Outsiders or Insiders?

Organised crime and civil society

Bill Tupman

w.a.tupman@ex.ac.uk

Imagining a “Marxist-Leninist” approach to organised crime

• Lenin: get Pyatakov to infiltrate it, then wait for turf wars and the opportunity to take over a group

• Mao: treat them as potential allies: Chingkangshan bandits and the He Long and Elder Brother Society

• But Gramsci; all this Leninist stuff only works in “the East” where “civil society” weak. In West, need long march through the institutions

• My earlier article concluded orgcrim policy should aim to strengthen civsoc: bottom-up not top-down

Organised crime

• A state within a state?

• A shadow economy?

• Networks of individuals with one foot in the legal and the other in the illcit?

• “Uncivil” or “unruly” civil society?

Neoliberal governance doctrine

• Role of state to be facilitator and enabler of private sector

• Market forces should be left free to create efficient distribution of goods and services

• Robust civil society will take over many state roles without burdensome bureaucracy

• Civ soc self-regulatory and democratic• This true globally as well as nationally• Rule of law just seems to appear somehow

Civil society: one or many?

• We talk about different types of state, different types of economy, but different types of civil society?

• A single national civil society or a multitude of different ones in cities or provinces…

• This is not same as culture!

• Global civil society?

Types of civil society?

• Do you either have or not have civil society?

• Is it better to talk about the individual relationships of civ soc instits with state

• If so, are there not different relationships between organised crime and the state

• And differing relationships between orgcrim and the rest of civ soc?

UNODC Typology of organised crime groups

• Standard hierarchy

• Regional hierarchy

• Clustered hierarchy

• Core group

• Criminal network

Milton Friedman changed his tune

• Establishing the rule of law is more basic than privatization

• In fact in some countries privatization without the rule of law is just stealing

• Bit late dear boy

• Shock therapy in eastern Europe was a gift to organised crime

Insiders or outsiders

• Is organised crime to be considered outside civil society

• Or as a component of civil society?

• And as a presure/interest group

• Is it an insider or an outsider in Wyn Grant terms?

Global civil society

• Gambetta analysis relevant• No global institutions of contract

enforcement• US instits tend to dominate• How do you enforce payment or quality

from US supplier if you arent US-based?• How do crime groups enforce cross-border

payments and quality of illegal goods and services?

Global civil society

• “Organised crime” as driver of globalisation

• Can organised crime substitute itself for global civil society as it has in some parts of post-Communist civil society

• And in the shanty towns of Latina America

• And in the “no-go” areas of Western industrial cities

Types of relationship

• Organised crime dominates civil society

• Orgcrim partner in civil soc

• Organised crime corrupts civil society

• Orgcrim active in some civ soc institutions

• Civsoc institutions oppose orgcrim

• Civsoc institutions active against orgcrim