In summer 2014, US agencies responsible for the border with Mexico were overwhelmed by tens of thousands of unaccompanied children arriving from Central America. Unprepared to address this unexpected kind of migrant, the US government deployed troops to carry out a new border mission: the feeding, care, and housing of this wave of children. This event highlights the complex social, economic, and political issues that arise along borders. In American Crossings, nine scholars consider the complicated modern history of borders in the Western Hemisphere, examining borders as geopolitical boundaries, key locations for internal security, spaces for international trade, and areas where national and community identities are defined. Among the provocative questions raised are, Why are Peru and Chile inclined to legalize territory disputes through the International Court of Justice, undermining their militaries? Why has economic integration in the "Tri-Border Area" of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay increased illicit trade supporting transnational terrorist groups? And how has a weak Ecuadorian presence at the Ecuador-Colombia border encouraged Colombian guerrillas to enforce the international borderline?

Mining and hydrocarbon production in Latin America is high-stakes for extractive firms, communities in resource-rich zones, and states. Amid global commodity price increases and liberal economic policies, the sectors have expanded dramatically in recent decades. This surge has made private investors and governments in the region ever more committed to extraction. It also has increased alarm within local communities, which have organized around the environmental, cultural, and social impacts of mining and hydrocarbons. Moreover, activists have mobilized to demand material benefits, in the forms of royalty distributions and direct company investment in local services and infrastructure. These conflicts take the form of legal battles, large-scale protests, and standoffs that pit communities against companies and the state, and consequently have suspended production, destabilized politics, and expended state security resources. In The Politics of Extraction, Maiah Jaskoski looks at how mobilized communities in Latin America's hydrocarbon and mining regions use participatory institutions to challenge extraction. In some cases, communities act within formal participatory spaces, while in others, they organize "around" or "in reaction to" these institutions, using participatory procedures as focal points in the escalation of conflict. Based on analysis of thirty major extractive conflicts in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru in the 2000s and 2010s, Jaskoski examines community uses of public hearings built into environmental licensing, state-led prior consultation with native communities affected by large-scale development, and local popular consultations or referenda. She finds that communities select their strategies in response to the specific participatory challenges they confront: the trials of initiating participatory processes, gaining inclusion in participatory events, and, for communities with such access, expressing views about extraction at the participatory stage. Surprisingly, the communities least likely to channel their concerns through state institutions are the most unified and have the strongest guarantee of participation. Including a wealth of data and complex stories, Jaskoski provides the first systematic study of how participatory institutions either channel or exacerbate conflict over extraction.

"Military Politics and Democracy in the Andes" challenges conventional theories regarding military behavior in post-transition democracies. Through a deeply researched comparative analysis of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian armies, Maiah Jaskoski argues that militaries are concerned more with the predictability of their missions than with sovereignty objectives set by democratically elected leaders.

Jaskoski gathers data from interviews with public officials, private sector representatives, journalists, and more than 160 Peruvian and Ecuadorian officers from all branches of the military. The results are surprising. Ecuador's army, for example, fearing the uncertainty of border defense against insurgent encroachment in the north, neglected this duty, thereby sacrificing the state's security goals, acting against government orders, and challenging democratic consolidation. Instead of defending the border, the army has opted to carry out policing functions within Ecuador, such as combating the drug trade. Additionally, by ignoring its duty to defend sovereignty, the army is available to contract out its policing services to paying, private companies that, relative to the public, benefit disproportionately from army security.

Jaskoski also looks briefly at this theory's implications for military responsiveness to government orders in democratic Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela, and in newly formed democracies more broadly.