The Political Economy of Border Checkpoints in Shadow Exchanges

ABSTRACT

This introductory article revisits cross-border shadow exchanges in a comparative perspective and reflects on their theoretical implications. It explores the diversities and complexities of shadow operations and critically examines the concept of informality that is commonly used to describe such non-state-sanctioned practices. It further underlines the key role played by checkpoint politics in border governance. Border checkpoints serve both as a state institution in regulating border crossings as well as a political site where material and power exchanges among state and non-state actors are negotiated. Such negotiation of selective passage through state-controlled gateways is often predicated upon the skilful manipulation of time and space by experienced traders and brokers.     

Eurosceptics in trilogue settings: interest formation and contestation in the European Parliament

Trilogues have been studied as sites of secluded inter-institutional decision making that gather the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament (EP) and the European Commission. Trilogues, however, are not exempt from formal and informal party-political dynamics that affect intra- and inter-institutional contestation. The increase in Eurosceptics in the 2014 EP elections offers an opportunity to investigate their efforts to shape the position and behaviour of the EP negotiating team in trilogues. Therefore, this article investigates to what extent Eurosceptic party groups participate in trilogue negotiations and how mainstream groups deal with their presence. The analysis shows that the opportunities to participate in trilogues and shape the EP’s position are higher for those perceived as soft Eurosceptic MEPs, while mainstream groups apply a ‘cordon sanitaire’ to those perceived as being part of hard Eurosceptic groups – which reduces the chances of MEPs from those groups being willing to participate in parliamentary work.     

Insurgent informality: the struggle over space production between the Israeli state and its Palestinian Bedouin communities

This article addresses the political and spatial agenda of the people of informalities. It conceptualizes insurgent informality as a discursive social reality, which is based on the struggle between the state hegemonic discourse regarding informal spaces and modes of space production and the countering-hegemonic discourse of communities. Based on empirical case, this paper interrogates the discourses of Israel and the its Arab communities regarding informal spaces. The analysis suggests that the state hegemonic discourse is articulated through three interrelated logics of difference, threat and spatiality. The countering discourse challenges the hegemonic discourse through its logic of justice, recognition, and protest.     

Running to stand still: aggressive immobility and the limits of power in Russia

The common conception of Russian politics as an elite game of rent-seeking and autocratic management masks a great deal of ‘mundane’ policymaking, and few areas of social and economic activity have escaped at least some degree of reform in recent years. This article takes a closer look at four such reform attempts – involving higher education, welfare, housing and regional policy – in an effort to discern broad patterns governing how and when the state succeeds or fails. The evidence suggests that both masses and mid-level elites actively defend informality – usually interpreted in the literature as an agent-led response to deinstitutionalization and the breakdown of structure – creating a strong brake on state power. More than a quarter century into the post-Soviet period, this pattern of “aggressive immobility” – the purposeful and concerted defense by citizens of a weakly institutionalized state – has in fact become an entrenched, structural element in Russian politics.     

Rural informalities and forest squatters in the reserved forests of Assam,India

It has now been well established that forests in South Asia are postcolonial political zones. In Assam, in northeast India this was accomplished through the colonial project of converting jungles into Reserved Forests. Using the politics of dokhol (“to grab or occupy by force”) as an entry point, this article examines the comparative epistemologies of squatting and informality in urban and rural contexts. My intent is to unpack the everyday practice, maintenance, and sustenance of dokhol within the reserved forests of Bodo Territorial Autonomous District. This entails an extension of existing scholarship on formal-informal dichotomies in relation to rural squatters, in particular those on forestland. I do so by combining an ethnographic study of dokhol by rural squatters with three influential strands of critical scholarship on urban squatting, namely Partha Chatterjee’s “political society,” Asaf Bayat’s “quiet encroachment,” and Ananya Roy’s take on planning and deregulation. This article advances the case of rural informalities and opens a dialogue between the two forms of informalities – rural and urban, especially in the context of South Asia.     

Sympathy for the devil: state engagement with criminal organisations in furtherance of public policy

Governments have long relied on non-state actors to assist in the implementation of public policy. Legitimate elements of civil society have become familiar instruments of governance. States have also engaged criminal actors to this end. This article will note examples of state collaboration with criminal interests, from pirates turned privateers during the 17th and 18th centuries, to the patriotic hackers of today. It will discuss the strategic considerations giving rise to such engagements, the pitfalls that may beset them, and the ethical considerations that might inform the decision by a state to enlist the services of illicit organisations.     

Narcomessages as a way to analyse the evolution of organised crime in Mexico

Drug-related homicides in Mexico have increased to levels never before seen and organised crime has evolved accordingly, becoming more fragmented and diverse. This work analyses the evolution of organised crime and drug-related violence in Mexico by examining how drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) communicate through the messages left next to executed bodies from 2007 to 2011. Results suggest that the use of narcomessages has changed and developed in parallel with the evolution of organised crime. In the beginning, DTOs used their victims merely to position themselves. Over time, as the organisations became stronger, they began to direct and sign their narcomessages. By 2009, rivalries were firmly entrenched between several criminal groups, even while the increasing violence led to the creation of new groups with the stated purpose of defending citizens. The evolution of organised crime is observed by the fragmentation of existing groups, the consolidation of new alliances, and the creation of new groups.     

Organized Crime and Trust:: On the conceptualization and empirical relevance of trust in the context of criminal networks

Organised crime networks are often characterised as being held together by bonds of trust, but the conventional wisdom regarding the relation between trust and organised crime lacks a comprehensive theoretical and empirical underpinning. The purpose of this paper is to explore where deeper research on this issue may lead and how it can potentially contribute to a better understanding of organised crime in general. Drawing on the general sociological literature, it provides a preliminary conceptualisation of trust in the context of organised crime centred around a fourfold typology along the micro-macro dimension. The authors use anecdotal evidence from their research on illegal markets for highly taxed goods in Norway and Germany to illustrate that there are different types of trust, that there are different consequences of the violation of trust, and, finally, that there are criminal relations not based on trust at all.     

Changing Typology of Organised Crime in a Post-Socialist Lithuania (the Late 1980s–Early 2000s)

This paper analyzes the dynamics of organised crime in post-socialist Lithuania. Three overlapping periods in evolution of organised crime are discerned. During the mid 1980s organised crime emerged with the attempts to liberalise the state socialism by legalizing cooperative and individual property as a basis for economic activities. By the early 1990s organised crime in Lithuania began to metamorphose from illegal manufacturing to opportunistic criminality associated with the privatisation of state property. Since the mid 1990s organised crime has again undergone change. It has entered what could be termed a maturation phase. This maturation was influenced by a number of factors including; the end of the privatization process, resumed growth of the economy, development of the legal and fiscal infrastructure to regulate a market economy, and increasing effectiveness and successes of policing in Lithuania [1] [1] Johnstone, Peter 2005. ‘Commissar-General Vytautas Grigaravièius, Lithuania national police’. Police Practice and Research, 5(4–5), September–December, pp. 357–370. . In this article the political, socio-economic, organisational and cultural factors that influenced the dynamics of change in organised crime are analyzed.     

International Norm Diffusion and Organised Crime Policy: The Case of Greece

The premise of this paper is that a section of the Greek policy-making elite responsible for formulating policy against organised crime has taken advantage of an internationally-developed programme of action on this issue to strengthen perceptions of the Greek state's legitimacy amongst both domestic and foreign audiences. Although positive reaction to foreign pressure for policy change has tended to be made at the risk of losing further legitimacy in the eyes of domestic public opinion, in this case the issue of organised crime has presented an opportunity to the policy-making elite to develop policy that also aims to bolster the domestic legitimacy of the state by dealing with criminality and presenting the state as a clean and neutral body acting for the common public good.