In this talk, I analyze the relationship between criminal governance and citizen claim-making for public goods. Millions of people across Latin America live in urban peripheries marked by uneven state presence but where criminal organizations are often present and govern everyday life. What impact does this overlapping reality have on the strategies citizens use to make claims on the state for public goods? A comparative analysis across three peripheral Mexico City neighborhoods shows that claim-making strategies vary in both level – individual or collective – and mode – brokered or direct. I argue that criminal governance influences claim-making through two channels: social capital and political brokerage. I use this argument to structure a comparative analysis of claim-making for a basic but fundamental public good: water. The study contributes to broader debates on distributive politics, citizenship, and democracy.

Eduardo Moncada is the Claire Tow Associate Professor of Political Science at Barnard College of Columbia University, and he is also the Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University. His research examines the origins, dynamics and consequences of crime and violence in Latin America, with a focus on how criminal governance shapes political life. He is the author of Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America (Stanford University Press) and Resisting Extortion: Victims, Criminals, and States in Latin America (Cambridge University Press). He is also co-editor of Inside Countries: Subnational Research in Comparative Politics (Cambridge University Press). In his current research, Moncada is examining how variation in the ways that criminal organizations govern territories shapes how citizens make claims on the state for public goods and services. Moncada’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, among others.