Underworld and Upperworld: Transnational Organized Crime and Global Society

Abstract

Organized crime is in many respects the shadowy underside of modernity. Transnational organized crime, similarly, is the underside of globalization. Of course, organized and transnational crime are hardly new phenomena. A case has been made that the dominant families of ancient Greece should be considered akin to the mafia families of the Cosa Nostra (Van Wees in Hopwood 1999), and it is clear that organized and cross-border smuggling, racketeering and piracy were a feature of the world of ancient Rome. Indeed, rings involved in counterfeiting cacao beans in ancient Aztec society — the beans were both exclusive beverage and basic coinage — show many of the fundamental characteristics of modern counterfeiters (Berdan in Hopwood 1999). More recently, the pirates of the Spanish Main were part of a relatively complex transnational criminal economy, with networks of informants, fences, re-sellers, contractors and suppliers. In all these cases, though, crime could organize effectively only on the back of a relatively complex political and economic system.

Power is migrating to actors who are skilled at developing networks, and at operating in a world of networks … Nonstate adversaries — from warriors to criminals, especially those that are transnational — are currently ahead of government actors at using, and at being able to use this mode of organization.

Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1996: 43