What is a “Mafia State” and how is one created?

Anthea McCarthy-Jones and Mark Turner

Policy Studies, 2022, vol. 43, issue 6, 1195-1215

Abstract: How do corrupt practices evolve into the almost complete criminalization of the state, and what are the conditions necessary for a mafia state to emerge? In this article, we trace Venezuela’s political trajectory under President Hugo Chávez and its causal connection to the consolidation of a mafia state under President Nicolás Maduro by identifying critical junctures that occurred under the administrations of Presidents Chávez and Maduro. These critical junctures first laid the foundations for the mafia state, albeit unintentionally, and then allowed and encouraged the criminalization of the state. The incremental abolition of governance institutions started by Chávez and continued by Maduro in the context of dramatic decline in oil production created an ideal environment in which criminal activities could thrive. By the end of this process, Venezuela had evolved into a complex kleptocracy in which no rule of law or institutions were capable of or willing to oppose the executive and its loyal military and irregular force allies. Thus, a mafia state is born.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442872.2021.2012141 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:43:y:2022:i:6:p:1195-1215

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cpos20

DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2021.2012141

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Studies is currently edited by Toby James

More articles in Policy Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().