Fixing The Most Violent Countries On Earth | Rachel Kleinfeld
Chris Williamson (host), Rachel Kleinfeld (guest)
In this episode of Modern Wisdom, featuring Chris Williamson and Rachel Kleinfeld, Fixing The Most Violent Countries On Earth | Rachel Kleinfeld explores how Complicit Democracies Enable Violence—and How They Can Reform Rachel Kleinfeld discusses findings from her book *A Savage Order*, exploring why some democracies are extraordinarily violent and how they can transform. She distinguishes between genuinely weak states and “complicit” states, where governments and elites tacitly or explicitly tolerate violence by non-state actors for political or financial gain. Drawing on case studies from the US South and Wild West, Italy, Colombia, Mexico, Georgia, Nigeria, India and others, she identifies recurring patterns: polarization, inequality, politicized security services, and middle-class insulation from violence. She then outlines how countries escape this trap through middle-class backlash, inclusive political movements, difficult elite bargains with violent actors, and state reforms that gradually restore legitimacy and reduce violence.
How Complicit Democracies Enable Violence—and How They Can Reform
Rachel Kleinfeld discusses findings from her book *A Savage Order*, exploring why some democracies are extraordinarily violent and how they can transform. She distinguishes between genuinely weak states and “complicit” states, where governments and elites tacitly or explicitly tolerate violence by non-state actors for political or financial gain. Drawing on case studies from the US South and Wild West, Italy, Colombia, Mexico, Georgia, Nigeria, India and others, she identifies recurring patterns: polarization, inequality, politicized security services, and middle-class insulation from violence. She then outlines how countries escape this trap through middle-class backlash, inclusive political movements, difficult elite bargains with violent actors, and state reforms that gradually restore legitimacy and reduce violence.
Key Takeaways
Violent democracies are often complicit, not weak, states.
Many highly violent democracies have functioning courts, police and bureaucracies, but elites deliberately allow or protect non-state violence (gangs, militias, mafias) because it helps them win elections, control rivals, or enrich themselves.
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Middle-class insulation enables extreme violence against the poor.
When inequality is high, the middle class can wall itself off with private security and better neighborhoods, rationalizing that violence is just “criminals killing criminals,” which allows abusive systems to persist for decades.
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Repressive crackdowns usually worsen organized crime and violence.
Policies like mano dura or “three strikes” that massively expand imprisonment tend to turn prisons into networking hubs where gangs consolidate, professionalize, and expand transnational operations, leading to more sophisticated crime.
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Lasting reform requires both inclusion and hard political bargains.
Successful cases combine three tough moves: cutting deals with some violent actors to stop open warfare, building a more inclusive state that serves marginalized communities, and then selectively but forcefully confronting remaining criminal groups.
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Social movements help middle classes choose reform over repression.
When violence finally spills into middle-class life, societies reach a tipping point; at that moment, organized social movements can steer public demand away from punitive “tough on crime” responses and toward systemic, inclusive reforms.
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Reformist leaders are essential—but can become autocratic over time.
The hyper-energetic, ego-driven personalities who can overhaul corrupt systems are also prone to overreach and authoritarian drift; societies and international actors must support them early but be willing to remove them once they turn.
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Political equality must accompany economic fixes to reduce violence.
Cash transfers or minimum incomes matter, but without genuine political voice—fair voting, reduced capture by big money, and responsiveness to poor and marginalized communities—economic measures alone will not shift the underlying violent order.
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Notable Quotes
“What I saw in country after country were these implicit deals with states that aren't weak, but have deliberately chosen to allow a certain amount of violence by non-state actors for their own reasons.”
— Rachel Kleinfeld
“Within about a decade, the old Confederates who had lost the Civil War won the peace—and they were back in power.”
— Rachel Kleinfeld
“If you’re a poor person being targeted by criminals, you also can’t turn to the police because, for all you know, they’re working together.”
— Rachel Kleinfeld
“If I couldn’t come up with something good, I was just gonna go to Mexico City and open a cooking store. There’s no reason to keep studying violence if there was no way to solve it.”
— Rachel Kleinfeld
“The people who look at a country that’s basically a failed state and say, ‘I’m gonna take over and make this place good’—it’s a very particular kind of person.”
— Rachel Kleinfeld
Questions Answered in This Episode
How can citizens in relatively safe democracies recognize early signs that their state is becoming complicit with violent actors?
Rachel Kleinfeld discusses findings from her book *A Savage Order*, exploring why some democracies are extraordinarily violent and how they can transform. ...
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What practical levers do ordinary middle-class voters have to push their governments toward inclusive reform rather than punitive crackdowns?
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How should international donors and organizations balance the need to support reformist leaders with the risk that those leaders later become authoritarian?
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Given that repression often backfires, what alternative policing and justice reforms are most effective at weakening gangs and mafias?
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How might lessons from Colombia, Georgia, or post–Civil Rights America apply to current conflicts and rising polarization in Western democracies today?
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Transcript Preview
(wind blows) Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Rachel Kleinfeld, Modern Wisdom, how are you today?
Very well. Great to be here, Chris.
Uh, I'm really excited to speak to you today. It's a, a turbulent time in politics and the, the 21st century for governments trying to make themselves work effectively, so I think it's gonna be a, a, a really interesting conversation. I'm reading your bio here. A senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for In- International Peace, and the founding CEO of the Truman National Security Project. Is that right?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Those sound like situations where there's lots of serious stuff happening all the time.
(laughs) Well, there's certainly a lot of attempts to, uh, have serious conversations about serious issues, yes.
(laughs)
Um, but, you know, the, the, the world of think tanks in Washington, D.C. is, uh, is one of advi- advising, so we advise our government, we advise your government in Britain.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and all around the world, trying to, trying to make a difference.
Yeah, uh, something tells me that you don't get much time to just, like, crack jokes and kind of chill out. It's probably a lot of serious stuff.
Uh, we have our fun, but, um, you know, I'm not, I'm not present there very often. I spend an awful lot of time at 40,000 feet, so, um, you know, flying from place to place to ... so my fun is generally on the fly in different countries doing, you know, eating street food in Afghanistan or, uh, or riding lorries in Bangladesh. That kind of thing.
That's pretty cool. So, we're, we're gonna talk about A Savage Order, which is your new book.
Mm-hmm.
Um, can you tell us, uh, why you started writing this and, and what did you want to find out when you began?
Uh, absolutely. So, when you work in a think tank, eh, there's a lot of serious talk as you've discussed, but there can also be a lot of talk that doesn't really go anywhere. And so, I wanted to see could we do anything about the problem of violence? I spent all my time reading about it, thinking about it. How do we end conflicts? What do we do about violence? And it turned out, we knew very little about what actually worked. And so, I pulled together a big conference. I brought together the experts on electoral violence, on organized crime, on gang violence. You know, you have it, we had them all in a room together. If a bomb had gone off in that room, who knows? You know (laughs) .
(laughs) It would have been ruined.
It's a, a massive, uh, brain power on violence would have been ended. Um, and I said, you know, "What do we know?" And we put together a literature review on here's all that we knew, which was quite a lot. We, we had a great deal of knowledge, actually, about how you fight gangs, how you get better policing, all sorts of things. Um, and then I said, "Okay, well, how would you get a corrupt police force in X country to adopt these ideas?" And, you know, the room just went silent, and I thought, "Okay. That's the problem I need to focus on for this book."
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