This innovative book investigates the paradoxical situation whereby organized crime groups, authoritarian in nature and anti-democratic in practice, perform at their best in democratic countries. It uses examples from the United States, Japan, Russia, South America, France, Italy and the European Union.

This innovative book investigates the paradoxical situation whereby organized crime groups, authoritarian in nature and anti-democratic in practice, perform at their best in democratic countries.

Why is organized crime so successful? / Fabio Armao

Transnational organized crime interferes with the everyday lives of more and more people -- and represents a serious threat to democracy. By now, organized crime has become an inherent feature of economic globalization, and the fine line between the legal and illegal operation of business networks is blurred. Additionally, few experts could claim to have comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the laws and regulations governing the international flow of trade, and hence of the borderline towards criminal transactions. This book offers contributions from 12 countries around the world authored by 25 experts from a wide range of academic disciplines, representatives from civil society organizations and private industry, journalists, as well as activists. Recognizing the complexity of the issue, this publication provides a cross cultural and multi-disciplinary analysis of transnational organized crime including a historical approach from different regional and cultural contexts.

Transnational organized crime interferes with the everyday lives of more and more people - and represents a serious threat to democracy. By now, organized crime has become an inherent feature of economic globalization, and the fine line between the legal and illegal operation of business networks is blurred. Additionally, few experts could claim to have comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the laws and regulations governing the international flow of trade, and hence of the borderline towards criminal transactions. This book offers contributions from 12 countries around the world authored by 25 experts from a wide range of academic disciplines, representatives from civil society organizations and private industry, journalists, as well as activists. Recognizing the complexity of the issue, this publication provides a cross cultural and multi-disciplinary analysis of transnational organized crime including a historical approach from different regional and cultural contexts. Conception: Regine Schönenberg and Annette von Schönfeld.

Organised crime is now a major threat to all industrial and non-industrial countries. Using an inter-disciplinary and comparative approach this book examines the existing, official institutional discourse on organised crime to examine whether, or not, it has an impact on perceptions of the threat and on the reality of organized crime.

Challenging Organized Crime in the Western Hemisphere: A Game of Moves and Countermoves takes the unusual approach of exploring and describing how organized crime groups develop their capacities in response to heightened powers of law enforcement; and how law enforcement in turn responds, creating an ongoing dynamic interaction. The book shows how a state, such as the United States, has and can develop new laws and practices in ways that enable them to deal with relatively large violent groups—and yet preserve the rule of law and civil liberties. While most texts describe organized crime groups and the challenges to government they impose from a static perspective, the authors dissect the interaction over time of organized crime and democratic governance that has created the present structure and balance of advantages in the United States. Readers learn about the markets for contraband and extortionate protection that form the bulk of organized criminal enterprise, the vulnerabilities of the traditional practices and rules of law enforcement, the effects of globalization of criminal enterprises on their contest with the state, the effectiveness of various practices of law enforcement, and the continuing forces of change, often technological, in the businesses of organized crime and law enforcement that play important roles in the contest between them. This thought- provoking book is ideal for students of organized and transnational crime in university programs and law schools, as well as researchers and legal practitioners, who seek to look beyond the simple traditional history of organized crime and develop a strategy to confront organized crime in the future.