Solidary Neighbors? The Involvement of Middle-Class Communities in the Governance of Security and Disorder in Brazil

This study explores how residents govern security in two middle-class neighborhoods in Londrina, the fourth largest city in southern Brazil. Utilizing nodal governance theory, it analyses a security program called Solidary Neighbor ( Vizinho Solidário, in Portuguese) in both neighborhoods, in place since the early 2010s. Document analysis, direct observation, and interviews with 26 respondents comprising mostly residents, but also police officers, sex workers, and homeless people, were conducted to assess how the program works and what implications it has for the governance of public spaces. The findings show that the Solidary Neighbor program functions as a community governance node oriented toward reducing criminal opportunities with the use of technologies to monitor outsiders and displace sex workers and homeless people. The article concludes that particularly in contexts such as in Brazil, bottom-up security initiatives have the potential to produce hostile and exclusionary public spaces.

Security Networks

Studies into organizational networks and governance tend to analyze professional behavior through the lens of rational (self)interest, resources, conflict, and power relations. However legitimate, this viewpoint overlooks the normative dimensions of networks. Therefore, in studying nodal security governance, the authors introduce the concept of “social practice,” which highlights the intrinsic normativity of what networked actors do. Social practices, they argue, deepen the theory of nodal governance by focusing more precise attention on the mentalities and value-laden characteristics of actors in highly complex settings. Drawing on this insight, the chapter presents a theoretical framework for analyzing social practices in nodal security governance, after which an empirical example concretizes our rather abstract line of reasoning.

The role of defensive firearm use in the governance of security in Latin America

This article discusses the role played by citizens who acquire firearms for defensive purposes in the governance of security in Latin America. Do states possess the capacity to enforce formal-legal regulations or do citizens participate in the governance of security autonomously? Does the behavior of armed citizens correspond with the strategies and goals defined in security policies? The analysis concludes that firearms facilitate a behavior which delegitimizes authorities and harms state security policies. This role is more frequent in Latin America due to the legitimacy deficits of authorities and the lack of information regarding firearms and users, which hinder state capacities to control armed citizens from a distance. Their conceptualization in scenarios of regulated governance is therefore problematic, since their behavior evades state control frequently and with ease. These citizens are therefore better conceptualized under a nodal governance model.