On the Resilience of Illegal Drug Markets

Martin Bouchard

Global Crime, 2007, vol. 8, issue 4, 325-344

Abstract: This paper argues that the concept of resilience is a fruitful way of understanding the impact of repressive policies on illegal drug markets. For the purpose of this article, resilience is defined as the ability of market participants to preserve the existing levels of exchanges between buyers and sellers, despite external pressure aimed at disrupting the trade. The first part of the paper highlights how some of the core features of illegal drug markets, a decentralized structure and high prices, contribute to increasing their resilience to attacks. The second part develops a framework that can be used to compare markets on the basis of their resilient properties. Some of the empirical and policy implications of the framework are discussed in the conclusion.

Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1080/17440570701739702

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