This volume explores recent evidence of how partial state failure in Latin America interacts with new forms of organized violence, undermining the democratic consolidations of the past two decades. This 'new violence' stems from a variety of social actors: drug mafias, peasant militias and urban gangs, the socalled actores armadas, and include state-related actors like the police, military intelligence agencies and paramilitary forces. The results include both 'governance voids' - domains where the legitimate state is effectively absent - and the erosion of the capacity and willingness of stat.