Security and Mexico’s Southern Border: Post-Westphalian Governance?

The speed and ease of communication and degree of interconnection today have led states to readjust their concept of security—adding diverse transborder issues like transnational organized crime, health related pandemics, environmental catastrophes, and immigration to traditional territorial threats. Emil Kirchner and James Sperling (1997, 2007), who examine security governance in the European Union (EU), also elevate an associated change—from the Westphalian notion of sovereignty representing territorial integrity within a defined geographical boundary facing increasing pressures to such post-Westphalian tendencies as increasing interstate collaboration and/or with nongovernment institutions and civil society in general.1 Maintaining security and welfare is being radically altered.