Criminal heterarchy and its critics: governance and the making of insecurity in Colombia

ABSTRACT

The FARC, Colombia’s oldest and biggest guerrilla organisation, has long been constructed as the country’s public enemy number one, an enemy that is increasingly portrayed as an outright criminal actor who abandoned all political ambitions. This image of the FARC as a criminal threat to the Colombian state and society is central to a broader turn towards criminalisation in Colombian politics. Through the lens of a critical governance perspective and the notion of the state’s discursive selectivity this article analyses turning points during which the construction of Colombian society’s criminal enemies became a driving force in the country’s security governance. Which social forces support the implementation of criminalising forms of security governance and how? What are the social and political consequences of the latter? In answering these questions, the article argues that the war on (guerrilla) crime assumes a ‘productive’ role for Colombia’s formal democracy.