Menace to Society

Political-criminal Collaboration Around the World

Roy Godson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138527973
• eBook ISBN: 9781351505772
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

One of the more dangerous contemporary threats to the quality of life is the collaboration of the political establishment with the criminal underworld - the political-criminal nexus (PCN). This active partnership increasingly undermines the rule of law, human rights, and economic development in many parts of the world. States in transition are especially at risk. Despite the magnitude of the threat, there is little understanding of the security threats by the PCNs and how and why political-criminal relationships are formed and maintained. Menace to Society is the first attempt to develop an analytical framework for making generalizations about this contemporary scourge. Case studies of Colombia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia and Ukraine, and the United States by leading scholars and practitioners included here answer such key questions as: How do PCNs get established? How is a PCN maintained, and destroyed? What do the participants want from each other in a PCN? What can be learned from those who have successfully countered the PCN? The findings indicate that political, economic, and cultural factors play a significant role in the formation and evolution of PCNs. When the institutions of the state are weak, as in Nigeria and Colombia, it is difficult for the state to prevent political-criminal collaboration. A lack of checks and balances, either from civil society or opposition political parties such as described in the cases of Mexico and Russia, is a key factor. Cultural patterns tend to facilitate this kind of collaboration. Markets and economics, too, bear on the PCN issue. The supply and demand for illegal goods and services, not only drugs, in many countries creates a market controlled by criminals who need political help to "run" their business. Menance to Society will be critical reading for security planners, foreign and military policymakers, and political scientists.

1

The Political-Criminal Nexus and Global Security

Roy Godson

One of the more dangerous threats to the quality of life in the contemporary world is at once both old and new. It is the collaboration of the political establishment with the criminal underworld—the political-criminal nexus (PCN). This active partnership increasingly undermines the rule of law, human rights, and economic development in many parts of the world. States in transition are especially at risk. The insidious effects of the PCN, and even its very existence, are often obscured, not only deliberately by the players themselves, but also by the tendency of security specialists to underestimate groups outside the formal political structures.

In some areas, the problem of the PCN is chronic—for example in Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey, and Taiwan. In such cases, only the forms and balance of power among the players change. In other countries and regions—Colombia, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, the Balkans and the Caucuses—the problem is more acute, violent, and kaleidoscopic, and often it dominates political, economic, and social life.

As local problems become global, and global problems have local effects, its appears that the complex and murky relations between criminals and political elites in many parts of the world explain much not only about local politics, but regional and global trends in world politics as well. These increasingly complicated dynamics have also created a different kind of security challenge, the contours of which are only gradually coming into focus.

Part I of this chapter highlights the significance of this problem, and explains why it has now become of major importance in regional and global trends. Part II seeks to diagnose contemporary factors or causes that create the problem—the “drivers” or “linchpins.” Some will be skeptical that valid causal generalizations are possible—especially about clandestine relationships. Indeed, such generalizations—and well-grounded theory and data—are not easy to come by. However, as the chapters in the book illustrate there have been studies of diverse cases—some well documented—so that patterns, generalizations, and hypotheses can be put forward to facilitate further study, and draw implications for policy.

In addition, and significantly, governmental leaders from the global level—the UN, the G8, and the World Bank—to the regional—the EU and OAS—to national and subnational elites have begun to grapple with aspects of the problem. They are beginning to prescribe solutions, pass international conventions, and authorize expenditures for the use of force and other techniques of statecraft to manage the malady. Having reached conclusions about the cause of the problem, they are developing and implementing policy aimed at its management.

Part III of the chapter summarizes the main elements of governmental diagnosis and prescriptions. It then seeks to address causal factors that appear to have been under- or over-estimated (for intellectual and bureaucratic reasons) and suggests directions for future research and policy planning to strengthen analysis and prescriptions that ultimately will help to prevent and ameliorate this global security challenge.

Part I. The Political-Criminal Nexus: A Major Security Problem or a Nuisance?

Definitions of Key Terms

Definitions are necessary to avoid the confusion that accompanies the many different types of political and criminal actors. Nonetheless, some definitions now in use are extremely broad.

Some define regimes or governments as “criminal” because they systematically violate international conventions, such as the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While not disputing the criminal nature of some of these regimes, this definition is too broad for analytical purposes. It would include most if not all authoritarian regimes from the Nazis and Communist regimes to Panama under Noriega, and would erase the distinctional problems created by the collaboration of two sets of actors, the political and the professional criminal.

Other definitions focus on individual political leaders and define their governments as criminal because the leaders themselves, or the political systems they manage, regularly violate the criminal statutes in their own societies. This would include what have come to be known as “kleptocracies,” very corrupt leaders who use their political authority to enrich themselves, their families and their political allies. Mobutu (The Congo), Abacha (Nigeria), and Estrada (Philippines) would appear to fall into this category.

The focus here is on the collaboration between two sets of groups and institutions, the political establishment and the criminal underworld. The involvement is sustained, although it may take different forms. Sometimes it is easy to distinguish between the two sets of players, as in the case of the American Cosa Nostra, and the U.S. political establishment. When political establishment knowingly and regularly does business with gang leaders, or when professional criminals are actually elected to power, as has happened in Sicily and Taiwan, the distinction is less straightforward. The lines between the two sets of players become less distinctive; and sometimes the political and the criminal merge.

The Criminals (Underworld). The criminals, whose activities are substantially shielded from public view in the underworld, have a number of characteristics:¹ They are professionals, usually, but not always. They make their livelihood primarily from crime. Some also engage in legal as well as illegal professional activities. The principal motive is profit making, but this is not the exclusive driver. The most important criminals are part of an organization, i.e., part of an ongoing relationship with other criminals. The organization can be a hierarchical, vertical structure, such as the U.S. or Sicilian Cosa Nostra, or a more horizontal, egalitarian network, such as those found in organized crime in and around China and the Chinese diasporas scattered throughout the world. Geographic location can be local, regional, or transstate. The criminals purposefully violate national and often international conventions, (e.g., most importantly, the anti-drug trafficking regime).

The Political Establishment (Upper World). The political establishment on the other hand, must conduct at least some of its business in public. It is important to note the major distinction between the legal-governmental establishment, and the non-legal, terrorist/separatist, revolutionary groups, such as al-Qae’da, Colombia’s FARC, the Irish IRA, and Kosovo’s KLA. The focus here is on the legal, governmental, and political establishment. Within this establishment, there are diverse players and levels.

The first are office holders in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. They include those in security bureaucracies, the military, paramilitary, intelligence and security services, diverse police and law enforcement, prosecutors and judges. Usually, these are both national and local, but they interact with transstate criminals who operate both inside and outside their territory. At the top are the president, prime minister, and various other ministers. These operate usually at the national level, but sometimes they also interact with transstate criminals.²

A second group are front men who work for or support official office holders. They include political party officials, public relations firms, businesses, legal advisers, accountants, and NGOs supportive of parties. They usually are based nationally, but they often operate across state borders.³

The third group is the legal opposition that rotates in and out of official positions; they and their front men and organizations are usually nationally based, but often with transstate links to both legal and criminal actors.⁴

The PCN consists of relationships of varying degrees of cooperation among these political and criminal participants at the local, national, and transstate levels. These patterns fluctuate between various combinations of collaboration and conflict.⁵ An initially stable pattern may, over time, become unbalanced until a new more stable equilibrium is reached. It sometimes evolves into open war between the partners, and the PCN is seriously weakened if not destroyed. For example, after decades of mostly collaboration both the criminals and the politicians were seriously damaged in Sicily in the 1980s and 1990s.⁶ However, in most cases where a crime group has endured and prospered—whether in a democracy or an authoritarian regime—the criminals have reached some type of accommodation with political authorities at the local, national, or transstate level.

Criminal organizations that exist over a period of time are advantaged by collaboration, at least in their home state or region. Typically, where one sees a long history of organized crime, there is a PCN, for example, in southern Italy and the U.S.-Mexican border.⁷

However, it should be noted that not all political actors that engage in criminal/corrupt activities require a PCN. Political actors can behave in a criminal fashion—for example, become corrupt—without collaborating with the underworld, yet often they believe that such alliances are advantageous.

Why the PCN is a Transstate Security Threat

Why is the PCN a transstate security threat and not simply a local law enforcement or policy problem? Security threats interfere dramatically with the functioning of society. Conditions that threaten the political, economic, social infrastructure of a system cannot be considered ordinary crime problems. Normally, the infrastructure or framework provides the means for the reconciliation of differences within the system. For example, street crime and public health problems are not generally a security problem in the United States. The infrastructure can handle such problems and they generally do not threaten the functioning of the legal or health systems. On the other hand, contemporary organized crime in Mexico and the spread of AIDS in much of Southern Africa threaten the legal, economic, and social infrastructure of those societies. Even the perception that they threaten the infrastructure creates a security problem by diminishing confidence in central authority, or creating alternative structures of power.

Especially in the world’s many weak states and small states, the PCN is a major threat to the infrastructure of governability and the rule of law. The PCN may not become the government. There may be major foreign policy or economic decisions that the top political leaders undertake without consultation or major participation by criminal groups. However, the PCN in these societies plays a role in determining major aspects of the infrastructure. For example, in elections or the appointments of key executives or judicial figures, or in key public investment decisions, tax policy, trade policy, coalitions on diverse issues will be formed between political and criminal leaders. This will result in political appointments in the security area, prosecution policies, border controls, etc. In the courts, it will extend to who is prosecuted, who is convicted, what prison conditions or sanctions prevail. The PCN involves much more than a few corrupt officials. It can and sometimes does substantially control the politics of a country and how it normally works. It affects the functioning of much of the system, and threatens the security of the rule of law.

However, the balance within the PCN may at times go back and forth. Sometimes the politicians will dominate, sometimes the criminals. The specifics of how the PCN dominates a state vary. Regardless of who is dominant, the politicians or the criminals, the coalition of forces that is created influences many aspects of government, and the reconciliation of differences inside the country.

A key factor in the ability of the PCN to maintain power is the fact that it can resort to violence and intimidation. In addition to the use of violence by criminals, the PCN can mobilize the forces of the state when necessary to attain its goals. Once the public comes to fear those who should be their protectors—the police, intelligence, and security forces—and loses confidence in the electoral and the judicial systems, they will seek alternatives, creating different patrons and loyalties, and further weaken the national infrastructure.

Particularly in a globalizing world, all areas are of concern. This is because the PCN can operate on a local, national, regional or transstate level. Their activities in one country or region undermine democratic governabililty, the rule of law, economic development, human rights, and the environment in that region. But a local or regional PCN also can, and often does, take advantage of zones of impunity, or sanctuary in other regions to operate more effectively in its home state as well as in other regions. For example, a PCN in one state will use safe havens in other regions for production of illegal products, such as drugs and counterfeit goods; they use transit zones in other regions for illegal activities, such as smuggling and access to markets; and they use services in still other regions for money laundering, safe meetings, false documents, particularly passports (including diplomatic passports). The fact that the central governments of such states often have difficulty maintaining control over all their territory, make the possibility of an effective governmental response less likely.

This influence now often reaches beyond domestic activities. The PCN in one country or region also is in a position to influence regional and global security concerns. It can affect state-to-state relationships, making normal relations all but impossible. For example, political decisions in the Balkans, on the U.S.-Mexican border, in central and SW Asia, the Golden Triangle and Central Africa are affected by the PCN in other countries. Smuggling routes for drugs, arms, resources, and people from SW Asia are controlled by PCNs in the former CIS, the Balkans, and southern Italy. The reverse is also true. The Colombia PCN has played a major role in the evolution of politics and security in Mexico and the Caribbean. Decisions by the Colombian cartels to use the Mexican and Caribbean smuggling routes to the United States have resulted in the massive national PCNs in these regions. Prior to these developments, they were local organizations, affecting local crime and corruption. This transformation changed the nature of politics and security in Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and the U.S. border area during the 1990s.

Of 192 states in the world today, approximately 35 have characteristics that maintain strong governability and rule of law—and weak PCNs. On the other hand, approximately 120 states can be classified as medium to weak to failed states (zones with very weak to nonexistent infrastructures).⁸ They have medium to strong PCNs. In these states, PCNs threaten the security of their own people as well as the security of people in other regions.

For example, the United States is affected by the activities of the PCNs in Eurasia, Mexico and the Caribbean. Their involvement in drugs, illegal migration, violation of intellectual property rights, and the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction, has a direct impact within the U.S. even though the U.S. itself appears to be relatively free of a domestic regional or national PCN.

To tak...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1. The Political-Criminal Nexus and Global Security
• 2. Broken Bonds: Mafia and Politics in Sicily
• 3. Drugs and Democracy in Colombia
• 4. An American Way of Crime and Corruption
• 5. Slicing Nigeria’s “National Cake”
• 6. Mexico’s Legacy of Corruption
• 7. Russia and Ukraine: Transition or Tragedy?
• 8. Minimizing Crime and Corruption in Hong Kong
• 9. Black Gold Politics: Organized Crime, Business, and Politics in Taiwan
• About the Contributors
• Index