Mexico's Security Failure: Collapse into Criminal Violence

Because Mexico has failed to achieve internal security, it poses serious threats to its neighbors. This volume takes us inside the Mexican state to explain the failure there, but also reaches out to assess the impacts of Mexico#xE2;#xAC;"s security failure beyond its borders. The key innovative idea of the book, security failure, brings these perspectives together on an intermesticlevel of analysis. What doesn#xE2;#xAC;"t work within the state accounts for its negative impact on other states. It is a view that runs counter to the standard emphasis on the external, trans-national nature of criminal threats to a largely inert state. Security failure expresses the idea that, while it#xE2;#xAC;"s unhelpful to talk of states failing, it#xE2;#xAC;"s also misleading to leave out of the account how states struggle and change in interaction with those threats. Serrano#xE2;#xAC;"s volume is both timely, with Mexico much in the news, but also of lasting value. It explains Mexican insecurity in a full-dimensional manner that hasn#xE2;#xAC;"t been attempted before. Mexico received much scholarly attention a decade ago with the onset of democratization. Since then, the leading topic has become immigration. However, the security environment compelling many Mexicans to leave has been dramatically under studies. This tightly organized volume begins to correct that gap.

Paul Kenny, former lecturer in humanities, King's College, London University and Visiting Professor, Universidad National Autnoma de Mxico (UNAM). Mnica Serrano, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Professor of International Relations at EI Colegio de Mxico, and Senior Research Assistant at the Centre for International Studies, Oxford Univeristy. Arturo Sotomayor, Assistant Professor, Naval Postgraduate School.