Illicit Partners and Political Development: How Organized Crime Made the State

Conventional approaches to the relationship between states and criminal groups depict it as one of corruption. However, this overlooks the developmental aspect of some state-criminal group relationships. This paper identifies the types of relationships states and criminal groups can have, and the conditions under which they collaborate to achieve political and economic developmental goals. I first develop a typology of state-criminal group relationships deductively. Then, using archival and secondary sources, I evaluate four cases, each representing a different type of state-criminal group relationship. I find that, though corruption exists to some degree in all cases, when states criminalize markets due to domestic pressure, they are more likely to challenge the criminal groups that emerge as a matter of policy. Furthermore, when states criminalize markets because of international pressure, they are more likely to collaborate with the criminal groups that develop. This collaboration can take the form of economic development or political consolidation. I conclude that criminal groups emerge as a by-product of the statebuilding process, and can be incorporated into that same process later.