“War Making and State Making as
Organized Crime” (Tilly, 1985)
“If protection rackets represent organized
crime at its smoothest, then war making
and state making – quintessential
protection rackets with the advantage of
legitimacy - qualify as our largest
examples of organized crime.”
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What do States Do?
War making: eliminate/neutralize their own rivals
outside the territories in which they have clear &
continuous priority as wielders of force
State making: eliminating or neutralizing their
rivals inside those territories
Protection: eliminate/neutralize the enemies of
their clients
Extraction: acquiring the means of carrying out
the above
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Classic European state-making
followed this causal pattern
War making
Protection
Extraction
State making
(Tilly, 1985, p. 183)
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Global Organized Crime
James H. Mittelman (Excerpted from
Mittelman, “Global Organized Crime,”
in The Globalization Syndrome,
Princeton, 2000)
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Global Organized Crime
a transnational enterprise
involving multiple persons
organized on a hierarchical basis
for the purpose of securing profit and
power by engaging in illegal activities
 TNCO: transnational criminal organization
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The New Criminality
Globalization presents opportunities for
new forms of illegality that crop up
between established codes of international
law, challenge existing norms, infiltrate licit
(lawful) businesses and extend into
international finance

e.g., computer crimes, money laundering,
stealing nuclear materials and “sophisticated
fraud”
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Sophisticated Fraud
fraud: intentional deception to gain an
advantage or cause harm to another
sophisticated fraud relies on technological
complexity among several parties using
counterfeit bank statements, credit cards,
letters of credit, computer intrusion, and
ingenuity of design

e.g., stock market “pump & dump” scams and
pyramid/Ponzi schemes
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The “Great Transformation” comes
to the Global South
Rapid marketization  social dislocation
 rural resentment & peasant uprisings
Polanyi’s “double movement”
(transformation & countermovement)
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Poverty trap of declining incomes
in countryside and limited legal
opportunities in cities leads people
to seek emigration “services”
“When poverty is severe, criminal gangs flourish” (236)
Smuggling groups exploit the impoverished
Smuggling operations depend on powerful and wealthy
criminals with the resources to corrupt state officials
Corruption of political authorities is the crucible in which
customs officers, police and tax inspectors assist in the
crime or look other way

at play in all kinds of smuggling/dealing in contraband
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Causes of rise in transnational
criminal organizations (TNCOs)
Technological innovations allowing for increased mobility
of people – some carrying contraband – and flow of illicit
goods


esp air travel, telecommunications, use of computers in business
contraband: goods whose importation or exportation or
possession is prohibited by law
Technological innovations that facilitate cross-border
operations

e.g., satellite technology, fiber optic cable, and the
miniaturization of computers
Hypercompetition
Deregulation, by lowering state barriers to free flows of
capital, goods, services, and labor
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Like TNCs, TNCOs operate
above and below the state
Above the state: they capitalize on
globalizing tendencies of permeable
borders and deregulation
Below/beside the state: they offer
incentives to those marginalized by
globalization, esp. the impoverished
substratum
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Is such crime a kind of resistance
to neoliberal globalization?
The marginalized represent the labor
supply in the form of social forces
participating in parallel economy of
organized (and unorganized) crime and
impairing the licit channels of
neoliberalism

The supply side, then, may be regarded as a
disguised form of resistance to dominant
mode of globalization
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TNCOs – economic or political?
Profit comes not merely from theft but from
emulating market mechanisms
Whereas GOC groups have ostensibly
economic objectives, to extent that they
undermine the main actors in the
globalization process – TNCs and
dominant states – then TNCOs are both a
political component of, and a response to,
globalization
13
TNCOs are similar to legit TNCs
Embrace logic of market, flexible, hierarchical,
e.g., triads

triads: Chinese criminal networks
based in Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, and also in
countries with significant Chinese populations, such as
Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, U.S. and Canada
Hong Kong triads provide leadership, while
commercial tongs (merchants’ guilds), many
based in Chinatowns, act as local subsidiaries,
whose activities are facilitated by guanxi
(connections) in Eastern Asia
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Global cities, more than states, are
the main loci of TNCOs
Offer agglomerations of financial services
Sources of technological innovation, advanced
communications and transportation systems
Given vast scope of internet, cybergangs can
assault a global city from anywhere and remain
anonymous
Diversity allows TNCOs to blend into legit
institutions in ethnic neighborhoods of diaspora

Many such neighborhoods have weak ties to and are
distrustful of the police, hampering law enforcement
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GL of organized crime threatens
state authority
The state, according to Weber’s influential
conceptualization, exercises monopoly over the
legitimate use of force within a territory

GL of organized crime weakens basis of government
and constrains its capacity
While transnational & subnational criminal
groups do not seek to take over state apparatus,
they contest the rationale of the state, esp in
terms of its legitimate control of violence and
maintenance of justice
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Growing connections between the state
and organized crime give rise to more
state-sanctioned violence
TNCOs involved in arms trade
Political insurgents rely on TNCOs
Privatization of security puts the activities
of contracted military personnel “outside
the law,” into a kind of legal grey zone
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New forms of criminality undermine state
sovereignty, the inter-state system
Paradox: heavily laden with trappings of
force, state is weakened but not powerless
Traditional notion of jurisdiction based on
territoriality is progressively brought into
question
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TNCOs are alternative social
organizations that, in some ways,
challenge authority of state to impose law
offer commerce & banking in black/gray markets
that work outside regulatory frameworks
buy, sell, and distribute contraband
swift dispute resolution & debt collection outside
courts
create & maintain illegal cartels
secure/protect businesses, and shelter them
from competitors, the state, and rival criminals
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