State, Administration & Security Governance: Conceptual Perspectives

Abstract

This panel advances conceptual and historical perspectives on the state, public administration, and security governance in Latin America and beyond. The papers examine how administrative traditions, state capacity, and security practices are shaped by political contestation, historical legacies, and transnational power relations. Several contributions revisit the foundations of public administration, exploring processes of politicisation and calls to decolonise administrative thought from a Latin American perspective, as well as subnational variation in state capacity following the Mexican Revolution. Other papers interrogate contemporary security governance, moving beyond binary notions of repression to map distinct ‘varieties of mano dura’ policies across the region. The panel also situates these dynamics within a broader global context, analysing the persistence of United States colonial practices in the twenty-first century. Taken together, the papers offer critical conceptual tools for understanding how states govern, adapt, and exert authority under conditions of inequality, insecurity, and enduring imperial legacies.

Title	Details
Decolonising Public Administration: Politicisation and Administrative Traditions from a Latin American Perspective	View Paper Details
Inter-Provincial Rivalry and Subnational Variations in State Capacity After the Mexican Revolution.	View Paper Details
Political Exception in the Contemporary Chile: A Critique of its Normalization in the Case of the Chilean-Mapuche Conflict	View Paper Details
Imperial Afterlives: United Statian Colonial Practices in the Twenty-First Century	View Paper Details
Beyond Repression: Mapping ‘Varieties of Mano Dura’ Policies in Latin America	View Paper Details