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Abstract
Institutions generate incentives that guide behavior, but many analysts and policymakers underestimate the power of institutions to affect behavior by ignoring how distinct strategies work to generate similar outcomes in different institutional contexts. This article uses the illegal trade in psychoactive substances to illustrate how outcomes (the size of the illegal drug market) across very distinct political institutions can be the same because individuals adopt different strategies in their pursuit of the same behavior: to participate in the illegal drug trade. The illegal trade in psychoactive substances represents an understudied and poorly studied issue in international relations. Arguments that focus on the deviant characteristics of governments in the developing world and organized crime to explain the trade are misleading for empirical and methodological reasons. I propose a general argument about the proliferation of the illegal drug trade that accounts for its success in countries struggling with poverty, corruption, terrorism, and pariah leaders, as well as in rich, stable democracies in which the rule of law “reigns.” The article takes factors that are often seen as distinct in explaining the drug trade (e.g., civil rights in liberal democracies and corruption in developing countries) and demonstrates that their explanatory logic represents variations on the same causal variable: the ability to conceal oneself. My insight is that the strategies used to achieve concealment vary by the institutional context in which participants find themselves.
I want to thank Mat McCubbins, Gary Jacobson, Jane Milner-Mares, and Peter Gourevitch for comments. Travis Knowles and Adriana Valle provided valuable research assistance. I thank the UCSD McNair Faculty Mentor Program for Ms. Valle's support. All responsibility for views expressed in this article is mine.
Notes
1. On the rational design of institutions, see the special issue of International Organization, vol. 55, p. 4, Autumn 2001. On the general importance of considering illegal phenomenon in our social science models, see (CitationFriman and Andreas, 1999; CitationAndreas, 2004).
2. The cross national data in the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the relevant EU agencies and the U.S. drug agencies is partial, incomplete, and generally not comparable.
3. For example, the Justice Dept surveys of whether prisoners were under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs at the time that they committed their offense cannot tell us whether drugs produce crime. An argument about the relationship between drugs and crime requires that we not only knew whether people committed crimes while on drugs, but also whether they had committed crimes before ever consuming drugs, how many people consume drugs and do not commit a crime other than consumption, and how the illegal status of the drug, rather than its pharmacological characteristics, affects the propensity to commit crimes.
4. The existence of the trade itself is a far more complex issue that requires explaining why people desire to consume psychoactive substances and why some are illegal and others not. CitationAndreas (1998) and CitationRaustiala (1999) offer explanations rooted in economics and law (criminal and commercial) to explain why smuggling across borders occurs, but my argument is about proliferation of all aspects of the drug trade, including consumption, production, trafficking, and money laundering, whether those activities cross international boundaries or not.
5. The U.S. has the highest proportion of its population behind bars (CitationWalmsley, 2005) as a result of its “war on drugs” and mandatory sentencing, including obligatory 25 years to life sentences in some states after a third felony conviction. (In California simple possession of an illegal substance can be charged as a felony.) Thailand, a major supplier of methamphetamines, has the death penalty for large traffickers; Singapore has the death penalty for trafficking in heroin, morphine, cannabis, opium, and some amphetamine type stimulants; even small dealers can get 15 years in Bolivia. In the Lao Democratic People's Republic users can be exiled from their villages and in China drug traffickers have been executed after mass rallies.
6. As a result, the U.S. government has turned toward more psychological and sociological models to prevent the use of illicit drugs.
7. Since social and religious norms are institutions, the logic of my concealment argument is likely to include variations in these norms regarding the use of psychoactive substances. Cfr. Scandinavian social democracies (CitationGoldbert, 2004; Citationvan Solinge, 1997) and perhaps some Islamic societies (CitationSamii, 2002; UNODC n.d.a.; CitationAnderson, P. 2006). But I leave discussion of the variations across social norms to other scholars who wish to pursue this point.
8. 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, amended by 1972 Protocol; 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.
9. On deviance as a social science concept, see Howard B. Kaplan and Robert J. Johnson, Social Deviance: Testing a General Theory, New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001.
10. “Decriminalization” means that the act remains illegal but will not be pursued by the police or punished by the courts.
11. “The FBI has found that even if key individuals in an organization are removed, the depth and financial strength of the organization often allows the enterprise to continue.” CitationFederal Bureau of Investigation (n.d.b.)
12. CitationMacCoun and Reuter (2001) offer this as a justification for minimizing attention to other illegal drugs in their book.
13. Heroin users are undercounted because of their demographic characteristics, but there is no indication that the real numbers would alter this ranking.
14. DAWN surveys were significantly changed in 2004 and data on drug “mentions” is not available after 2002.
15. Ironically, because U.S. law enforcement is not corrupt, most traffickers seek to limit their exposure by dealing with small numbers of known clients. Given the large number of consumers (about 19 million) and retailers who seek to limit the number of consumers to whom they sell, it is not inconceivable that the U.S. has over a million people dealing illicit drugs at the retail and wholesale levels.