The dramatic escalation of drug-related violence in Mexico has become a reason for concern for the “international community” and the United States, in particular. Echoing the globally dominant discourse of ´state failure´, it is argued that the Mexican state is incapable of curbing the power of the cartels and securing public security and, therefore, needs to be ´capacitated´ from the outside lest the country collapse and become a liable for the entire region. The most important endeavor in this regard is the Mérida Initiative; initially a ´classic´ security cooperation agreement between the United States and Mexico initiated in 2007. Internally, the current security crisis has accelerated state building efforts as well. Our paper critically discusses these ‘internal’ and ‘external’ state building processes as well as the relation between them. By doing so, we engage with two central issues of the panel: First, the modes of interaction between internal and external actors, and, second, the role of interaction between internal actors on different levels. We argue that the Mérida Initiative underwent a shift from a ‘classic’ logic of bilateral cooperation between sovereign states to a transnational, “post-liberal” logic of governing (Chandler). In this logic the Mexican state is merely understood as an administrative component of a multi-level governance architecture that transcends established boundaries of national self-determination. As for internal state building, we argue that the current conjuncture is indicative of a shift of Mexican centerperiphery relations, from a predominantly negotiation-based pattern to a coercion-based pattern favoring the center over the peripheries. It would seem, then, that Mexico is currently experiencing a duality of state formation processes. While internally the Mexican state seems firmly, and quite successfully, engaged in a project of coercive centralization, it is simultaneously being embedded in an international state building regime that considers the right to political autonomy conditional upon the responsible and effective exercise sovereign state capacities. Paradoxically, the Mexican state has never in its history had more centralized coercive power at its disposal then today, while at the same time never being so closely scrutinized and guided in the exercise of these powers from outside.
