Gema Kloppe-Santamaría, In the Vortex of Violence: Lynching, Extralegal Justice, and the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020), pp. xvi + 212, $85.00 hb, $34.95 pb and E-book; £70.00 hb, £29.00 pb and E-book.

Abstract

political interests, proactively influenced subnational politics and became de facto local rulers. The consequence of this is a deepening human-rights crisis as civil society is unprotected (or even attacked) by a subverted state. To break the state −crime nexus and avoid the emergence of democratic dynamics connected to the criminal underworld, Trejo and Ley suggest the implementation of profound reforms to the security and judicial sector or transitional justice processes. If Votes, Drugs, and Violence does a great job in showing theoretically and practically how authoritarian regimes contribute to the formation and consolidation of the grey zone of criminality, it tells us little about how these zones can (or cannot) reproduce themselves in liberal democracies. Although it ismentioned that these grey zones are narrower in liberal democracies, we are not told how it is possible that most illegal drugs are consumed here. If liberal democracies enjoy relative peace and prosperity, it is probably through the export of violence to developing countries − a dynamic exemplified in the flow of guns from the United States to Mexico− something the book is unable to look at due to its subnational focus. Similarly, there is no discussion on the pertinence of drug regulation for the reduction of violence, a remarkable absence given that such an approach has been increasingly suggested by scholars, activists and policy-makers as one solution to the problems. Such gaps, however, do not diminish the impact of the book for the development of a ‘political science of organized crime and large-scale criminal violence’ (pp. 8, 27, 291–2) and it has valuable lessons for students of the state, organised crime, armed conflicts, and democratic transitions. Better understanding of these grey zones is a particularly pressing issue for the increasing number of people around the world who now live under criminal governance regimes supported by state officials.