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Abstract
This paper empirically analyses the involvement of ethnopolitical organisations in criminal behaviour across time in two regions of the world – the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Drawing on the data from the Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior data set, it contributes important insights to a literature on organisational crime that is dominated by case studies and small-N analysis, as well as reinvigorating the study of ethnopolitical organisations as actors in the analysis of organised crime. Our findings reveal that in both regions groups that engage in violence of some form were significantly more likely to engage in many kinds of criminal activity. Our analysis also finds that ideological orientation has a marginal impact, while economic grievances and diaspora connections were significant predictors of criminal activity for groups in the Middle East (but not Eastern Europe). In sum, this analysis suggests that the decision to engage in criminal activity is primarily dependent on the organisation’s internal attributes and external influences.
Notes
1. Becker, Beirut Bank Seen.
2. Chambliss, State Organized Crime.
3. Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia.
4. Allum, Camorristi, Politicians, and Businessmen.
5. Paoli, An Underestimated Criminal Phenomenon.
6. Brand, Mexico’s Narco-Insurgency.
7. Ross, An Introduction to Political Crime.
8. Smith, Paragons, Pariahs, and Pirates.
9. McIntosh, Organization of Crime.
10. Albanese, Organized Crime in Our Times.
11. Albanese, Corporate Criminology.
12. Ibid.
13. Sutherland, White Collar Crime.
14. Ibid.
15. Kubrin, Stucky & Krohn, Researching Theories of Crime.
16. Cressey, Criminal organization.
17. McIntosh, Organization of Crime.
18. Smith, Paragons, Pariahs, and Pirates.
19. Ibid.
20. Levitt, Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God,Ch 11.
21. Byman et al., Trends in Outside Support.
22. Asal, Deloughery, and Phillips, When Politicians Sell Drugs.
23. Gurr and Mincheva, The Political Economy of Trans-Border.
24. Neapolitan, Cross National Crime Data.
25. Papachristos and Smith, The Small World of Al Capone.
26. Hanson, Brazil’s Powerful Prison Gang; Finnegan, Silver or Lead.
27. Asal, Deloughery, and Phillips, When Politicians Sell Drugs; Gurr and Mincheva, The Political Economy of Trans-Border.
28. Morselli, Gabor, and Kiedrowski, The Factors that Shape.
29. Gurr and Mincheva, The Political Economy of Trans-Border.
30. Daft, Organization Theory and Design.
31. Kraatz and Zajac, How Organizational Resources Affect.
32. Adams, The Financing of Terror, 237–238.
33. Gurr and Mincheva, The Political Economy of Trans-Border.
34. Unseem, Ideological and Interpersonal Change; Crenshaw, An Organizational Approach.
35. Bovenkerk, Wanted: ‘Mafia boss.’
36. Janis and Mann, Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis, 130.
37. Abrahms and Lula, Why Terrorists Overestimate.
38. March, “Decisions in organizations”; March, Decisions and Organization.
39. Drake, The Role of Ideology, 53.
40. Crenshaw, “Theories of Terrorism”, 15.
41. Asal and Rethemeyer, The Nature of the Beast, 438.
42. Weinburg, “Political and Revolutionary Ideologies,” 182–183.
43. Asal, Deloughery, and Phillips, When Politicians Sell Drugs, 209.
44. Goldstein, The Drugs/Violence Nexus.
45. Morselli, Gabor, and Kiedrowski, The Factors that Shape.
46. Forest, Zones of Competing Governance; Idler and Forest, Behavioral Patterns among (Violent) Non-State Actors: A Study of Complementary Governance.
47. Asal, Deloughery, and Phillips, When Politicians Sell Drugs, 209.
48. Cornell, The Narcotics Threat; Hough, Guerrilla Insurgency as Organized Crime; Meehan, Drugs, Insurgency and State-building.
49. Piazza, The Opium Trade, 216.
50. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence.
51. Byman et al., Trends in Outside Support.
52. Lupsha, Transnational Organized Crime.
53. Shapiro, Terrorist Decision-Making.
54. Naghshpour, Marie, and Stanton, “The Shadow Economy.”
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Wahlert, ”The Failed State.”
58. Albanese, “Predicting the Incidence.”
59. Asal, Pate, and Wilkenfeld, Minorities at Risk Organizational; Asal et al., Gender ideologies.
60. Gurr, People vs. State.
61. Asal, Pate, and Wilkenfeld, Minorities at Risk Organizational; Asal et al., Gender ideologies.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid.
65. Mahoney, After KKV.
66. Marshall, Jaggers and Gurr, POLITY IV Project Dataset.
67. King and Zeng, Logistic Regression.
68. McCormack, Terrorist Decision Making; Abrahms and Lula, Why Terrorists Overestimate the Odds of Victory; Shapiro, Terrorist Decision-Making; Martin and Perliger, Turning to and From Terror; Idler and Forest, Behavioral Patterns among (Violent) Non-State Actors.
69. Hamm, Crimes Committed by Terrorist; 2005; Curtis and Karacan, The Nexus Among Terrorist.
70. Rollins and Wyler, Terrorism and Transnational Crime.
71. Rollins and Wyler, Terrorism and Transnational Crime; Sarkar and Tiwari, Combating Organised Crime.
72. McCormick, Terrorist Decision Making, 490.
73. McCormick, Terrorist Decision Making, 490; Crenshaw, An Organizational Approach; Crenshaw, How Terrorism Ends; Crenshaw, “Theories of Terrorism”; Weinberg and Eubank, “Political and Revolutionary Ideologies.”
74. Shapiro, Terrorist Decision-Making.
75. Abrahms and Lula, Why Terrorists Overestimate the Odds of Victory.
76. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence.
77. Gurr and Mincheva, The Political Economy of Trans-Border.
78. Gurr and Mincheva, The Political Economy of Trans-Border, 11.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Victor Asal
Victor Asal is an associate professor of Political Science and chair of Public Administration at the State University of New York at Albany.
James J.F. Forest
James J.F. Forest, PhD, is a professor and director of the Security Studies graduate degree programme at UMass Lowell. He is also a senior fellow with the Joint Special Operations University, and co-editor of the scholarly journal Perspectives on Terrorism.
Brian Nussbaum
Brian Nussbaum is assistant professor of Public Administration and Policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs of the State University of New York at Albany. He is also an affiliate scholar with the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and a senior fellow with the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University.