Political Corruption as a Transnational Organized Crime

This article's objective is to characterize political corruption as a transnational organized crime, which is to say, a crime that operates in a network in the context of globalization and affects democratic Governments. The methodology consisted of adopting the theoretical elements of Castells (2006), Ianni (1974) and Williams (1994, 2003), which are approached in recent studies by Campana (2016); Charette & Papachristos (2017); Malm & Bichler (2011); Morselli (2009); and Papachristos (2011), as well as Political Science studies, such as Bobbio (2016), based on which two types of networks of transnational political corruption are proposed: one against the Government and another which seeks to benefit from the Government. The two types are developed based on two cases that occurred in Latin America, which show the hybridization of crime and politics.