ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how contemporary policy thinking is reformulating the notion of international responsibility and, in the process, entrenching neoliberal governance frameworks in Western societies. It argues that in the context of the international fight against drug-related organised crime in the Americas a therapeutic discourse on demand reduction has overcome the state-building problematic according to which international security problems are caused by socio-cultural deficits in weak, failed, or fragile societies abroad. The Merida Initiative is a well-suited example to illustrate the emergence of neoliberal policy thinking and the way in which the growing awareness of global interconnectedness is eroding the binaries of the state failure framework—in the wake, further popularising therapeutic neoliberal governance at home. Rather than modernizing Mexican law enforcement agencies, the Culture of Lawfulness approach helped re-centre US policy on the “management of cultural factors”, trying to bring about a “fundamental shift in values”.
