국외 정세의 변화와 국내 제도의 부적절한 전환: 에콰도르 치안 악화의 복합적 요인 = Changing international circumstances and inadequate domestic institutional transitions: Double factors behind the deterioration of public security in Ecuador

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper attempts to explain the deterioration of public security in Ecuador through a dynamic and complex analysis of domestic and international factors. It raises the following research question: What are the factors that caused Ecuador, an example of sound public security in Latin America until the mid-2010s, to fall into the worst situation of public security in the late 2010s? Most existing studies on the causes behind the instability of public security tend to focus on domestic factors. The regional circumstances that constitute an important part of Latin America’s uniqueness, i.e. changes in the regional conditions directly or indirectly related to public security, have been considered constants always existing in Latin America and not been sufficiently analyzed. Through the recent case of Ecuador, this paper provides an analysis of dynamic changes in the external circumstances that affect domestic public security. At the same time, it analyzes domestic institutional changes as factors that may mediate or buffer the external changes. Based on this approach, this paper argues that the deterioration of public security in Ecuador is the result of a combination of the changes in the international drug-related conditions, particularly the full-scale inroads of the two major Mexican drug cartels upon Ecuador and their alliances with Ecuador’s domestic organized criminal groups, and the inadequate transitions of domestic policies under the rubric of neoliberal structural adjustment. In other words, the increased violence of domestic criminal organizations due to their alliances with the foreign drug cartels and the weakening of investment and institutional implementation in public security due to changes in the national policy line have generated significant synergy for the unprecedented deterioration of public security in Ecuador.