ABSTRACT
This chapter provides preliminary insights into some questions. It proposes a series of intuitions to account for states decisions to confront and fight versus collaborate and sign pacts with violent, non-state actors. The chapter draws from scholarship on bargaining, rational war, peace-building, and electoral politics to assess the extent to which the arguments advanced in the literature may implicitly explain the variation. The discussion tended to assume that a lack of state-building and reclaiming state functions and territories back from non-state actors results from a lack of capacity or relative power. The Mexican experience suggests the importance of domestic politics, specifically democratization and elections, in determining state strategies. Trejo and Ley develop a model in which, under authoritarian governance, the state allows non-state specialists in violence to regulate, tax, and protect the criminal underworld in exchange for their political loyalty. The chapter concludes by exploring the implications of divergent government strategies towards illicit non-state actors for state consolidation and governance.
