![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Why do criminals use rituals? Past work argues that criminal rituals provide a sense of continuity or certainty in an inherently uncertain environment. We argue instead that rituals play an important organisational role. Criminal rituals facilitate internal governance and promote group activity through three mechanisms: creating common knowledge, mitigating the costs of asymmetric information, and shaping identity among group members. Using internal documents and written constitutions, we apply this framework to understand the internal governance mechanisms used by the late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Chinese-based Green Gang.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Danilo Freire and John Meadowcroft for helpful comments.
Notes
1. Coyne and Mathers, “Rituals: An Economic Interpretation.”
2. Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life; Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures; Goffman, “Nature of Deference and Demeanor”; and Irons, “Religion as Hard-to-Fake Signal.”
3. Abadinsk, Organized Crime, 157; Ianni, A Family Business, 23; and Sanchez-Jankowski, Islands in the Street, 50.
4. Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia, 146–153.
5. Ibid., 151–153.
6. Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld, 195–229.
7. Chw, Rational Ritual; Coyne and Mathers, “Rituals: An Economic Interpretation”; and Hugh-Jones and Reinstein, “Anonymous Rituals.”
8. Catino, “How Do Mafias Organize?”; Dick, “When Does Organized Crime Pay?”; Leeson, “An‐arrgh‐chy”; Leeson and Rogers, “Organizing Crime”; Leeson and Skarbek, “Criminal Constitutions”; Levitt and Venkatesh, “Economic Analysis of a Drug-selling Gang”; Reuter, Economics of the Visible Hand; Sanchez-Jankowsk, Islands in the Street, 63–100; Skarbek, “Putting the “Con” into Constitutions”; Skarbek, “Governance and Prison Gangs”; and Skarbek, Social Order of the Underworld.
9. Allum and Sands, “Explaining Organized Crime in Europe.”
10. Kleemans,” Organized Crime and the Visible Hand,” 621.
11. Clay, “Trade without Law”; Greif, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy; Landa, Trust, Ethnicity, and Identity; Leeson, “The Calculus of Piratical Consent”; and Stringham, Private Governance.
12. Bandier, “Land Reform”; Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia; Milhaupt and West, “The Dark Side of Private Ordering”; Shortland and Varese, “The Protector”s Choice”; Sobel and Osoba, “Youth Gangs as Pseudo-Governments”; Varese, “Is Sicily the future of Russia?”; Varese, The Russian Mafia; Varese, Mafias on the Move; and Wang, “Extra-Legal Protection in China.”
13. Greif, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy, 14–28.
14. Levitt and Venkatesh, “Economic Analysis of a Drug-selling Gang.”
15. Leeson, “An‐arrgh‐chy”; Leeson and Skarbek, “Criminal Constitutions.”
16. Bates et al., Analytical Narratives; Greif, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy.
17. Reuter, Economics of the Visible Hand, 109–131.
18. Martin, “Origins of the Green Gang.”
19. Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang.
20. Chesneaux, Secret Societies in China; Su and Chen, Jindai Shanghai Heishehui; and He, Zhongguo youzuzhi fanzui yanjiu.
21. Chen, “Secret Societies and Organized Crime”; and He and Wang, Zhongguo Dalu Heishehui.
22. Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang, 22.
23. Martin, “The Origins of the Green Gang.”
24. Weiner, The Rule of the Clan.
25. Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang, 18; and Xia, “Organizational Formations of Organized Crime”
26. Kong, “Lun Luo sect.”
27. Chwe, “Culture, Circles, and Commercials”; and Chwe, Rational Ritual.
28. Chwe, Culture, Circles, and Commercials.
29. Chwe, Rational Ritual, 4.
30. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 81–118.
31. Schelling, What is the Business of Organized Crime?, 645.
32. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 53–80.
33. Leeson, “Converting Social Conflict.”
34. Collins, Violence, 247–253.
35. Abadinsky, Organized Crime, 157; Ianni, A Family Business, 23.
36. Leeson, “An‐arrgh‐chy”; Leeson, “Pirational Choice.”
37. Leeson, “Calculus of Piratical Consent.”
38. Axelrod, “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms.”
39. Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang .
40. He, Zhongguo youzuzhi fanzui yanjiu.
41. Lu, “Social Changes.”
42. Chesneaux, Secret Societies in China.
43. Zhao, Minguo sanda banghui zhi qingbang.
44. Chesneaux, Secret Societies in China.
45. Cai, Zhongguo jindai huidangshi yanjiu; and Tan and Peng, Zhongguo Mimi Shehui.
46. Akerlof, “The Market for Lemons.”
47. Spence, “Job Market Signaling.”
48. Grafen, “Biological Signals as Handicaps.”
49. Sosis, “Why Aren”t We All Hutterites?”
50. Sosis et al, “Scars for War.”
51. Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld.
52. Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld, 62.
53. Allen and Reed, “The Duel of Honor.”
54. Coyne and Mathers, “Rituals: An Economic Interpretation,” 77.
55. Skarbek, The Social Order of the Underworld, 114–117.
56. Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia, 146–155.
57. Ibid., 147.
58. Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia, 149.
59. Anderson, Code of the Street.
60. Skarbek, The Social Order of the Underworld, 116.
61. Spence, “Job Market Signaling.”
62. Tan and Peng, Zhongguo Mimi Shehui.
63. Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang, 18–19.
64. Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang.
65. Chesneaux, Secret Societies in China; Davis, Primitive revolutionaries of China; and Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang.
66. Su and Chen, Jindai Shanghai Heishehui.
67. Tan and Peng, Zhongguo Mimi Shehui.
68. Cai, Zhongguo Jindai Huidangshi Yanjiu.
69. Qin, Jianghu sanbai nian.
70. Su and Chen, Jindai Shanghai Heishehui.
71. Davis, Primitive Revolutionaries of China, 147.
72. Akerlof and Kranton, Identity Economics, 13.
73. Landa, Trust, Ethnicity, and Identity, 29.
74. Akerlof and Kranton, “Economics and Identity”; Akerlof and Kranton, “Identity and the Economics of Organizations”; and Akerlof and Kranton, Identity Economics, 2010.
75. Davis, Primitive Revolutionaries of China; Tan and Peng, Zhongguo Mimi Shehui.
76. Xia, “Organizational Formations of Organized Crime in China.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
David Skarbek
David Skarbek is Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at King’s College London. His research examines how extralegal governance institutions form, operate, and evolve. He has written extensively about American prison gangs.
Peng Wang
Peng Wang is Assistant Professor of Criminology at the University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on organized crime, mafias, police corruption, and extra-legal governance.