Grammar of Threat: Governance and Order in Public Threats by Criminal Actors

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231152745
• Author: Philip L. Johnson,Shauna N. Gillooly
• Date: 01 September 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(10) 1567–1596

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231152745

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Grammar of Threat:

Governance and Order in

Public Threats by

Criminal Actors

Philip L. Johnson

1

and Shauna N. Gillooly

2,3

Abstract

Why do criminal actors publicly display threatening messages? Studies of

organized crime emphasize that criminal actors rely on clandestine networks

of inf‌luence. Subtle or coded threats are an effective means of extending that

inf‌luence, but publicizing these threats appears to undermine their chief

advantage. We argue that publicized threats broadcast an imagined order,

delineating who has a place in society under criminal control, and who does

not. To demonstrate this argument, we construct a “grammar of threat”and

use this to analyze public threats broadcast by four criminal actors: two

groups in Colombia and two in Mexico. The analysis demonstrates that every

group projects an order through their threats, but that the order imagined

varies by group. Some orders are more clearly ideological; some are more

localized or more expansive. These f‌indings highlight the important role of

communication—distinct from but often combined with violence—in

criminal governance.

Keywords

organized crime, violence, threats, communication, Latin American politics

1

Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

2

College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

3

Instituto PENSAR, Pontif‌ica Universidad Javieriana, Bogota, Colombia

Corresponding Author:

Philip L. Johnson, Princeton University, New South Building, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.

Email: pljohnson@princeton.edu

Introduction

On a Monday in May 2019, students at the University of Antioquia in

Colombia found themselves the targets of a series of threatening pamphlets

plastered around their campus. The messages warned of a violent social

cleansing operation against students who engaged in political activity instead

of quietly going about their studies. The messages were signed by a notorious

criminal band, the ´

Aguilas Negras (Redacción, 2019). While threatening

messages are a common tactic of insurgent and militia groups in Colombia, the

publication of threats by a criminal group that supposedly has no agenda

beyond prof‌it—least of all an agenda against peaceful students—is puzzling

(Uribe Alarcón, 2018). Yet these threatening messages were hardly an

anomaly; the Aguilas Negras publicized hundreds of threats against various

targets in the preceding years (Bolaños, 2018).

Illicit economies operate outside of (formal) state regulation, and so ex-

tralegal violence—or at least the possibility of such violence—plays a sig-

nif‌icant role in ordering criminal activity (Schelling, 1971). However, most

criminal actors moderate the frequency and visibility of their violence most of

the time (Blume, 2022;Duran-Martinez, 2018). Threats are a useful way to

induce desired behavior in a target without resorting to violence that risks

drawing the attention of the state or reprisals from rival criminal actors

(Lessing, 2015). For a criminal group with an established reputation, a coded

or implied threat is often enough to induce compliance (Gambetta, 2009).

However, the power of threats resides in the fact that they can achieve the

desired effects while leaving almost no trace. No corpse appears to increase

homicide statistics and goad the government into a response (Cruz & Duran-

Martinez, 2016). Awhispered word or a knock on the door late at night may be

enough to communicate the threat to the intended target, while leaving no

witnesses or evidence to implicate the author of the threat.

1

Broadcasting a

threat seems to undermine the main advantage of threats—the ability to exert

inf‌luence that is largely invisible to any wider public. Why, then, do criminal

actors such as the ´

Aguilas Negras publicize their threats to a far wider au-

dience than their intended target?

We de f‌inea threat as a communicated projection of future violence (Brown,

2020). We def‌ine a public threat as a threat deliberately publicized so as to be

observable by audiences other than the target of the threat. This study argues

that public threats are a way of imagining order and control on the part of

criminal actors. These threats delineate who has a place in society and who

does not, as well as who can wield violence on behalf of society. This is a form

of “imagining”because it projects a social and political order to a general,

public audience (Anderson, 2006). The threat makes possible the order, while

also foreshadowing the actions that will make real the order. While this

political imagining is common across public threats by criminal actors, the

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