Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 355
Contexto Internacional
vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021
http://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-8529.2019430200006
Lehmann
Entrenching the Problem?
International Organizations and
Their Engagement in Latin America
to Address Violence: The Case of
the European Union in the Northern
Triangle
Kai Lehmann
*
Abstract: Latin America is the most violent region in the world. Yet, decades of political and nan-
cial investment by the international community have not had the desired results. Using the work of
the European Union in the Northern Triangle of Central America as a case study, this article asks
what explains this failure. Utilizing the conceptual framework of Complexity and Human System
Dynamics, it argues that current policies actually entrench the pattern of conditions which lead to,
and sustain, violence. It shows how, by reconceptualizing this problem using the concepts of Com-
plexity, policies could be made more eective and sustainable.
Keywords: violence; Latin America; European Union; complexity; Human System Dynamics
(HSD).
Introduction
Latin America is the most violent region in the world. is, in turn, is a driver for other
problems, especially the loss of human capital, which is either being killed or eeing this
violence in huge numbers. Fearing these ripple-eects, the international community has
made a concerted eort to address the problem of violence in the region. ese eorts
have come from other countries, international organizations, from regional organizations
based in the Americas or such organizations based outside the region but with signicant
historical and economic interest in it.
* University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo-SP, Brazil; klehmann@usp.br. ORCID iD 0000-0002-7516-4240.
356 vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 Lehmann
Yet, despite signicant investments, both politically and nancially, violence in Latin
America remains at extraordinarily high levels (e Economist 2018), apart from some
notable success stories at the local level (Doyle 2011).
What explains this failure? is raises questions about the way this problem is dened
as well as the concepts and approaches used to address it. ese are the issues that the
present work will address.
As a case study, the actions of the European Union in the Northern Triangle of Cen-
tral America (Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala) will be analysed, using the concep-
tual framework of Complexity and Human System Dynamics (HSD). It will be argued
that Complexity and HSD allow for the reconceptualization of the issue of violence, which
allows for a clearer denition of the problem and for the identication of the specic
conditions which sustain violence across time and space. Furthermore, areas of further
research that could turn this reconceptualization into concrete and executable policies
will also be identied.
Latin America as a Region of Violent Peace
Since the end of the of the Cold War, Latin America has become the second-most peaceful
region on earth, without any signicant military conicts, with the obvious exception of
Colombia (Uppsala Conict Data Program 2018). Yet, it is, by far, the most violent region
in the globe, as violence is hereby dened as the ‘intentional use of physical force or power,
threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community
that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological
harm, mal-development or deprivation’ (WHO 2002: 4). With less than 10% of the world’s
population, Latin America accounts for more than one third of all the world’s recorded
homicides (Igarapé Institute 2017). It houses the most violent country in the absolute
number of homicides (Brazil, which in 2016, saw more than 60,000 murders recorded);
the vast majority of the most violent countries relative to population-size (amongst them,
Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela and Mexico); and the vast majority of the 50 most vi-
olent cities on earth (Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal
2018). As such, Latin America is considered to be a ‘zone of violent peace’ (Mares 2017:
225).
e impact of this situation has been felt throughout the region and beyond. Latin
America has been a central focus in the long-running war on drugs (Carpenter 2003). Vi-
olence has been a key driver for migration, especially to the United States (Jaitman 2017;
Orozco and Yansura 2014) and has fuelled an enormous wave of internal displacement
(IDMC 2017). e combination of death and displacement, in turn, has had a negative
impact on the economic and social development of the region. It has shone an unatter-
ing light on structural problems of Latin American societies, from economic and social
inequality to the structural weakness and corruption of the state (Williamson 2009).
Many of these issues have received considerable attention in both academic and pol-
icy debates. During processes of colonization, little regard was given to the well-being of
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 357
native populations, which were decimated through a mixture of disease and deliberate
extermination. e consolidation of, in particular, the Spanish colonies, spurred inde-
pendence movements and dreams of Latin American unication, as articulated by Simón
Bolivar (1783-1830). Yet, these never came to fruition. Instead, the various wars of inde-
pendence fought during the 19
th
century consolidated administrative and political divi-
sions between the dierent territories and entrenched tensions between and within them,
fostering nationalism and class two of the most important cleavages which inuence the
region’s countries to this day (Dabène 2009). As such, as Koonings and Kruijt (1999: 2)
argued ‘Latin America has a legacy of terror, of violence, of fear.’
During the Cold War, the region was a key battle ground between the two superpow-
ers, the United States and the Soviet Union (Pastor 2005). Between 1945 and 1991, there
were no fewer than 11 international and 38 internal armed conicts in Latin America and
the Caribbean (Tavares 2014). is history also reinforced a culture in favour of strong-
men leaders that spurred some vicious authoritarian dictatorships, which, in many cases,
lasted well into the 1980s (Skaar and Malca 2014). is, in turn, cemented a culture of
deep mistrust between the state and the population that is crucial to understanding the
problem of violence today (Arias 2011).
Bearing this in mind, it should not come as a surprise that the end of the Cold War
did not lead to an end of violence. Rather, Latin America became a text-book example
of the shiing dynamics of security, leading to turbulent peace (Crocker, Hampson and
Aall 2001), the region suering with levels of interpersonal violence, oen comparable to
actual warzones (Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal 2018).
Confronted with the legacy of war, the need for reconciliation, economic reconstruc-
tion and the construction of post-war democracies, Latin America soon seemed to be
overwhelmed by that challenge. e states which emerged in the post-conict context
were at once weak yet dominated by the same longstanding political and economic elites.
Beset by corruption and unable to guarantee even the most basic services to signicant
parts of its population, several countries soon faced daunting challenges in terms of secu-
rity (Kurtenbach 2010; Acemoglu and Robinson 2019).
Different approaches to violence and the role of the international
community
e international community actually played a key role in this debate regarding the post-
Cold War security environment. e United Nations developed the concept of ‘human
security,’ dened as ‘the security of people, including their physical safety, their economic
and social well-being, respect for their dignity, and the protection of their human rights’
(Baylis, Smith and Owens 2011: 566). is includes the right ‘to live in freedom and dig-
nity, free from poverty and despair. All human beings are entitled to freedom from fear
and want, with equal opportunity to enjoy all their rights and fully develop their human
potential’ (United Nations 2012: 1). Critically, the concept recognizes the ‘interlinkages
between peace, development and human rights, and equally considers civil, political, eco-
358 vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 Lehmann
nomic, social and cultural rights’ (United Nations 2012: 1). Furthermore, human security
should be pursued in a ‘context-specic’ form, recognizing the dierent needs and chal-
lenges which exist across time and space. Out of this emerged a concern, amongst other
things, about urban crime and its links, for instance, with drug tracking (United Nations
2012: 1).
is shi in focus found great resonance in Latin America in a post-conict context
of oen deep social problems and spiralling violence, which increased by more than 50%
in the 20 years following the end of the Cold War (World Bank 2010). Subsequently, there
has been enormous public pressure to do something about violence, security being one of
the main public concerns throughout the region (Muggah and de Carvalho 2014). Polit-
ical leaders responded to this pressure in, broadly dened, two ways, whose tensions will
be critical for the argument that follows.
Particularly, there has been an acceleration of so-called iron st security policies by
national governments that promise to be ‘tough on crime.’ ese iron st policies have
been adopted by political leaders from across the ideological political spectrum, from
right-wing governments in Honduras to ostensibly le-wing governments in Venezuela
(Howarth and Petersen 2016; McDermott 2019).
Such an approach rests on three fundamental tenants. Firstly, it relies on a confronta-
tional approach towards what governments dene as criminals. Killing and imprisoning
as many alleged members of criminal gangs or, more broadly, bandidos became the over-
riding policy-aim, the idea being that the sheer scale of death and incarcerations will act
as a deterrent and destroy the structure of any given criminal organization. With this in
mind, authorities would routinely round up and imprison literally hundreds of people at
any given time in any given area based almost entirely on where people lived, how they
dressed, and how they looked (Lehmann 2012).
A second key plank of this strategy is the increasing use of the military in the pro-
vision of public security (Pion-Berlin and Carreras 2017). e Armed Forces patrol vio-
lent neighbourhoods and confront criminal groups which control these neighbourhoods.
ey undertake raids to conscate drugs, weapons and apprehend alleged gang members.
ey are also frequently granted special powers to stop and search people and their prop-
erties, suspending constitutional rights in the process (Mitidieri 2018).
A third, and related, plank refers to the role of the justice system. Here, what has been
noticeable is the fact that normal processes of justice are frequently suspended, either ex-
plicitly or implicitly (Martínez 2016). Equally, it has become common, and oen accepted,
that police or other agents of the state use lethal force against alleged criminals without
facing the risk of any negative consequences for themselves (Pine 2008). In several in-
stances, killing criminals has been positively encouraged politically (Miragila 2017). As a
consequence, many Latin American police forces are now amongst the most lethal in the
world (Human Rights Watch 2018).
Many analysts have pointed to problems with this approach in a normative sense
(Arana 2005; Pine 2008; Olson 2015). It is a blatant abuse of human rights and disregards
any sense of fair and impartial justice, whilst entrenching deep social and economic divi-
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 359
sions in the process. Yet, at its most basic, the approach has simply not worked. ere is
overwhelming empirical evidence to show that, far from reducing violence, in the medi-
um term, iron st policies, in fact, increase it (Garcia 2015; Dudley 2010; Igarapé Institute
2017).
In response, political actors – particularly at local and international levels - have ar-
gued that violence should be seen as part of a much broader concept of ‘citizen security’
which ‘encompasses an array of ideas, policies, and activities intended to promote safety
and security, strengthen social cohesion and reinforce the mutual rights and obligations
of states and citizens’ (Muggah and de Carvalho 2014: 6). At a practical level, this means
‘the organization and delivery of eective public safety measures in the context of broader
democratic norms’ (Muggah and de Carvalho 2014: 6). e Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB) denes citizen security as consisting of three interdependent dimensions: Vi-
olence, crime and the fear of crime. From this perspective, citizen security ‘incorporates
interventions from varied disciplines and policy perspectives that prevent and reduce vi-
olence through a menu of dierent initiatives’ (IDB 2012: 5). For its part, the United Na-
tions Development Program denes the concept as
the process of establishing, strengthening and protecting demo-
cratic civic order, eliminating threats of violence in a population
and allowing for safe and peaceful coexistence. It means eectively
safeguarding inherent human rights, especially the right to life, per-
sonal integrity, inviolability of the home and freedom of movement.
(UNDP 2013: 1)
In practical terms, citizen security focuses on 5 dierent types of intervention (IDB
2012):
a. Social intervention
Under this category, actions focus on groups of people ‘at risk’, both the perpetrators
and the victims of crime. In practice, this means particularly young males and, in many
cases, members of minority ethnic groups. Actions would also try to address associated
problems, like alcohol- and drug abuse as well as domestic violence, which is oen a key
factor in future broader criminal activity.
b. Situational prevention
e key focus of the intervention is the environment under which people live and
at-risk groups act. e objective of the policy is to change this environment in such a way
as to reduce the number of opportunities for violent behaviour. ese actions may include
changes to local infrastructure; increased surveillance of space as well as of people; reduce
the stress levels within any given group, stricter regulation of the sale of alcohol; and fur-
ther such interventions with the aim of making potential oenders rationally assess the
risks of committing a crime to the point of considering it likely that any infringement will
be detected and punished accordingly.
360 vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 Lehmann
c. Police
A third set of actions focuses specically on the police, which is a key part of the cycle
of mistrust between the population and the state. One issue within this context is that of
police eectiveness (Sherman 2011a). Here, a lot of work has gone into making sure that
there is a police presence in targeted areas, spatial concentration of crime being one of the
hallmarks of violence in Latin America (Jaitman and Aizenman 2016). Furthermore, since
most victims of crime can be found in one particular group of people, interventions focus
on the manner police interact with this group (Petrosino, Guckenburg and Turpin-Petros-
ino 2010: 1).
Connected to the issue of police behaviour, however, it has been noted that, oen-
times, the police do not have the capacity to act eectively in the areas where the people
most vulnerable to crime inhabit (Sherman 2011b). erefore, the question of police-re-
form has become a key issue of discussion across Latin America, focusing on the structure
of the police force, training within the police, and the way police interact with the popu-
lation (Ungar and Arias 2012).
d. e judicial system
Closely linked to the police is the justice system which stands out in most of Latin
America for being both inecient and mistrusted by the population (Pine 2008; Lehmann
2019). As a consequence, there is a widespread perception – backed up by signicant
empirical evidence - of impunity, as well as the idea that the system only works for a priv-
ileged few. is, in turn, sustains alternative power structures which keep order in places
in which the state has no or little eective presence (IDB 2012).
Within this context, interventions focus on reforming both the institutions and the
strategic focus of the criminal justice system. Examples thereof are reforms of how the
dealing in ‘soer’ drugs by small-time dealers, as well as drug users, are dealt with (Gen-
dreau 1996). is also includes ideas to make the justice system more exible, allowing
it to dierentiate between types of criminals and adjusting sentencing accordingly (IDB
2012). Finally, it involves attempts to make the justice system a key actor in the prevention
of crime. In practice, this means the provision of pre-trial services, the increased use of
non-custodial and rehabilitative sentences, and/or the development of so-called ‘alterna-
tive dispute resolution mechanisms,’ such as restorative justice (Sherman and Strang 2012:
215).
e. Penitentiary system
Finally, one key area of activity within the context of citizen security are reforms of the
penitentiary system. is has long been identied as one key problem in the region, along
with prisons hopelessly overcrowded and a lack of control over its population which, in
turn, oen lives in inhumane conditions, turning them into nishing school for criminals
(d’Aubuisson and Dudley 2017).
Citizen security as a concept, then, is a recognition of the multi-faceted nature of vio-
lence. It acknowledges violence as a problem across several levels which is expressed in a
number of dierent ways and, therefore, requires a number of dierent responses. Citizen
security is also a recognition of the multi-faceted causes of violence, which have been dis-
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 361
cussed in minute detail in the literature (World Bank 2011; UNDP 2013). Organizations
such as the United Nations have made a concerted eort to incorporate personal security
within its framework of human security, of which citizen security is a fundamental part
(UNDP 2013). As will be shown, the EU, at local the level, has also incorporated some of
these principles. Politically, this means the need for an integrated and wide-ranging ap-
proach, one which incorporates questions such as food security, environmental protection
and education into the security agenda. Caballero-Anthony (2015) adds to this the con-
cept of ‘community security’ of which citizen security is part but which depends crucially
on human development, and on the establishment and consolidation of democracy.
What one has, then, is a ‘complexication’ of the issue of security in conceptual terms,
pushed and embraced, at least rhetorically, by the international community. e UN as-
sumed a leading role in promoting the idea of ‘human security’ as a basis for dening and
addressing security by challenging and broadening that eld considerably in the process.
Other actors moved in similar directions, showing in detail both the causes and conse-
quences of violence and their interconnections (UNODC 2018; World Bank 2011; WHO
2002).
Yet, despite this shi and ‘complexicaiton’ of the concept of violence, the overall
results of the policies applied have been disappointing. Violence has remained at astro-
nomical levels in the region. Whilst there have been some local success stories, the pattern
of violence and insecurity has not shied in the region (Dominguez 2017).
e question, therefore, becomes what explains this failure. It will be shown that the
shi towards citizen security in a conceptual sense has not been accompanied by a shi to-
wards citizen security in terms of actions across all levels of the political and social system.
In fact, in many cases, the very organizations applying concepts of citizen security at one
level embrace ideas of iron st approaches at another, thereby signicantly undermining
its potential to bring about desired and sustainable change.
To illustrate this confusion and its consequences, I will now introduce the conceptual
framework of Complexity and Human Systems Dynamics (HSD) before applying it spe-
cically to the actions of the European Union to address the problem of violence in the
Northern Triangle of Central America.
Violence as a Complex Adaptive System
As shown above, violence has been tackled essentially using two dierent approaches:
the iron st approach and the citizen security approach. e iron st approach basically
applies a strongly reductionist approach, very typical of traditional approaches to most
spheres of public policy. With the application of the right policies and sucient resources,
it would possible to work out solutions and implement them. ere is a clear relationship
between cause and eect, and the impact of proposed policies (i.e. solutions) can be pre-
dicted. In other words, the problems are “linear”, with certain actions leading to predict-
able results (Geyer and Rihani 2010).
362 vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 Lehmann
By contrast, citizen security, as a concept, begins to recognize violence as complex,
not just in a descriptive, but also in a conceptual sense. at is to say that it is a problem
characterised by the following:
■ e presence within the system of a large number of elements
■ e interaction of these elements in a rich manner – that is, with any element in the
system inuenced by, and inuencing, a large number of other elements
■ Interactions that are frequently non-linear
■ Feedback loops in the interaction
■ e openness of the system and its elements to their environment
■ e operation of the system in a state far from equilibrium
■ e existence of a system history
■ Elements of the system are ignorant of the behaviour of the system as a whole
(adapted from Geyer and Rihani 2010)
Eoyang (2010: 466) has dened such systems as complex adaptive, ‘a collection of
semi-autonomous agents with the freedom to act in unpredictable ways and whose in-
teractions over time and space generate system-wide patterns.’ As Edwards (2002: 17) has
observed, such systems ‘have remarkable resilience in the face of eorts to change them.’
is is partly due to the fact that, in such systems, the elements and agents ‘are constantly
changing, as are the relationships between and amongst them.’ As a consequence, ‘uncer-
tainty becomes the rule’ (Eoyang and Holladay 2013: 17).
Nevertheless, this uncertainty does not mean permanent instability. In fact, in most
cases, changes in the relationships between agents take place within a framework of fun-
damental systemic stability. Interactions ‘simply change the conditions and relationships
among the parts and the whole, they do not change the system in any fundamental way’;
the interaction between the parts and the whole oen sustains existing patterns, as ‘parts
interact to generate emergent patterns while the patterns inuence parts and their inter-
actions’ (Eoyang and Holladay 2013: 17-18). e result is a self-generating, self-organizing
reality of human systems dynamics which is based on the interdependence between the
parts and on the whole of the system. Self-organisation here is dened as a process by
which the internal interactions between the agents and conditions of a system generate
system-wide patterns (Eoyang 2001).
In such a situation, change is dynamical; it is the result of multiple forces acting in
unpredictable ways and generating surprising outcomes, which even the most powerful
actors cannot control at all times. Change, then, is at best partially predictable and is char-
acterised by tipping points, at which the dynamics of the system change profoundly to
settle into a new pattern. However, it is impossible to know when and in what form the
tipping point will arise (Gladwell 2000). Even if an action could be executed exactly as
planned, it would not guarantee the right result. Because the elements of a complex adap-
tive system are multiple and interdependent, one can never do only one thing: one action
will have multiple impacts, meaning that unintended consequences abound (Jervis 1997).
If one accepts these premises, then one has to accept that the future remains unknow-
able. is being the case, any action taken cannot have as its principal objective the den-
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 363
itive resolution of a particular problem since the self-organisation of a complex adaptive
system does not stop at a particular – less so at an externally predetermined – point. In-
stead, ‘the best you can hope to do is to build adaptive capacity to coevolve with the system
as it changes over time’ (Eoyang and Holladay 2013: 25).
As such, actions have to be constantly evaluated and adjusted depending on particular
local circumstances. Decision-making processes and the actions they produce have to be
exible, adjustable, and decentralised. ey have to be able to respond to the unforeseen
changes and circumstances that arise as agents of the system respond and adapt to any
given policy. ey have to be able to respond to change in a system with a high number
of variables.
To enable such an approach and eective action in such a system of high unpredict-
ability and uncertain outcomes, Eoyang and Holladay (2013: 30) propose ‘Adaptive Ac-
tion,’ a ‘method for engaging in dynamical change in an ever-emerging, always self-or-
ganizing world.’ ey argue that to approach any given problem, it is necessary to do so
by exploring the current state of self-organisation, as dened above, so as to allow for
targeted intervention that can change this pattern of self-organisation, which has given
rise to, and is sustaining, the problem to be tackled. is process is based on three simple
questions:
What?
e ‘what’ question tries to identify the current state of the process of self-organisation,
which is dependent on three conditions: the elements which hold the system together
(such as shared objectives, geographical locations, social class, etc.), dierences between
the agents of the system which generate tensions that allow for change (such as dier-
ent interpretations of a particular issue, class, resources, location, etc.), and the channels
through which these dierences can be expressed (media, assemblies and meetings, etc.).
Eoyang (2001) denes these conditions as containers, dierences, and exchanges (or con-
nections) (CDE). She also shows that these are interdependent across time and space. As
such, they can serve dierent functions within dierent contexts.
Questions that might be asked to reveal the current state of self-organisation include:
What do we see? What containers are the most relevant? What dierences exist and what
impact do they have? What exchanges are the strongest and what are the weakest? What
has changed and what has stayed the same? What do we want these patterns to look like
in the future? What did these patterns look like in the past?
So, what (does it mean)?
e ‘so what’ question tries to make sense of what has been observed. What do the patterns
we observe mean for any possible action? Such a question is critical in that it generates
options for action but also allows for the adaptation of action to dierent circumstances
across time and space. In other words, the ‘so what’ question is crucial to making actions
364 vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 Lehmann
adaptable to the particular circumstances within which they have to be applied. Questions
might include: So, what does the current state of aairs mean to you, to me, and to others?
So, what does that mean for our ability to act? So, what does that mean for the future de-
velopment of the system? So, what options do we have for action?
Now what (do we do)?
e ‘now what’ question, nally, allows us to take action, having considered the current
state of self-organisation and its implications. Crucially, this question allows for the con-
sideration of dierent actions and dierent types of action across time and space. Ques-
tions may include the following: Now what will I/you/we/they do? Now what will be com-
municated to others? Now what will the results and the consequences be? Now what will
be done in response to these results?
ese three questions allow for the identication of the conditions and patterns which
sustain a particular problem across time and space. ey allow us to exercise ‘[c]onscious
inuence over self-organizing patterns [as they permit] seeing, understanding, and inu-
encing the conditions that shape change in complex adaptive systems’ (Eoyang and Holla-
day 2013: 30). In this particular case, they allow for the identication of the conditions and
patterns that give rise to, and sustain, violence. As such, it is useful to dene more precisely
what we mean by conditions and patterns.
Conditions
Conditions are the elements of the social system which, individually and in interaction
with one another, determine the speed, direction, and path of a social system as it evolves
(i.e., self-organises) into the future. As stated above, there are three conditions which de-
termine self-organisation: containers, dierences, and exchanges (or connections).
Patterns
As these dierent conditions interact, they form patterns, here understood as the simi-
larities, dierences and connections that have meaning across time and space. In other
words, patterns are the expression of the interaction between the three dierent condi-
tions just outlined above (Eoyang and Holladay 2013: 30).
ese terms have critical implications for action. ey indicate that social problems
are in fact the expression of a pattern of interdependent conditions across time and space.
is being the case, what needs to change are the conditions which form the pattern that
sustains a particular problem.
With these considerations made, the question, then, becomes what explains the fail-
ure to change the patterns of violence that have been so notable, and persistent, in Latin
America? It is this we shall turn to now, looking specically at the work done by the Euro-
pean Union in Central America.
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 365
The European Union in Central America: undermining its own chances
of success?
At rst glance, the choice of the EU as a case study to illustrate the diculties of the inter-
national community in acting eectively to address the issue of violence in Latin America
may seem odd. It is, aer all, a regional organization which has relatively little leverage in
Latin America as a whole, bearing in mind the overbearing presence of the United States
as the regional power.
Yet, the EU is quite representative of the problems faced by the international commu-
nity. Firstly, more than any other international organization, the EU explicitly embraced
the role of being a normative power (Manners 2002), making an explicit link between
the promotion of democracy, open markets, respect for human rights and peace (Diez
and Tocci 2017). Secondly, the organization tested this approach rst, and extensively,
in Central America in the aermath of that region’s civil wars during the 1980s and 90s,
making it one of the rst regions where the EU proactively dened a foreign policy role
for itself in that process. Its aim was to ‘extend peace, democracy, security and economic
and social development throughout the entire American region’ (European Commission
2003: Foreword).
As such, the EU stresses the need for a balanced approach to drugs policy; the need
for an eective policy in relation to the circulation of small arms, which represent a par-
ticular problem in the region; the need to build anti-corruption capacity in partner coun-
tries, and reforms of national security- and justice sectors, focusing in particular, on access
to the justice system for all citizens as well as the respect for human rights at all times
and by all actors (European Commission 2011). In other words, the European Union has
taken on board many of the basic principles of citizen security, clearly seeing violence as
a multi-faceted problem in which many conditions interact in a non-additive fashion to
produce what, in the language of Complexity, can be described as an incoherent pattern
of conditions. Using the CDE model it is, in fact, possible to illustrate this incoherence
graphically, as seen in Table 1 below:
366 vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 Lehmann
Table 1: CDE model – Conditions of violence in Central America
Conditions for
Self-organisation
Violence
Container Recognition of violence as a problem
Social class
Community
Difference Experience of violence
Priorities in dealing with violence, objectives
Purpose of violence: Why is it committed?
Social and economic differences
Exchanges/Connections Media
Political structures to address violence
Violence as a means of exchange: ‘against criminals’ or as a defence
mechanism of community
Emergent Behaviour Incoherent. Incompatible containers; too many significant differences;
exchanges insufficient to release tension. System not resilient enough.
Source: Elaborated by the author.
ere is broad consensus across the region, amongst political actors at all levels, as
well as the population at large, that violence is a serious problem which needs to be tack-
led. is, then, becomes a key container as policy-makers prioritize this issue politically.
Yet, Central American society actually lacks any strong and enduring bonds that hold
it together. It is frequently noted that nation-formation has been very weak (Leonard
2011). erefore, it is the dierences between the agents that predominate. Here one can
nd deep social divisions between a small elite which controls the vast majority of wealth
and large parts of the population which are extremely poor (Leonard 2011). Additionally,
there are political divisions, economic divisions and, as will be shown below, dierences
in the extent to which particular problems, such as violence, impact on specic segments
of the population.
is enormous dierence in the distribution of wealth has a huge bearing on a host
of other dierences that mark Central American society. For instance, it contributes to,
and reinforces, a geographical segregation, with poor people disproportionally living on
the periphery of the big cities or the countryside. It equally reinforces professional dier-
ences, with poor people disproportionally working in service jobs – for instance as maids,
security guards, porters, and the like. It reinforces educational divisions between those
who can aord private education and those who cannot. It reinforces dierences in access
to quality health care, which, in turn, has led to, and sustained, a remarkable dierence in
life expectancy and other health outcomes (IFAD 2011).
As a result, each agent and group has developed its own containers. For instance,
the upper and middle classes oen live in gated communities to which ‘outsiders’ do not
have access, creating a strong spatial container. Equally, it is virtually unheard of – and
oen considered dangerous – for outsiders to enter the poorer communities, as the author
knows from personal experience. Gangs control who can and cannot come into their ter-
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 367
ritories and going into the ‘wrong’ community can be fatal. Gangs, however, are a crucial
container, providing order and an opportunity to overcome, for instance, resource dier-
ences (Farah 2016).
is segregation is underscored by the exchanges in the system. Here, one crucial
role belongs to the media. Concentrated in the hands of few, the media play a critical role
in pushing one particular narrative with regards to violence (Pine 2008). ey dene
violence as being the acts of one particular group (gangs) involved in a couple of activities
(drugs, extortion) coming from a particular area (slums). ey therefore strongly rein-
force existing dierences, be they social, political, or economic (Farah 2016).
is amounts to an incredibly incoherent pattern of self-organization. Coherence is
dened as the degree to which parts of a system ‘t’ each other or the external environ-
ment, and it is a necessary factor in sustainability. In Central America, the parts of the
system do not ‘t.’ Rather, the dierent parts and agents are in antagonistic opposition to
one another.
Patterns, as dened above, are similarities, dierences, and connections that have
meaning across time and space. Yet the conditions just described point to patterns which
simply do not have meaning across the social system as a whole. What containers there are
apply primarily to certain sub-groups of society. For instance, the political and economic
elite is bound together by an enormously strong container (wealth, access to economic
opportunity, geographical location, etc.) which in most other sections of society serves
only as a marker of signicant dierence (for instance, most people cannot live where the
elite lives, or cannot dream to work where they work, or cannot go to the schools that the
elite can send their kids to, etc.).
Critically, what the above understanding indicates is a lack of connections between
the dierent parts of society. Dierent agents acting within the system are essentially liv-
ing separate lives. ey do not come into contact with one another in such a way as to
turn the tensions generated by their dierences into opportunities for meaningful change.
Rather, any contact serves exclusively to reinforce their respective status so that everybody
always remembers who they are.
It is within this context that international organizations work to address violence.
Yet, as shown, they have not overcome the incoherence which leads to, and sustains, vio-
lence. Violence in Latin America has remained at astronomically high levels (Asmann and
O’Reilly 2020). e region has remained the most violent in the world (e Economist
2018) and, within it, Central America has continued to be the most violent sub-region,
with both Honduras and El Salvador amongst the most violent countries in the world
(World Bank 2020). In fact, as Ashman and O’Reilly (2020) have shown, aer some de-
cline, in 2019 homicide rates increased again in Honduras. e question, then, is what
explains this. Looking at what the EU does in Central America is, once more, instructive
in this respect, as the following table illustrates:
368 vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 Lehmann
Table 2: CDE model – The political approach to Violence in Central America
Conditions for
Self-organisation
Violence
Container Citizen security approach to violence by the EU
Difference
Emphasis given to violence by various actors at regional level
Difference between regional, national and local approach to violence
Internal differences between actors
Differences in interests between international organizations and (some of)
their respective member states
Exchange
Funding for projects from actors at regional level
Political structures to address violence at regional, national and local level
Public opinion
Emergent Behaviour
Incoherent. Weak containers; countervailing differences; exchanges too
narrow to release tension. System not resilient enough.
Source: Elaborated by the author
As shown above, there is a clear focus on citizen security on the part of the EU in its
stated approach to addressing violence in Central America. Yet, this emphasis is oen not
shared by other actors. For instance, a signicant part of the funding for Central America
coming from the United States is explicitly for hard security purposes, aimed at confront-
ing organized crime groups and gangs in combat (Huey 2014). Bearing in mind the power
this country has within, and over, the countries of the region, this is a signicant distinc-
tion which makes a dierence.
Yet, critically, such dierences exist not only between actors, but also within particu-
lar organizations, depending on a host of factors, including which political level they are
engaging at. e EU has a host of initiatives which clearly aim for both economic and
political change in the region. is is shown by what the EU does at local level, for instance
through its projects to bolster education in poor communities or infrastructure devel-
opment (European Union External Action Service 2020). In doing so, the EU actually
adopts, consciously or not, principles that are clearly compatible with an HSD approach,
as outlined above, and citizen security. What’s more, according to data compiled by the
Association for a More Just Society (AJS), such local initiatives have oen led to a signi-
cant reduction in violent crime at local level, sometimes up to 75% (AJS 2020).
Yet, at the same time, the organization has been contradictory when it comes to deal-
ing with national governments. For instance, as one senior EU diplomat stated who, at the
time, was stationed in Honduras: ‘What we want here is stability’ (Senior EU Diplomat
Honduras, interview, 2014). In relation to specic problems in specic countries in the
region, the EU has been unwilling to challenge the status quo – the social, political and
economic structures and conditions – in any signicant way. For instance, in response to
the disputed Presidential elections in Honduras in 2017, the EU attested that the problems
in the vote count were ‘merely of a technical nature’ (European Union Electoral Observ-
er Mission 2018) and did not question the legitimacy of the result, which saw President
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 369
Hernandez re-elected by a razor-thin margin, having been considerably behind before a
power outage stopped the electronic counting of the votes. When power returned, he had
wiped out the decit in votes to frontrunner Salvador Nasralla. e EU merely called for
further eorts at inclusive government. In attesting a technical fault in the counting pro-
cess, the EU was actually more timid in its ndings than the Organization of the American
States (OAS 2018). Similar observations can be made in relation to Guatemala and the
bland EU response to the shut-down of the UN-sponsored anti-corruption and impunity
commission (European Union External Action Service 2018).
Such tensions are also evident when looking at the interaction between the EU and its
member states. Many of those have their own national interests in Latin America, strongly
shaped by historical connections (as in the case of Spain) or particular national com-
mitments in relation to, for instance, development aid. In practical terms, this means,
amongst other things, that some of the work related to security and violence in Central
America is nanced by the European Union whilst other is nanced by one or several of
its member states. In some of these cases, the national funders are clearly interested in, at
the macro level, stability and protecting the status quo whilst, in others, the aim is clearly
to bring about change (Grefe 2012).
Similar tensions can be observed at the national level. Governments oen pursue
hard-line security policies following the iron-st approach outlined above. In recent years,
all three Northern Triangle countries have sought to dene street gangs such as MS 13
as terrorist organizations with associated extraordinary powers for law-enforcement and,
increasingly, the army to act against these groups without the usual recourse to due pro-
cess (Blake 2017; Puerta 2018). Such measures, whilst of dubious eectiveness in terms
of reducing violence, are very popular with signicant sections of society (Dudley 2010;
Phillips 2014). Soldiers, then, become, for this segment of the population, the signicant
dierence in addressing their fears. Such a narrow denition of the problem of violence
generates a sense of security through the idea that the problem can be contained, both
socially and geographically.
Yet, this runs contrary to some of the very policies that other levels of the state pur-
sue. At the local level, there has been a considerable increase in citizen security initiatives
across the region over recent years, oen sponsored by Non-Governmental Organisations
(NGOs), other outside organizations (national or international) or local authorities (Mug-
gah and de Carvalho 2014). ere have been both social initiatives – such as education
and infrastructure projects – but also initiatives to improve the quality of policing within
the community in order to establish more trust between the population and local law
enforcement. is has happened by encouraging and facilitating joint work between state
institutions and independent organizations – mainly NGOs which work on specic ques-
tions such as Children’s or Women’s rights (Rísquez 2017). Once again, there are several
success stories across Latin America which show the eectiveness of such approach at the
local level (Muggah and de Carvalho 2016).
Yet, this same third sector is oen subject to enormous intimidation by the national
government (Frank 2018). As one Executive of one NGO concerned with children’s rights
370 vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 Lehmann
put it: ‘I have cars with police observing me permanently stationed outside my house’
(Senior civil society and children’s rights activist, interview, 2015). Another senior ocial
for a dierent children’s charity hence stated: ‘We do the state’s work for them. Really, [the
state] should make sure children are in school, not us’ (Senior ocial from international
NGO in Honduras, interview, 2015). In other words, the state is undermining some of its
own policies, working extraordinarily hard to stop any meaningful change from occurring
(Lehmann 2019). One can illustrate the inconsistencies in policy visually, described in the
Table 3 below:
Table 3: Violence and political responses as a process of self-organization
in Central America – A summary
Conditions for
Self-organisation
Stability and iron fist
policies
Citizen security-based
initiatives
Iron fist, stability AND
citizen security policy
Container Small and few: Violence
as a clearly definable
problem committed by
clearly identifiable actors
Many and entangled: The
social conditions (‘root
causes’) of violence
Large and many: What are
the aims of the policy?
Aimed at whom? What
actions?
Difference Few: Gang-member or
not; how many killed or
imprisoned
Many, some significant:
Resources from
international community,
for instance
Innumerable: The same
agent projecting different
objectives to different
partners;
Tensions within and
between different actors
Exchange Few: Media
The ‘ok’ from the
international community
for actions undertaken
Ambiguous: NGOs at
meso-level working
with state and local
community
Arbitrary, Meaningless:
Who communicates what
to whom and how?
Too many conflicting
messages
Emergent
Behaviour
Predictable pattern
Clear cause and effect
Tight coupling
Emergent patterns
Emergent structure
Nonlinear cause and
effect
Loose coupling
No patterns
Random
No cause and effect
Uncoupling
Source: Elaborated by the author
e key issue to emerge out of this debate is the problem of inconsistencies within and
between dierent political actors. Within a context of many more signicant dierences
than containers and few meaningful exchanges, no coherent pattern of action can emerge.
In what has been described above, it is possible to observe three dierent patterns of action
being pursued oen by the same actors. On the one hand, the international community, as
represented by the European Union, seeks stability and predictability in Central America.
To do so, it supports the status quo at national level. On the other, it seeks change through
a host of initiatives, oen quite explicitly embracing the principles of citizen security. Yet,
with this contradictory strategy of change and stability that coexist, the end result is a
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 371
random pattern in which cause and eect are ‘de-coupled’: ‘Every dollar [the international
community] spends is money to fortify the status quo’ (Frank, interview, 2013).
e end result of this is clear from the available data: Violence uctuates both in terms
of intensity and where it occurs, but the overall pattern remains unchanged (Igarapé Insti-
tute 2017; World Bank 2020). Rather than addressing the issue of incoherence, of which
violence is one of the most visible consequences, this inconsistent approach contributes to
and locks-in this incoherence. In other words, the international community helps perpet-
uate the very problem it sets out to address. e disconnect between policies pursued at
the various levels of the system means that there can be no scaling of successful policies
across the system as a whole. It also makes it much easier for actors trying to resist changes
to do so. Actions at one level, for instance, the national level, can signicantly undermine
the eectiveness of actions at another (for instance, at regional level).
Now what? Addressing the issue of incoherence
e are several points to come out of the above case study: Firstly, in many ways, one of
the key problems confronted by the international community in addressing violence is
that its members ask the wrong questions. Violence is the expression of social, political
and economic incoherence. As such, the key question for the international community is
not how to eliminate violence but what can be done to increase social cohesion within the
region? In other words, what conditions need to be changed in order to increase social
cohesion across the system as a whole.
is leads to a second point, namely the question of which social conditions identi-
ed as contributing to, and sustaining, social incoherence actors like the European Union
actually have a chance of signicantly and sustainability inuencing? ere needs to be
recognition that large-scale so-called reform programs will inevitably confront enormous
resistance by those who stand to lose the most from any change. Recent experiences with
anti-corruption eorts in Guatemala and Honduras have demonstrated clearly that po-
litical and economic elites will ght back. Are organizations like the EU prepared to take
them on? e evidence suggests they are not.
irdly, eorts to increase coherence have to focus as well on the internal coherence
of those international actors working in Central America. In the case of the European
Union, it is of little use advocating and implementing change at the micro level (which
has oen been done with some success) whilst aiming for stability at the macro level. e
result of this internal incoherence is that even when there are local successes in violence
reduction, there is no way of scaling these successes across the system as a whole. Inco-
herence is not only sustained but increased.
With these three issues in mind, it is possible to make some tentative practical sugges-
tions as to what international organizations could do in order to increase social coherence
within the system in which they work.
e rst critical change in approach should be one towards increasing de-centraliza-
tion. ere are several micro-level success-stories which have not led to a change in the
372 vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 Lehmann
overall pattern of conditions (Diez and Tocci 2017). One of the reasons for this is that
there is no critical mass of successes at local level which could be used to change the prac-
tical and political dynamics at meso and macro levels. Can international organizations
show what works at local level and use this to change the dynamics of the system as a
whole? How this can be done is a key question for further research.
To achieve widespread decentralization, however, it would be imperative to make in-
ternational organizations less risk averse. erefore, one challenge is to demonstrate the
utility of an approach such as de-centralization using traditional methods of social scienc-
es and policy-making. Data shows that violence in Latin America is a highly concentrated
phenomenon, both geographically and socially. It occurs in very specic neighbourhoods
against very specic groups of people and is committed using predominantly one meth-
od: rearms (Jaitman and Ajzenmann 2016). Whilst violence moves from place to place,
these characteristics are very stable. is allows for clearly targeted policies within a stable
strategic framework of objectives.
As such, what is suggested here is not particularly radical in terms of method but does
represent a signicant departure in terms of approach. erefore, one key challenge is to
sell the utility of this approach, based on Complexity and Human Systems Dynamics, to
policy-makers. How this can be done will be a key area for research in the future.
Conclusions
Violence in Latin America is a long-standing problem, as are eorts on the part of the
international community to address this issue. Yet, just about every piece of empirical data
shows these eorts have not been successful or, even in cases they have been, they have
proven unsustainable.
In this article, it has been argued that the reasons for this lack of success lie, rst, in
the way violence has been dened by those actors trying to confront it. It has been shown
that violence is an expression of an incoherent pattern of social conditions. As such, the
objective of any policy to address violence needs to be to increase the coherence of the
social system within which the problem exists.
Yet, current eorts by the international community contribute to the worsening of this
incoherence by adopting, and facilitating, essentially two dierent, and contradictory pol-
icy approaches. While on the one hand they implement political actions clearly aimed at
change at the local level, they preach, and help sustain, stability at the macro level. In doing
so, they add an extra layer of incoherence that can already be identied in the common
existing tensions between local and national political actors and their actions.
As such, the urgent task for policy makers is to increase both their own coherence
as well as that of the system within which they are acting. How this can be done leads to
some key questions for further research, amongst them, how successful local initiatives to
address violence can be scaled to the national and regional level.
is, in turn, calls for much interdisciplinary work on how to reform policy-making
organizations to become more open and adaptive so as to embrace self-organization as
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 373
a process to be encouraged and pro-actively shaped. As argued above, this will require
a commitment to an open, inclusive and decentralized approach to policy-making. Its
proponents should be incumbent on demonstrate, in detail, how it could be encouraged
and implemented across all levels of the policy-making and implementation process. is
is particularly true in the area of international politics and political cooperation at the
international level of the type analysed in this work, since, here, we are oen dealing with
several huge organizations which cannot simply be transformed from one state to another
state. e way such organizations work and evolve needs to be adapted over time.
Finally, this leads us to the question of expectations as to which social conditions
international organizations can actually inuence and which results can be obtained. It
may well lead to a re-examination of both the problem denition and one’s own working
practices. Whilst such a conclusion may be politically initially uncomfortable, it is also
necessary, bearing in mind the disappointing results of policies so far. It would also be
liberating, since it would free these actors from the unrealistic expectations they are oen
subjected to. In other words, such a re-denition of purpose and reform of decision-mak-
ing structures would, in and of itself, initiate a process which can increase the coherence
of the social systems within which these actors engage. e task is urgent, and time is
pressing.
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Acknowledgements
e present article is a partial representation of the results of two research projects which were
nanced, respectively, by the Europe and Global Challenges Programme, jointly funded by the
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Compagnia di San Paolo and the Volkswagen Foundation and the
Fundação de Ampáro à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), grant number 2015/06849-3.
About the author
Kai Enno Lehmann is Associate Professor at the Institute of International Relations of
the University of São Paulo (IRI-USP) in Brazil, having previously held positions at the
Pontical Catholic University of Rio e Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and the University of Liverpool
in England, from which he holds a Ph.D. in International Relations. He works on crises
and the response of the international community to them, using the conceptual frame-
work of Complexity, with particular focus on Latin America. He has done several pieces
of consultancy work for the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and
Development and the Bertelsmann Foundation on Central America.
Entrenching the Problem? vol. 43(2) May/Aug 2021 379
Enfatizando o Problema? Organizações Internacionais
e Seu Engajamento na América Latina para Enfrentar a
Violência - O Caso da União Europeia no Triângulo Norte
Resumo: A América Latina é a região mais violenta do mundo. No entanto, décadas
de investimento político e nanceiro da comunidade internacional não tiveram os
resultados desejados. Usando o trabalho da União Europeia no Triângulo Norte da
América Central como estudo de caso, este artigo pergunta o que explica essa falha.
Utilizando o enquadramento conceitual de Complexidade e Dinâmica do Sistema
Humano, ele argumenta que as políticas atuais realmente consolidam o padrão de
condições que conduzem, e sustentam, a violência. Ele mostra como, ao reconcei-
tuar esse problema usando os conceitos de Complexidade, as políticas podem se
tornar mais ecazes e sustentáveis.
Palavras-chave: violência; América Latina; União Europeia, complexidade;
Dinâmica do Sistema Humano (HSD).
Received on 9 July 2020, and approved for publication on 26 November 2020.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
