Organised crime and international aid subversion: evidence from Colombia and Afghanistan

Abstract

Scholarly attempts to explain aid subversion in post-conflict contexts frame the challenge in terms of corrupt practices and transactions disconnected from local power struggles. Also, they assume a distinction between organised crime and the state. This comparative analysis of aid subversion in Colombia and Afghanistan reveals the limits of such an approach. Focusing on relations that anchor organised crime within local political, social and economic processes, we demonstrate that organised crime is dynamic, driven by multiple motives, and endogenous to local power politics. Better understanding of governance arrangements around the organised crime-conflict nexus which enable aid subversion is therefore required.

Beyond Conventional Boundaries

“…Explaining corruption as a consequence of the presence of organized crime or vice versa (Buehn and Farzanegan 2012) is a tautological argument. Corruption and organized crime should instead be seen as a composite whole (Roberts 2021) and we need to acknowledge clearly that in some cases organized crime can function from inside the official state (Schmid 2018).…”

“…Changes in illicit market shares can be dictated by, and understood according to, the power configuration arrangements that patron‐clientelist networks in charge of formal organizations have negotiated and agreed upon. These configurations are constantly negotiated and re‐negotiated between political actors (Bojicic‐Dzelilovic et al 2015). For example, in 2019 in Ukraine, a significant share of the illicit tobacco market was seized by the State Security Service from the Interior Ministry (Lough and Dubrovskiy 2018).…”