Criminal Politics: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Organized Crime, Politics, and Violence

Abstract

Over the last decade, organized criminal violence has reached unprecedented levels and has caused as much violent death globally as direct armed conflict. Nonetheless, the study of organized crime in political science remains limited because these organizations and their violence are not viewed as political. Building on recent innovations in the study of armed conflict, I argue that organized criminal violence should no longer be segregated from related forms of organized violence and incorporated within the political violence literature. While criminal organizations do not seek to replace or break away from the state, they have increasingly engaged in the politics of the state through the accumulation of the means of violence itself. Like other non-state armed groups, they have developed variously collaborative and competitive relationships with the state that have produced heightened levels of violence in many contexts and allowed these organizations to gather significant political authority. I propose a simple conceptual typology for incorporating the study of these organizations into the political violence literature and suggest several areas of future inquiry that will illuminate the relationship between violence and politics more generally.

The Politics of Criminal Victimization: Pursuing and Resisting Power

“…Crime challenges order and development Barnes 2017;Durán-Martínez 2018;Kalyvas 2015;Lessing 2018;Moncada 2016;Trejo and Ley 2018;Ungar 2002;Yashar 2018). One strand of the emerging research on crime sees victims as resigned to the harm inflicted upon them by criminal actors amid absent or complicit states in contexts of "endemic fear and insecurity" (Moser and McIlwaine 2004, 3-4).…”

The limits of peace in Latin America

“…At the same time, political elites tend to downplay the political influence of criminal organisations despite calling for '"tough on crime" or "law and order" policies'. 66 Latin America provides extensive evidence of the related processes of escalation of repression and violence by state and non-state actors.…”

Will Regulating Drug Markets Help Governments to Better Control Organized Crime?

“…While not all state-organized crime relations are confrontational (Barnes 2017), and not all popular support for them is voluntary (Norman 2018), this provides governments with a dilemma: attempts to suppress illegal economic activity can trigger processes of de-legitimization of governments and legitimization of criminal and political actors challenging state power (Felbab-Brown, 2010). How governments act when confronting drug trafficking organizations will at least partly shape to what extent citizens affected by their actions will feel supported by these governments (see, for example, Fisher & Meitus 2016) and might support them in regaining influence in areas currently controlled by non-state actors basing their power on illegal activity.…”