In this theoretical chapter, three frameworks help in further advancing the exploration of how Chile’s public institutions have confronted organised crime since redemocratisation: governance studies, policy networks and historical institutionalism. They do so by interpreting the state’s security performance through the centric and decentralising approaches; by exploring the formation and development of public institutions policy communities in light of contending policy issues; and by accounting for the changing institutional complexities, plus the factors that have been most influential in accommodating novel practices for security policy action. The historical institutionalism approach supports this book’s layout when presenting each of Chile’s prosecution policy institutions (the Ministry of the Interior, the Public Ministry, the policing bodies and the Financial Analysis Unit) and their time-evolving governance outcomes. It does so by bridging those particular and underlying institutional processes for policy action that are narrated in the subsequent empirical chapters. It concludes by assuming the general idea that a cumulative chronological narrative of events allows for a better exploration of networked security governance. The chapter also provides a brief explanation of the research methodology used to collect and interpret written and oral sources of original data.