs, are the empirical “elephant in the room” of my study, as I did not analyze gang structures. It is often counterproductive for a single study to tackle multiple dimensions of the studied variables like the organizational structure of perverse social capital. A multidimensional approach is often burdensome to 4I

did not include political polarization in the comparative analysis of social capital in the barrios of Caracas, as this factor became a significant element of Venezuela’s institutional context during the 2000s; when Hugo Chavez was in power (Corrales 2014, 397–398). However, Violence rates in Caracas rose and stabilized during the 1990s (see Fig. 1.1). Hence, political polarization was probably not a major element affecting social capital in the studied barrios. However, only further analysis can confirm or reject that hypothesis.

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causal explanations because it tends to impede abstracting relationships in social processes, which researchers need to cut through complexity. Theoretical abstraction is critical for testing and building defeasible theoretical arguments (Healy 2017, 119, 125–126). However, it would behoove further research of urban violence on Caracas and elsewhere to further analyze the structure of these groups and interpret them with the help of the extensive literature that exists on the topic (Coughlin and Venkatesh 2003; Hagedorn 2014; Klein 2014; Klein and Maxson 2014; Levitt and Venkatesh 2000; Venkatesh 1997). The difficulties and security concerns of undertaking such research are undoubtedly numerous and challenging, but the potential theoretical contributions of further understanding and explaining the processes of perverse social capital are worth the investment.

6.4 Analyzing Urban Violence After Venezuela’s Economic Collapse To conclude, it is pertinent to address the evolution of urban violence after 2011, as the provisional evidence likely shows that substructural variables like social capital have remained stable in their moderating effect between politico-economic macrostructural conditions and urban violence rates. The rentier structure that reduced susceptibility to urban violence in Caracas and Venezuela imploded after 2014. Official Poverty rates nationally are available until the first half of 2015 and show an upward trend from 24% poverty in 2012 to 33 in 2015 (Instituto Nacional de Estadística 2016c). This contrast the evidence shown in Figs. 1.6 and 1.7. Contrastingly, an assessment of poverty rates by the Caracas-based Andres Bellos Catholic University states that poverty by the first half of 2017 rose to 82% (El Nacional 2017). Moreover, hyperinflation and an unprecedented mass exodus of Venezuelans to neighboring countries since 2017 have accompanied the dramatic rise in poverty. Like any severe economic crisis, however, the causes are multiple. Among main reasons for this dramatic rise in poverty, and thus marginality was Venezuela’s static rentier structure inability absorb or adapt to the global oil price bust of 2014 (Vera 2015, 563–567; 2017, 2–7). In addition, the continued decline of oil production from approximately 2.7 million barrels per day in 2013 to approximately 1.36 million barrels per day reduced rent windfalls to Venezuela, which has been its most significant source of hard currency (Monaldi 2018). It is important to stress that one cannot trace Venezuela’s economic collapse to mere “external shocks”. As discussed in Sect. 1.3.2, Venezuela’s rentier structure absorbed the political demands of a growing urban labor force through clientelistic economic policies like foreign exchange (FX) controls. Such policies had a disastrous effect on non-oil productivity, as they artificially overvalued the Venezuelan currency to subsidize imports indirectly. The state policy of making imports cheaper than domestic production led to prioritizing the creation of clientelistic patronage networks over economic efficiency, which induced the Dutch disease (Karl 1997, 176–177; Sid Ahmed 1987,

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903). FX controls caused a reduction in non-oil productivity by rendering it internationally uncompetitive. Although such policies kept the price of indirectly subsidized goods and services low and shielded from general inflationary pressures, such market disruptions, which allowed for socioeconomic indicators to improve from the early 2000s until the early 2010s, sowed the seeds of Venezuela’s current economic woes. The sustainability of politically advantageous protectionist policies like FX controls depended on ever increasing oil rent windfalls to prevent a rapid increase in the inflation rate that leads to the severe food and goods shortages that Venezuela experienced since 2014. Since oil rent windfalls stagnated, even if global oil prices were relatively high, the Venezuelan economy experienced a slow-paced “FX tsunami” before international oil prices busted. By February 2014, after almost 11 years of continuous and strict exchange control, the disparity between the official and blackmarket rate of the Venezuelan Bolivar reached 1,200%. The jump of the black-market exchange rate over the official one resulted in an inflation rate of 41% 2013, and a shortage rate of basic staples of about 30% (Salmeron 2014). The global oil price bust of late-2014 just aggravated the “FX tsunami” after it reached a historic high of over 255% yearly inflation in 2016 (World Bank 2018). This macroeconomic indicator has spiraled into full hyperinflation after December 2017, as the inflation rate between June 2017 and June 2018 was of 46,350% (Leon 2018). FX controls have reduced non-oil productivity to the point of inducing hyperinflation and severe food scarcity. The vanishing of indirect subsidies like FX controls also vanished the macroeconomic effect of affecting relative prices to increase the population’s purchasing power and reduce urban marginality (see Sect. 1.3). In turn, this has led to the poverty levels mentioned above and the mass exodus of Venezuelans. Therefore, the macrostructural conditions changed dramatically after 2014, which should increase susceptibility to violence. However, the longitudinal behavior of violence rates nationally appears to have remained unchanged. Although reliable official figures at the national and urban level after 2012 are not available up to the point of writing this present book, unofficial evidence tends to suggest the longitudinal stability of violence rates in Venezuela. An unofficial but reliable analysis of violence trends in Venezuela by political scientist Dorothy Kronick (2016) places the violence rate in 2015 at around 69 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, based on a 95% confidence interval. One cannot confirm the accuracy of unofficial assessments until official ones become available and accompanied by clear methodological explanations. Nevertheless, this evidence falls in line with the finding that violence rates in Venezuela and Caracas, have remained somewhat stable during the twenty-first century, as one can appreciate in Fig. 1.1. Violence rates in Caracas showed a slight upward slope after the year 2000, which was a significant contrast with the steep upward slope of violence rates after the mid-1980s and 1990s. This apparent trend tends to strengthen this book’s findings even though politicoeconomic macrostructural conditions have changed dramatically in comparison to the ones studied up to 2011. Namely, substructural variables like social capital behave independently to a large extent from macrostructural variables and thus moderate effects on outcomes like urban violence rates.

6.4 Analyzing Urban Violence After Venezuela’s Economic Collapse

171

Finally, this book shows that the research agenda of violence in the barrios of Caracas after 2014 ought to account for the substructural changes caused by the mass exodus of Venezuelans since 2017. In 2015 just under 700,000 Venezuelans lived abroad. This number increased to 1.6 million by the end of 2017. According to the Organization of American States (2018), this significant increase was primarily the result of involuntary migration due to Venezuela’s severe economic collapse. Noteworthy about these numbers is not the steep increase of Venezuelan migrants but the fact that most of these involuntary Venezuelan migrants have likely been low-income barrio inhabitants. The exodus of Venezuelans to neighboring countries likely produced changes in social network structures within Venezuela’s cities. Following this book’s theoretical framework, such changes could have modified the structural composition of social capital at the barrio level and thus its moderating effect on outcomes like urban violence. The exodus of Venezuelans highlights the significance of conducting future analyses of moderating substructural variables like social capital to account for the changes to social network structures produced by the involuntary migration of barrio inhabitants. Such analyses would allow to better theorize changes and continuities of outcomes like high urban violence rates. Further analysis of social capital’s moderating effect also permits to tailor future micro or bottom-up interventions at the barrio or neighborhood level. Better tailoring bottomup interventions increase the chances of succeeding in reducing urban violence rates and thus tackling this great impediment to socioeconomic development.

6.5 Interviews 1.01 (16 April 2016) male, ~55, priest. 2.05 (23 April 2016) female, 40, secretary. 3.12 (30 May 2016) female, 34, school teacher.

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Index

A Acción Democrática, 130 Actuality of violence, 9, 29, 52 Agricultural sector, 20 Ajustes de cuenta, 139, 147, 160 Andres, Antillano, 55, 56, 127, 129, 131–133, 135, 147, 164 Arias, Enrique, 50 Auty, Richard, 18, 48 B Bandura, Albert, 56, 60 Baron, Reuben, 44, 68, 159 Barquisimeto, 2, 20 Barrio, 1–7, 9–12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 23–34, 43, 44, 47, 49, 51–58, 64, 68, 79–88, 90–94, 99–105, 107–112, 114–121, 125–129, 132–149, 155–163, 165–168, 171 Baruta, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 79–84, 87, 88, 91–94, 99–103, 107–111, 117–122, 125, 127, 128, 136, 142–149, 159–161, 165 Becker, Gary, 16, 49, 130 Bogota, 2 Boissevain, Jeremy, 31, 85 Boolean algebra, 30 Borgatti, Steve, 11, 62, 80, 128, 157 Bourdieu, Pierre, 10 Bourguignon, François, 52, 53 Briceño-Leon, Roberto, 8, 25, 29, 45, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 55, 127, 129, 147 Browning, Christopher, 70, 157, 163

Bruni-Celli, Josefina, 109, 130 Buchanan, James, 8, 15 C Cairo, 5, 9, 54 Cape Town, 2 Catholic, 7, 85, 86, 93, 128, 169 Catia, 5, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 80–88, 91–94, 99–105, 110–117, 120, 121, 125, 127, 128, 136–139, 143–146, 149, 159–162 Cedeño, Luis, 3, 132, 133, 139 Centros Diagnosticos Integrales (CDIs), 107 Chavez, Hugo, 2, 129–131, 133, 134, 147, 164, 168 Checkel, Jeffrey, 6, 9, 26, 31 Chicago, 55, 64, 162, 163, 168 Chicago school of urban sociology, 55, 64, 162 Clientelistic (rent distribution policies), 14, 134 Coase, Ronald, 6, 27, 29, 58, 62, 67, 80, 128, 163 Cockroach effect, 126, 135, 142, 146, 160, 162 Code of the street, 55 Coleman, James, 10, 11, 61 Collective action, 6, 7, 10, 33, 43, 45, 57, 59–62, 64–66, 68–70, 99–102, 111–121, 125–127, 135, 136, 139, 142, 145–147, 149, 157–162, 165–167 Collective efficacy, 11, 33, 34, 43, 44, 50, 57–70, 80, 91, 94, 99–102, 107, 109–121, 125–128, 132, 135, 136, 139, 145–149, 155–161, 163, 166, 167 Collier, David, 6, 26, 27 Collier, Paul, 10, 48, 54, 59

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. S. Leon, Violence in the Barrios of Caracas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5

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178 Community oriented goals, 59, 81, 112, 115, 117–119, 126, 165 Community trust, 6, 10, 112–116, 118, 119, 159 Concejos comunales, 112–115, 119, 161, 166 Conditional impunity, 34, 125, 127, 135, 142, 146, 160 Consistency, 31, 159 Coronil, Fernando, 48 Corrales, Javier, 134, 164, 168 Counter-cyclical, 4, 8, 17, 51 Criminal justice system, 54, 125, 147 Cultural deviance theory, 55, 56 D DiJohn, Jonathan, 20, 25, 49 Di Tella, Rafael, 65, 66, 100, 111, 126, 138, 140, 167 Drug charges, 133, 134, 147 Drug crimes, 125, 135 Drug trafficking, 131, 135 Dunbar, Robin, 30 Durkheim, Emil, 6, 7, 11 Dutch disease, 13, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 48, 49, 169 E Economic collapse, of Venezuela, 24, 156, 169, 171 Ehrlich, Isaac, 16, 49, 52, 127 El Nacional, 2, 169 Eisner, Manuel, 53 Elsenhans, Hartmut, 4, 5, 8, 13, 15–17, 21–23, 48–50, 83 Epidemiological approach, 56 Ethnic heterogeneity, 64, 100, 101, 103, 106–110, 121 Externalities, 11, 12, 53, 59, 62, 63, 66–70, 91, 111–113, 117, 120, 127, 136, 140 Extra-community trust, 111 F Fang, Xiangming, 12, 64, 65, 100, 162 Felson, Richard, 45, 46 Field, John, 11, 12, 66, 67, 100, 120, 126, 157, 161 Foreign exchange (FX) controls, 22, 169 Fox, Sean, 2, 17, 19, 46, 48, 49, 52 Friends of friends, 63, 81, 85, 86, 89, 91, 92 Fukuyama, Francis, 6, 7, 10, 12, 48, 53, 54, 59–62, 66, 67, 100, 111, 119, 120, 127, 130, 157, 165, 166

Index G Gangs, 11, 12, 34, 47, 51–53, 63, 65, 70, 100, 125–127, 134, 135, 137–143, 145–148, 158, 160–165, 168 Gaviria, Alejandro, 49, 52 Giddens, Anthony, 7, 11, 59, 66 Ginsberg, Benjamin, 48 Glaeser, Edward, 59, 62 Goal-oriented community organization, 100, 112, 114, 115, 117, 126 Goldfrank, Benjamin, 114, 161 Gomez, Juan Vicente, 83, 109 Goyal, Sanjeev, 11, 30, 33, 62, 63, 80, 128, 157 Granovetter, Mark, 8, 11, 27, 33, 50, 61, 62, 79, 157 Greece, 18 Grofman, Bernard, 30, 31, 159 Gross domestic product, 13, 16–18, 22 Guyana City, 2, 20 H Hampa común, 138, 140, 142 Harari, Yuval, 30, 56, 63 Hausmann, Ricardo, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 83 Hayek, Friedrich, 58 Hipp, John, 60, 61, 66, 100, 167 Hirschi, Travis, 55 Hoelscher, Kristian, 2, 46, 48, 49, 52 Homicide rates, 1–4, 28, 29, 45, 50, 58, 101, 155, 164 I Impunity, 34, 47–50, 125, 127, 134, 135, 142, 146, 147, 160 Inequality, 2, 4, 14, 15, 23–25, 51–54, 131 Informal social control, 5, 6, 10–12, 58–60, 64, 65, 68–70, 80, 81, 99, 100, 119, 121, 126, 156, 158, 159, 161, 163–165, 167 Institutional-anomie, 10, 11, 14–16, 26, 44, 61, 63, 65, 67–69, 149, 155, 157, 159, 161, 163 Institutions, formal and informal, 49, 50, 60, 61 Instrumentality of violence, 46, 68 International Monetary Fund, 5 Israel, 18 K Karl, Terry, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20–23, 32, 49, 83, 128, 169 Kenny, David, 44, 68, 159 Kingston, 2

Index

179

Kronick, Dorothy, 3, 134, 164, 170 Kubrin, Charis, 60, 125, 127, 135

North, Douglass, 6, 7, 11, 21, 46, 47, 49, 60, 66, 111, 114, 128, 130, 166

L Laderman, Daniel, 53 Latin America, 4, 5, 9, 45, 81, 85, 86, 127, 168 Law enforcement, 34, 49, 54, 125, 127, 129, 131, 135, 137, 138, 147, 148, 161, 162 Lee, Mathew, 45, 51, 52 Lessing, Benjamin, 46, 127, 147 Levitt, Steven, 23, 27, 45, 65, 126, 164, 169 Lin, Nan, 10, 29, 60, 62, 79, 80, 158

O Oil, 1, 4, 7, 8, 13–21, 23, 43, 47, 48, 58, 82, 83, 103, 105, 108, 131, 134, 169, 170 Oil industry, 15, 17, 20, 21, 83 Olson, Mancur, 5, 59 Organization of American States, 171

M Macrostructural variable, 43, 170 Maduro, Nicolas, 32 Malmquist, Carl, 45, 56 Managua, 5, 9, 54, 168 Mano dura, 126, 131, 135–137, 142, 144–148, 160, 166 Manzano, Osmel, 18, 20, 82 Marquez, Patricia, 12, 46 Martin, Felix, 2, 47 Matsueda, Ross, 43, 61, 64 Maxwell, Joseph, 26, 27, 164 Mazzuca, Sebastian, 49 McIlwaine, Cathy, 6, 10–12, 51, 53, 58, 59, 62, 65, 66, 70, 100, 111, 114, 126, 127, 136, 157, 158, 161, 167 McKay, Henry, 33, 64, 66, 100–103, 110, 162 Mercal, 23, 119 Merton, Robert, 8, 11 Messner, Steven, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, 48, 50, 51, 55, 56, 58, 63–65, 68, 69, 80, 102, 110 Mill, John S., 26, 50, 157 Minas de Baruta, 5, 28, 79, 83, 94, 99, 125, 156 Mitchell, J. Clyde, 11, 31, 32, 62, 80, 81, 128, 157 Mixed methods, 167 Moderation, 50, 67, 99, 120, 161 Monaldi, Francisco, 49, 169 Moncada, Eduardo, 2, 8, 45, 46 Moreno, Alejandro, 51, 85, 132, 139 Morenoff, Jeffrey, 6, 11, 33, 43, 57, 60, 63, 64, 67–70, 80, 99, 157, 168 Moser, Caroline, 6, 10–12, 45, 51, 53, 54, 58, 59, 62, 65, 66, 70, 100, 111, 114, 126, 136, 157, 158, 161, 167 N Naim, Moises, 21, 49, 138 National Guard, 126, 129, 130, 132, 133, 136–138, 144

P Pearlman, Janice, 12 Penfold, Michael, 49 Perez Jimenez, Marcos, 84, 148 Perez Lo Presti, Alirio, 94 Petare, 5, 26, 28, 31, 33, 34, 79–84, 87–94, 99–103, 105–108, 110, 111, 115–117, 120, 121, 125, 127, 128, 136, 140–146, 148, 149, 151, 156, 158–162 Petróleos de Venezuela, 21 Piketty, Thomas, 65, 66, 100, 111, 126, 167 Plaza, 81, 145 Policía Metropolitana, 129 Policía Nacional Bolivariana, 129, 136 Police, 12, 29, 34, 46, 60, 112, 127, 129, 130, 133, 136–149, 151, 160, 165 Police stations, 12, 29, 112, 127, 136, 137, 139–141, 143–146, 149, 156, 160, 161, 165 Political economy, 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 13, 18, 25, 32, 34, 44, 65, 66, 69, 105, 111, 126–128, 132, 133, 135, 139, 142, 146, 147, 160, 164 Political order, 47–50, 82 Political organization, 90, 166 Political violence, 13, 46, 47, 128, 129, 149 Population turnover, 64, 100–103, 105, 107–110, 121 Portes, Alejandro, 6, 12, 53, 62, 70, 157 Post-structural explanations, 44, 55, 164 Poverty, 2–5, 8, 9, 14, 23–25, 51–54, 64, 94, 100, 127, 131, 169, 170 Prison, 10, 52, 126, 127, 131–134, 147, 148 Pro-cyclical, 4, 16–18, 25, 34, 43, 44, 47, 54, 55, 70, 79, 155–157, 159, 168 Protestant, 7, 86 Przeworski, Adam, 8, 54 Public services, 84, 103, 104, 106, 107–109, 109, 110 Public transportation, 81, 87, 89, 90, 93 Punto Fijo, 21, 128 Putnam, Robert, 6, 10, 30, 49, 50, 61, 64, 66, 67, 69, 80, 81, 92, 93, 100, 102, 110, 119, 120, 126, 161

180 Q Qualitative comparative analysis, 1, 5, 27, 30, 79, 80, 101, 128, 156–158 R Ragin, Charles, 26, 27, 29, 30, 80, 101, 128, 158, 164 Relational data, 31, 79, 81, 101, 103, 106, 110, 159 Religious organization, 81, 85, 88, 92, 93 Rent-cum-marginality, 14–17, 21, 26, 28, 29, 44, 58, 67–69, 79, 94, 121, 128, 149, 155, 159 Rent distribution policies, 14 Rent, economic rent, 1, 8, 14, 15, 47, 67, 100, 131 Rentierism, 14, 15, 18, 44, 47–50, 57, 105 Rentier state, 13–16, 21, 48–50, 68, 168 Risk, 7, 56, 59, 62, 63, 65–67, 79, 111, 113, 117, 119, 132, 144, 157, 160, 161 Rodriguez, Francisco, 13, 17, 18, 20, 23, 83 Rodriguez, Simon, 149 Rodriguez Sosa, Pedro, 13, 17–21, 83 Rosas Meza, Iris, 49, 51, 84, 87 Rosenfeld, Richard, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, 32, 48, 50, 51, 55, 56, 58, 63–65, 68, 69, 80, 102, 110, 155 Ross, Michael, 48 Routine activities, 51, 55, 56, 87 Rubio, Mauricio, 6, 11, 12, 53, 62, 66, 70, 157 S Sampson, Robert, 6, 8, 12, 33, 43, 50, 55, 59–62, 64–68, 80, 99–101, 157, 162–164, 168 San Jose, 168 San Salvador, 2, 9 Santa Cruz del Este, 5, 28, 79, 94, 99, 121, 125, 149, 156 Schneider, Carsten, 30, 31, 158, 159 Scott, John, 31, 101, 103 Shaw, Clifford, 33, 64, 66, 100–103, 110, 162 Sicilian mafia, 166 Sid Ahmed, Abdelkader, 13, 15, 16, 21, 23, 48, 169 Smith, Adam, 15, 58 Social capital perverse social capital, 53, 62, 67, 70, 100, 125, 135, 139, 141, 155–158, 163, 164, 168, 169

Index productive social capital, 62, 63, 66, 67, 80, 106, 127, 158, 162, 165–167 Social disorganization (theory), 64, 162 Social Network Analysis (SNA), 30–32, 80, 85, 101, 128 Social network density, 11, 33, 43, 44, 58, 61–63, 66, 68–70, 79–81, 84–94, 99, 112, 113, 149, 155, 157–159, 161, 163, 167 Social ties, 33, 62, 85, 88, 157, 159, 167 Social violence, 44, 46, 47 Socioeconomic conditions, 1, 4–6, 25, 34, 43, 101–105, 107, 110, 155–157, 164 Socioeconomic indicators, 1, 4, 5, 14, 57, 110, 133, 155, 170 Socioeconomic status, 12, 64, 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, 121 Soto, Hernando de, 12 Sowing the petroleum, 20, 21, 25 Spain, 18, 148 Special police operations, 137, 138, 140–146, 148, 149, 160 Sport organization, 12, 81 Starr, Martha, 27, 167 State intervention, 127, 161, 166 Stewart, Frances, 24 Stiglitz, Joseph, 6, 60 Strong ties, 62, 63, 70, 79, 85, 88, 157 Structural model, 43 Structuration, 11, 32, 59, 60, 66, 68–70, 100, 111, 115, 120, 121, 125–127, 135, 136, 139, 142, 145–147, 157–159, 162, 166 Structuration of collective action, 59, 68, 69, 100, 111, 120, 121, 125–127, 135, 136, 139, 142, 145–147, 158, 161, 166 Substructural variable, 1, 4, 9, 10, 14, 26, 33, 43, 44, 47, 50, 52–55, 57, 58, 67, 79, 80, 157, 159, 164, 165, 167, 169–171 Susceptibility to violence, 9, 14, 16, 26, 52, 57, 68, 79, 105, 149, 170 Sutton, Willie, 7, 8 Systemic model, 61 T Tegucigalpa, 2, 9 Thickening effect, 91, 94 Tilly, Charles, 44–47, 90 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 10 Tournament structure, 65

Index Transaction costs, 5, 6, 11, 33, 45, 53, 57–60, 62–68, 70, 80, 81, 84, 86–88, 90, 93, 99–102, 104, 105, 107, 109–111, 113, 115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 125, 127, 135, 136, 139, 145–149, 155–158, 160–167 Trust, 6, 10–12, 29, 32, 54, 59, 60, 63, 65–67, 100–102, 105, 106, 111–113, 115–120, 127, 136, 137, 139–146, 148, 157, 159, 160 Trust in security agents, 136, 137, 140, 141, 143, 160 23 de Enero, 5, 28, 79, 82, 84, 94, 99, 121, 149, 156 U Ungar, Mark, 126, 129, 130, 138, 144, 148, 160 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2, 5 United States, 8, 9, 130, 131, 162, 168 Uphoff, Norman, 6, 58, 59, 65, 100, 111, 126, 136, 158, 167 Urban security policies, 6, 33, 34, 102, 121, 125–130, 135, 136, 139, 140, 142, 145–147, 160, 161, 165, 166 Urban space, 3, 4, 15, 22, 27, 28, 30, 43–47, 53, 59, 61, 87, 101, 104, 129, 134, 144, 156 Uslar Pietri, Arturo, 13

181 V Van Zomeren, Martjin, 60, 65, 100, 117, 126, 160 Velasco, Alejandro, 14, 21, 82, 84, 126, 129, 131, 138 Venkatesh, Sudhir, 12, 23, 27, 65, 126, 141, 162, 164, 169 Violence rates. SeeHomicide rates W Wacquant, Loïc, 52, 53, 127 War on drugs, 126, 128, 130, 131, 133, 135, 147 Warren, Mark, 10, 11, 66, 67, 100, 111, 120, 126, 157, 161 Weak ties, 33, 62, 63, 70, 79–81, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90–93, 157 Weber, Max, 27, 47 Wellman, Barry, 31, 32, 85, 101, 103, 126 Weyland, Kurt, 49 Wickes, Rebecca, 12, 32, 61, 64, 69, 158, 167 Wirth, Louis, 59, 61 Wood, Elizabeth, 45 Z Zimbardo, Phillip, 56 Zinecker, Heidrun, 5, 6, 9, 16, 26, 29, 30, 43, 45–48, 50, 54, 57, 60, 64, 68, 69, 100, 125–127, 135, 155, 162–164, 166, 168 Zubillaga, Veronica, 2, 4, 12, 45, 51, 52, 54, 55, 119, 139, 142, 155, 156