Research

My research focuses on the causes and consequences of non-state armed groups. One branch of this research agenda investigates the relationships that develop between criminalized groups and local communities. In my book, Inside Criminalized Governance: How and Why Gangs Rule the Streets of Rio de Janeiro (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, Cambridge University Press), I focus on the coercive and beneficial practices of drug-trafficking gangs in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (informal and impoverished neighborhoods). The book is primarily motivated by the following puzzle: why do some gangs develop responsive and beneficial governing relationships with local communities while others do not? In a series of article-length projects I explore how state interventions affect these groups, how individuals and communities respond to criminal organizations, and the consequences of gang territorial control for electoral democracy. Finally, I also seek to understand the relationship between forms and categories of violence that have previously been studied in isolation. In this regard, I seek to integrate criminalized violence within the broader literature on political violence, exemplified in my article, “Criminal Politics: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Organized Crime, Politics, and Violence.”

Inside Criminalized Governance

For more than thirty years, powerful drug-trafficking gangs in Rio de Janeiro have engaged in a variety of illicit activities including drug trafficking, electoral fraud, bribery of public officials, and extraordinary levels of violent crime. They have also monopolized violence in hundreds of favelas across the city and replaced state authority with governance forms of their own. Yet the relationships that they maintain with favela communities vary considerably across the city. In some favelas, gangs have developed systems of law and justice that are responsive to resident demands while maintaining a high degree of social order and providing some forms of welfare. In other favelas, gangs have implemented more coercive and unresponsive governing institutions while offering residents little in terms of goods and services. Inside Criminalized Governance seeks to understand these divergent outcomes.

The central argument of the book is that the local security environment determines governance outcomes. Gangs face two chief adversaries in their effort to maintain territorial control of favelas: rival gangs and Rio’s public security apparatus. I argue that these two types of threat impact gang governance strategies by incentivizing them to use greater degrees of coercion in the case of rival competition and to provide more responsive goods and services to the local population when they face significant police enforcement. One of the primary reasons for the divergence in gang response to these two security threats is that high levels of police enforcement, unlike threat from rivals, offers residents greater opportunities to denounce local gang members. To avoid denunciation and subsequent police enforcement, gangs seek higher levels of public support by becoming more responsive to resident demands.

To develop and test this theory, the book employs a multi-method research design. I spent nearly three years in the field, living in one set of gang territories for 18 months, during which I engaged in participant observation and archival research methods while conducting more than 200 interviews with current and former gang members, local politicians, NGO workers, and long-time favela residents. These qualitative methods provide the backbone for three in-depth case-studies in which I trace how shifting security environments impact gang governance from the birth of these organizations in the 1970s until today. I supplement these qualitative methods with micro-level data from resident denunciations of gang behavior from an anonymous hotline.

Reviews

‘Inside Criminalized Governance provides key new insights into the ways that organized crime groups govern populations and territories in the world today. Building on compelling evidence, including vivid ethnographic description and analysis of spatial control, Barnes offers a nuanced model of how interactions between criminal groups, their rivals, and the police affect how many in Latin America’s cities are governed.’     
     -Enrique Desmond Arias – Baruch College, CUNY
 
‘How and why do gangs govern urban populations? Drawing on years of fascinating fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro – including ethnography, interviews, and archival research – Barnes argues that rival groups, police, and residents shape how gangs use coercion and provide benefits. This is a major conceptual, theoretical, and empirical contribution and a must-read for scholars of non-state armed governance in contemporary Latin America.’
     -Ana Arjona – Northwestern University
 
‘Barnes goes granular on criminalized governance to depict its roots, dynamics, and forms. This is a marvelous, insightful, and enlightening book to be reckoned with in the years to come. Hard to put it down because it takes us inside a world few dare to examine and understand.’
     -Javier Auyero – The University of Texas, Austin
 
‘Based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, Inside Criminalized Governance brings the political nature of criminalized governance to the fore. This is, at the same time, a nuanced ethnography on how the urban margins are ordered and a theoretically driven study destined to make a significant impact on several disciplines, including sociology and criminology. I highly recommend it.’
     -Federico Varese – University of Oxford and Sciences Po

Peer-Reviewed Publications