Governance in Latin America: Democracy and Security

The paper aims to assess how insecurity affects the quality of democracy in Latin America from the perspective of security governance approaches. While the concept of governance has been widely applied to study the integration process in Europe, this panel argues that as security has become multidimensional in Latin America, new analytical instruments are required to advance a more comprehensive understanding of threats and the policies to deal with them. Based upon the contributions of security governance approaches, this panel seeks to assess how states, bilateral relationships and regions cooperate or fail to provide security to Latin American societies. The paper presents four areas of assessment: how security providers (states and regional institutional arrangements) are prepared in a) the area of hard security (compellence), particularly as to the military sector; b) the policies of conflict prevention trough the amelioration of root causes of the social unrest and violence, such as democracy promotion or reduction of social inequality; c) the policies of protection of threats such as drug trafficking and all types of organized crime, and d) policies to reconstitute the social tissue in post-conflict situations.