Suchergebnisse

Based on over 130 interviews with criminals, law enforcement officials and government representatives from post-Soviet Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, this book situates organized crime in the debate on state formation and examines the diverging patterns in organized crime following the aftermath of these countries' Coloured Revolutions.

For thisinnovative study, the first situating organized crime in the debate on state formation, Alexander Kupatadze interviewed over one hundred respondents including criminals, law enforcement officials, and politicians in post-Soviet Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan to map the divergent patterns of organized crime in these countries following their Coloured Revolutions. Drawing upon unique case studies of criminal activity, the authortraces the thin line dividing the licit and illicit spheres, or 'upper' and 'under' economic and political worlds. Kupatadze argues that state formation in post-Soviet Eurasia has been heavily marked by struggle for the dominance between political elites and organized crime groups that involved various forms of contention and collaboration. In reassessing the nature of state criminalization, Kupatadze introduces three dimensions of the state that determine the patterns of dominance: political-coercive, economic-taxation and ideological-informational. He distills the variables surrounding organized crime into contextual (geography, regional wars) and intermediate (related with the Coloured Revolutions such as participation of civil society, resources of competing political groups). This work is an important contribution to the study of organized criminality and state formation.

According to conventional wisdom, organized criminal activity is perpetrated primarily by non‐state, private actors who are occasionally [or not] protected by corrupt government officials. From this perspective, a hard distinction is made between those who provide protection to criminals (e.g., politicians or law enforcement officials) and the criminals themselves (e.g., smugglers or producers of counterfeit goods). It further treats the involvement of state‐affiliated actors as a by‐product of corruption in public office, rather than, in some places, a feature of it. This article builds on emerging evidence that state representatives play a far more direct role in supervising, organizing and sometimes managing crime than assumed in the majority of the literature. It shows that there are inherent theoretical, policy‐level biases that misguide the analytical thinking about organized crime in the Global South, and argues that there is a need to reconsider existing approaches to develop more accommodative definitions of organized crime.

This paper discusses the conditions under which post-Soviet states succeed in fighting corruption. The method of paired comparison of most similar cases, Estonia and Latvia on the one hand and Georgia and Armenia on the other, is used to tease out the variables that vary within and across pairs and produce divergence. It is argued that young, and structurally and ideologically cohesive, groups in power that are antagonistically predisposed toward the former colonial patron and free from the influence of the old guard are more likely to reform while enduring political-economic networks undermine anti-corruption reform.

Abstract: This paper looks at Georgia's path to reform in 2004–2012. The author argues that the young, ideologically and structurally cohesive elite capitalized on the window of opportunity and implemented "big bang" reform in 2004–2008. As time passed, the new incumbents developed vested interests that became apparent with the reemergence of a state-business nexus reemerged in 2008–2012. During the Saakashvili administration, these interests undermined market competition, and elite networks used state power to control economic and political structures. Even though concerns over particularistic practices have remained, petty bribery has decreased substantially.

Corruption is a complex problem and there are no easy ways for its solution. Most countries are stuck in corrupt equilibrium with little chance for endogenous change. The internal forces of public pressure, political leadership, free media and anti-corruption institutions as well as external dynamics of coercive, economic and normative leverage of international actors may push for the change. The risk is that corrupt interests may hijack progress and even reverse achievements. I argue that the interplay between various elements of these variables may move the polity away from corrupt equilibrium to a better one as well as control for the spoiler trap. Over the long-term the institutionalization of anti-corruption reform and transforming social norms are important to sustain progress.