Colombia has faced over fifty years of internal armed conflict, resulting in more than 9 million victims and dozens of peace negotiations with different illegal armed groups. With the demobilization of the largest paramilitary group in 2003 (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), the country saw renewed accountability efforts that highlighted the role of businesspeople in the violence. A norm of business accountability for past atrocities started to emerge with a number of convictions in the courts. When the government launched negotiations with the FARC guerrilla group in 2012, many observers expected continuity in this path of increased accountability of economic actors. But the path was severed. This chapter describes the ebbs and flows of business accountability in Colombia, looking at the role of the human rights movement in securing higher levels of accountability, and the emergence of an organized opposition from the business community to stop the process. The chapter argues that this business countermovement is a result of the success of the human rights movement in the courts, which led to convictions and brought the matter to the public eye. All of this created a more tangible threat to the interests of economic actors, leading to the subsequent backlash.

Through the study of processes of countermovement and counter-reform in the field of abortion law in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina over the past two decades, this chapter contributes to the discussion of backlash. In contrast to the judicial backlash thesis, it argues that the conservative reaction to abortion rights gains in Latin America cannot be explained as a direct or specific response to court decisions. Instead, the chapter presents an account of the development of countermovements and counter-reforms from a sociological perspective, by tracing them back to their interaction with political and legal opportunities. It identifies four types of counter-mobilization and counter-reform, based on the predominant and most successful strategies deployed by conservative actors against abortion rights in the case studies. Brazil is an emblematic case of conservative forces leveraging their legislative power via the formation of an inter-religious caucus at the national Congress. Mexico is a case of conservative pressure on subnational legislative processes. Colombia is a case of counter-legal mobilization by institutional activists anchored in national state structures. Finally, Argentina is the case in which counter-legal mobilization by civil society actors is most salient.

Chapter 4 examines how the aftosa commission understood and countered opposition, using threats and targeted violence, carefully calibrated concessions, propaganda, mediation by regional bosses and powerbrokers, and information-gathering. It argues that this blend of tactics illustrates the Mexican state’s conceptions of order and security, and supports the notion of the PRI regime as a "dictablanda"- authoritarian but institutionally weak, and reliant on a complicated blend of repressive and consensual mechanisms.

The Lava Jato (or “Car Wash”) corruption investigation offers an important case study of the evolution of legal accountability in consolidating democracies. This chapter evaluates the origins of the investigation and the early successes of prosecutors, analyzes why Lava Jato initially succeeded where numerous previous cases had floundered, discusses the causes and likely consequences of the investigation’s declining effectiveness and ultimate neutering, and reflects on what this experience suggests about legal accountability in Brazil and other democracies facing long-festering patterns of elite collusion, corruption and impunity.

This chapter investigates judicial corruption by illuminating the contrast between the high expectations generated by the construction of strong courts via ambitious reform efforts, and the reality of pervasive corruption within those same judicial institutions, especially where political power is concentrated. It examines the case of Ecuador, where a Constitutional Court with very broad formal powers granted by the 2008 Constitution was at one point in its history the site of corrupt exchanges between judges, lawyers and politicians. Crucially, such exchanges thrived when political power was concentrated: politicians demanded favourable decisions on specific issues and in exchange offered credible protection for judges seeking to engage in corrupt dealings with high-flying private litigants.

This chapter sets up the puzzle of how governments in weak institutionalized democracies regulate criminal markets and achieve relative order. While Latin America is the most violent region in the world, its criminal violence varies according to informal state responses to illicit markets. I collapse these responses into four types of informal regulatory arrangements: particularistic confrontations, particularistic negotiations, coordinated protection rackets and coordinated coexistence. A further intrigue is how elected politicians are able to contain drug-related violence with inefficient police departments prone to corruption and human rights abuses. I unpack the relationships between politicians and police, showing that different regulatory arrangements emerge from various combinations of political competition and police autonomy. This chapter then specifies the study’s research design and scope conditions (i.e., weakly institutionalized democracies) and lays out the plan for the book.