Building institutional capacity: knowledge production for transnational security governance in Mexico

ABSTRACT This article engages with institutionalist knowledge production in US-Mexican security relations, demonstrating how anti-crime governance in the Americas has shifted from a heavy-handed military rationale to a good governance and civil society–centred approach. This shift has been facilitated by the newly emerging resilience discourse which advocates turning local communities from passive beneficiaries of government-sponsored law enforcement into pro-active security partners. It will be argued that the rise of good governance and society-centred policy thinking has enhanced the epistemic authority of a heterogeneous, but ideologically aligned set of human rights advocacy groups, think tanks, policy-oriented academics and for-profit development NGOs – both in Mexico and the United States. This transnational expert community has been instrumental in inserting the issue of drug-related violent crime in Mexico into a globally dominant statebuilding framework. In consequence, security governance in Mexico has taken on a more transnational character and become the object of a highly intrusive international monitoring regime.