Replication Failure: U.S. Militarized Policy from Plan Colombia to the Mérida Initiative

Between 2000 and 2021, the United States invested more than $13 billion in militarized programs in Latin America, first through Plan Colombia and then with the Mérida Initiative. Despite independent evaluations raising concerns about the effectiveness and human rights violations, the U.S. used Plan Colombia as a model for the Mérida Initiative, with the primary goal of drug reduction, which neither program achieved. This thesis examines how U.S. agencies were able to replicate the program, overlooking reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) showing that cocaine production, trafficking, and cartel-related violence didn't decline. I use a two-step mixed-methods analysis, analyzing U.S. congressional testimony, GAO evaluations, declassified embassy cables, and UNODC data to argue that the replication wasn't based on the evidence presented by the agencies responsible for implementing Plan Colombia, but rather from three institutional mechanisms. The securitization framework supports agencies' belief that military enforcement is the correct approach to respond to drug trafficking. Bureaucratic politics then led agencies to use self-validating metrics as evidence of success, despite actual long-term outcomes. Lastly, coercive transfer brought the agency's form of success to Mexico, seeking to replicate the same outcomes of success described in Colombia. Overall, this paper isn't to document that these programs failed, but to explain the specific institutions that led to the replication.