Drugs, Organized Crime and Illicit Markets

Criminal organizations are scattered across the world, and play a capital role within contemporary global economies as well as being crucial political actors within the local societies they grow in. Their paramilitary organization, their control of the territory, their growing economic power, the ruthless violence they often deploy both against their competitors and against their opponents, raise the concerns of civil society, and governments are often incapable of deploying an enforcement strategy. Criminal organization are supposed to be engaged in such illegal activities as drug smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering and so on. The aspect of their connection with legal economy, as well as the support they enjoy from politics, is often neglected. This panel would welcome those papers that focus on this connections, as well as discussing on organized crime and drugs more in general.