When President Felipe Calderón took office he declared a war on drug lords, thus initiating a war of attrition which has claimed more than 40,000 lives in the last 5 years. In this paper I document how this escalation of…

Studies of authoritarian nations rarely consider the role and activities of regional officials. They are usually assumed to be the involuntary agents of national rulers, or the unwitting victims of local demands for political change. Instead, I argue that regional…

Why do some terrorist groups cooperate with each other, while others attack each other? Terrorist groups frequently interact. Emerging research shows that these network relationships have important consequences, but it remains unclear why some terrorist groups form ties with other…

This essay examines the effect of Mexico’s security strategy and security situation on public opinion. Political and policy analysts are highly divided as to the merits of the Mexican government’s war against the nation’s drug cartels, with some seeing the…

A broad summary of the theoretical literature on economic growth shows that this theory has transcended the neoclassical paradigm and that market rationality does not govern the human development process. Instead human development is the appropriate standard for rationality. Using…