How Civil Wars Help Explain Organized Crime—and How They Do Not

Stathis N. Kalyvas

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2015, vol. 59, issue 8, 1517-1540

Abstract: Large-scale organized crime occupies a gray zone between ordinary crime and political violence. The unprecedented scale of drug-related crime in Mexico has led to its description as an insurgency or even a civil war, a conceptual move that draws on recent studies that have associated civil war with large-scale criminality. By questioning both the “crime as civil war†and “civil war as crime†models, I argue that instead of folding the two phenomena, we should draw primarily from the micro-dynamics of civil war research program to identify areas of potentially productive cross-fertilization. I point to four such areas, namely, onset and termination, organization, combat and violence, and governance and territory. I conclude by sketching a theoretical and empirical agenda for the study of large-scale organized crime.

Keywords: organized crime; civil war; political violence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:59:y:2015:i:8:p:1517-1540

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