Fight or Hide: Why Organized Criminal Groups Go to War with the State

Abstract

The scholarship on criminal politics posits a range of confrontational and collaborative relationships between the state and organized criminal groups (OCGs). These relationships often result in equilibria, where the state maintains limited enforcement so long as OCGs limit violence. We examine what happens when that equilibrium is upset and ask why OCGs sometimes go to war against the state. We argue that OCGs will “fight” rather than adapt, or hide from, state enforcement when three conditions are met: (1) increased state enforcement threatens the criminal enterprise’s profitable continuity; (2) the OCG has the organizational capacity to wage war against the state; and (3) the criminal leadership has low linkage to the political class. We demonstrate this argument in six paired qualitative case studies in Sicily, Mexico, and Colombia, and we conclude with some advisory comments for avoiding criminal war.