Criminal governance

Roadmap: Criminal governance

• Last time: violence and organized crime
  • Violence within groups: discipline and succession
  • Violence between groups: information, commitment, and indivisibility
  • Violence between groups and the state: victim, perpetrator, collaborator
  • Why some markets are more violent than others
  • Any questions?
• Today: criminal governance
  • What is criminal governance, and what makes it distinct?
  • Who and what gets governed?
  • Why do criminal organizations govern at all?
  • What does this mean for the state?
  • Final project group work time

Criminal governance: the puzzle

What is criminal governance?

Criminal governance: the imposition of rules or restrictions on behavior by OC

What is criminal governance?

Criminal governance: the imposition of rules or restrictions on behavior by OC

1. Rules for members (internal governance)
2. Rules for other criminal actors in illicit markets
3. Rules for civilians (“gang rule”)

• What makes criminal governance distinct from other governance?
  • Organized crime expands beyond attempting to control the markets they operate in
  • Not rebel governance: no state-building ambitions, no “zones” of exclusive control
  • Not a mini-state: OC rarely challenge state authority completely

Why do criminal organizations govern?

Criminal governance is concentrated in three areas:

1. Policing: prohibiting theft, regulating violence, banning sexual harassment
2. Judicial: resolving disputes, enforcing contracts, punishing infractions
3. Fiscal: taxing businesses and residents, providing public goods and welfare

• Why govern civilians at all? Several non-exclusive motives:
  • Reduce police exposure: fewer crimes means fewer reasons for residents to call police
  • Protect profits: customers need to feel safe; loyal residents hide members during raids
  • Political leverage: governing builds constituencies that can be mobilized
  • Legitimacy: some OC groups express a genuine sense of duty to the community

Criminal governance and the state

• We have seen the state as victim, perpetrator, and collaborator (L11)
• Lessing adds a fourth framing: the state and OC as symbiotic
• Symbiosis is distinct from other crime-state arrangements:
  • Not integration: OC does not capture or replace the state
  • Not state-sponsored protection: the state does not simply look the other way for rents
  • Not alliance: OC is not deployed against a third threat
• Symbiosis means mutual dependence without coordination
  • State repression raises drug prices → more profits for OC → OC can afford to govern
  • Incarceration strengthens prison gangs → prison gangs impose order → state benefits
  • E.g., PCC’s homicide ban helped safety → the state benefits from what it officially fights
• The implication: expanding state presence may not crowd out criminal governance!

Before we break into groups…

• Today: criminal governance
  • What it is and what makes it distinct
  • Who and what gets governed
  • Why OC governs civilians at all
  • What this means for the state
• Next lecture: organized crime and politics
• Questions?

Read before Monday:

Barnes, Nicholas. 2017. “Criminal Politics: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Organized Crime, Politics, and Violence.” Perspectives on Politics 15(4): 967–987.

(Available on Perusall via Canvas)

Proposal: You all did great, but common feedback

• Analysis, not description
  • If you chose a historical or descriptive case make sure to keep the approach policy-focused
  • Ask: what does your case reveal about how OC operates, adapts, or evades control?
  • The case is evidence for broader forward-looking lessons, not an end in itself
• Course concepts: connect arguments, not just labels
  • Vague connections to course material came up a lot: ask what the mechanism is
  • Don’t just cite a concept to classify your case: use it to explain something
• Policy: specificity, not aspiration
  • What has already been tried? Why hasn’t it worked?
  • What can your audience concretely do, and what obstacles do they face?
  • Don’t just list what would work
    • Think about why it hasn’t happened yet, and what the costs of different options are
  • Quantitative evidence helps ground claims (you don’t need to generate new data, though!)

Final project work time

Some ideas for guiding questions drawing on the last two lectures:

• Violence:
  • Is violence primarily within-group, between-group, or between your group and the state?
  • Which violence mechanism from L11 best explains your groups use of violence (or not)?
  • How does the state play the role of victim, perpetrator, or collaborator?
• Governance:
  • Does your criminal group govern civilians? What functions does it perform?
  • If it does: what explains why it governs?
  • If it doesn’t: what explains the absence?
• Erin and I will walk around to help
• If there are group members that are always absent to these sessions during class, note that
  • Part of your grade will be based on peer-reviewed effort