Micro -governance and citizen-based security in Brazil

This doctoral dissertation builds on the "misrule of law" literature in Latin American studies and recent scholarship on "nodal governance" in criminology to study the lawful means through which the poor, in a context of failing justice and public security, are organized at the community level to address everyday problems that cause real and perceived insecurity. I examine different forms of citizen participation in local security networks in Brazil and South Africa, and employ ideal-typical methodology to measure the extent of agency micro-governance programs enable citizens to exert on insecurity as individuals and as communities . The research draws on results from two pilot experiments, and uses survey data from the pilot sites and from a national mapping of "alternative systems of conflict administration" to demonstrate that, and explain why, local (micro)governance programs in Brazil generally fail to empower communities as a means of security. Comparative analysis of local security networks in Brazil and South Africa shows that in Brazil, lawful, regulated community-based responses to insecurity enable citizens to exert only a limited, consumptive form of agency as the majority of local programs remain monopolized by non-community actors. I argue that the failures of micro-governance programs in Brazil result from the prevalence of conservative norms about the regulation of justice on the part of state, international, and other non-community actors working within local security networks. These norms generate unnecessarily high financial and human costs for public and private partners. They also undermine practical and normative objectives of the human security agenda by shifting the locus of decision-making outside the community, creating a paradox of what can best be described as "community governance from above." My research shows that the poor are disempowered as legitimate agents of Justice and as a means of security by bureaucracies that seek to "help"—as opposed to empower—them, on the one hand, and, on a different level, by scholars and policy-makers who take for granted that the poor's usual means of problem-resolution in the context of failing public security typically involves a criminal element. Ultimately, the research tackles key questions from how to reduce insecurity in shanty-towns to why norms and values in the policy-area of justice regulation determine human security outcomes.;Key words. Human Security; Local Security Networks; Insecurity; Access to Justice; Rule of Law; Alternative Dispute Resolution; Civil Society; Citizenship rights; Shanty-towns/favelas; Local Knowledge.