Democratic Political Transition and Re-Securitization: A Comparative Analysis of Argentina and Chile

HATHAZY, PAUL

Toronto

Congreso; XIX Congreso Mundial de Sociologia ISA; 2018

Asociación Internacional de Sociologia

This presentation is framed within a comparative study of security policies involving crime control and migration control in Argentina and Chile since the transition to democracy. Is also follows from my previous studies on the transformation of the police, courts and prisons in Argentina and Chile in the second half of the 20th century up to the present, with a special attention to the dynamics and effects of political democratic transition, and element sidelined in North-Atlantic studies of penal state change After finishing that study I realized, that penal bureaucratic change in democratic times, could not be understood, without considering the emergence and consolidation of ?security?, as a public problem in democratic times, as the issue of ?security? kept on appearing in the interviews and documents studies. Breaking with common sense assumption that these were institutional responses to the problem of crime in democratic times, indeed the narrative of reformers themselves, the problem turned into how did those prior sector reforms, became attached to the democratic era security policies, if they did, and then considered the core the ?citizens security? policy, or latter the ?Public Security? policies, in Chile, combining both police, courts, prisons, but also community programs, urban design, etc. Whereas in Argentina, the we have the same reforms, but mostly policing policies get finally ?attached? and conceived as the ?solutions? for the security problem ?citizen security?, with differences between the National Government, and those of the provincial governments. Today I want to discuss that work and how the approach can also explain the Argentina case, another case of democratization