This dissertation focuses on how the interaction of political, economic and social factors shape the nature of the state and civil society, and, in turn, their implications for popular participation in development. I examine the 2001 agrarian reform in Venezuela, which was part of the country's larger national project of building what the government called twenty-first century socialism. The government took an active role, pursued a redistributive development path, and promoted popular participation in the process.

The literature on state-led development projects and petro-states presents a pessimistic view of the possibilities for social change. Many of the dynamics that this literature describes occurred in Venezuela. Its economic dependence on oil exports negatively affected the agricultural sector, and contributed to the highly centralized and incoherent state structure that impeded the implementation of the country's agrarian reform. Moreover, the political conditions present in transitions to socialism tend to reinforce the existing centralization of power in the state and work against efforts at building a cohesive state bureaucracy with the necessary expertise to implement the new model. Decades of oil dependence also shaped civil society in such a way that popular sectors were relatively unorganized, and accustomed to depending on the state. The centralized nature of the state inhibited efforts to expand popular participation in decision-making.

Drawing on interviews with government employees and small farmers, as well as participant observation on farms, at farmer meetings and in government offices, my research demonstrates that the picture is not as dismal as this view would suggest. I describe how local actors, when organized, were able to influence the implementation of the agrarian reform, and thereby improve its success. Degree of decision-making power on the local level varied in the two states where I did fieldwork. In Yaracuy, where local state employees and farmers organized and coordinated with each other, they were able to wield more influence in the determination of policies, and the way these policies were implemented. As a result, these farms were relatively more successful.

There are several factors that played a particularly important role in shaping the distinct outcome in the two states, including natural resource endowments, local history, and geographical factors. By identifying the conditions under which the obstacles presented by oil, the political conditions of socialist transitions, and state-led efforts at development can be overcome, my research contributes to the literatures on development, petro-states and transitions to socialism. Moreover, many of my findings are relevant for other states because there are striking similarities in the structure and nature of the economy, the state and civil society across the Global South as a result of the legacies of colonialism and the neoliberal era.

My dissertation examines the relationship between law and society by analyzing the implementation of U.S. human rights legislation. In the 1970s, the U.S. Congress, reflecting the growing international consensus that human rights were a matter of international policy, legislated that respect for human rights be considered in all foreign aid decisions. A central feature of this legislation stipulated that aid should not go to countries “engaged in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” Subsequently, many have concluded that the United States has inconsistently applied this legislation, especially in United States-Latin America relations. These researchers have studied human rights as a self-evident concept, obscuring the fact that policy advocates—those with a vested interest in defining human rights and their violation and the United States’ response—imbue the concept with of human rights with meaning through policy debates. This dissertation takes a different approach, studying what I call the politics of meaning-making: the process by which policy advocates define and contest the meaning of these phenomena. In order to develop this approach, I examine two cases testing the United States’ commitment to promoting respect for human rights abroad: the ‘dirty war’ in Argentina (1976-1983) and the civil war in El Salvador (1980-1992). The similar scope and severity of human rights violations in both cases provides for a powerful comparison. Based upon a content analysis of 160 U.S. Congressional hearings—summing to more than 35,000 pages of documents, I find that policy advocates assessed each society’s supposed capacity for self-governance and leveraged their own analysis to develop a plan of restoring respect for human rights in Argentina and of establishing respect for human rights in El Salvador. The distinction between restoring and establishing respect for human rights is important because each had significant social consequences for all of the nations involved, both during and after these conflicts officially ended. This analysis served as a foundation for both how policy advocates framed human rights violations perpetrated during each conflict, and how they measured progress towards curbing human rights abuses. I trace the logics and resources policy advocates used to respond to each specific case of human rights violations abroad. My analysis offers a new way to understand the United States’ response to human rights violations through a unique lens. Moreover, my research points to the importance of examining the boundaries between crime and human rights violations. How and by whom these boundaries are drawn and redrawn, impacted all of the societies studied, and continues to have a contemporary impact on local, national, and global levels.

Despite a general pattern of decarceration occurring in US prison rates, an equivalent realignment has not developed around policing policy in cities across the US. This is despite the fact that in recent years, police departments throughout the country have faced intense public scrutiny for issues of misconduct and police violence. At the same time, a divide seems to be underway globally in which some cities and municipalities are adopting US-style, order-keeping policing policy, while others are reconsidering the conventional wisdom around the methods and goals involved in crime control. This dissertation investigates police practices aimed at “disorderly” activities on the margins of the law. It consists of a comparative ethnographic study of three restricted forms of entertainment in Oakland, California, Lima, Peru, and Stockholm, Sweden to investigate how different societies police activities deemed disorderly and how targeted groups respond to these interventions. Although prior penology scholarship has centered the discussion of punitive penal systems on larger political economic projects (e.g. neoliberal vs. social democratic) or solely at the site of the carceral state, this study shows how two mid-level factors—external, key government actors and internal police organizational logics—gives way to punitive practices described as dissonant disciplining. While dissonant disciplining in Oakland involved raids, surveillance, and racial profiling practices, in Lima, incosistent organizational logics made dissonant disciplining largely informal, consisting primarily of intimidation and physical violence handed out on the street. Repressive practices in these two sites threatened public safety and fueled direct acts of resistance directed at the police. Contrasting these findings, in Stockholm, policing reforms brought about by the central government paved the way for dialogue policing reforms. Dialogue policing suspended enforcement of nuisance laws in exchange for stronger relationships with policed groups, reduced incidence of violence, and diminished resistance to police efforts. The findings of the dissertation suggest the need to place greater focus on policy domains and institutional arrangements taking shape around penal organizations. Additionally, the research has policy implications as it pertains to policing reform. Namely, reform efforts aimed at reducing danger and racial bias in police practices would be served to target government actors which place untethered power in the hands of police organizations.