The Rise of Transnational Crime: International Cooperation, State Contributions, and the Role of the Global Political Economy

Abstract

Crime, War, and Global Trafficking: Designing International Cooperation. By Christine Jojarth. Cambridge University Press, 2009. 342 pp. $30.00 (ISBN-13: 978-0-52171-376-4). Crime and the Global Political Economy. By H. Richard Friman. Volume 16 of the International Political Economy Yearbook. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2009. 215 pp. $55.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-1-58826-676-7). The global market for criminal activities such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering, and weapons smuggling, among other activities, is staggering. The United Nations estimated the global drug trade at $321.6 billion in 2003 (Pollard 2005). Trade in human beings, whether for sexual exploitation or forced labor, is estimated to be between $30 and $40 billion per year, according to Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Rosenthal 2007). And over $1 trillion (733 billion Euros) is estimated to be laundered every year by drug dealers, arms traffickers, and other criminals (Croft 2007). While these global costs of criminal activity are huge, the role of this criminal market in the broader international economic system, and its effects on domestic state institutions and economies, has not received widespread attention from an IPE or political science perspective (Andreas and Nadelmann 2009, in Friman, ed. 2009). Two recent books, Crime and the Global Political Economy , edited by H. Richard Friman, and Crime, War, and Global Trafficking , by Christine Jojarth, have delved into this area, examining the role that global crime and various forms of trafficking and other illicit activity have for both the global economy and security, and for the state. Taking somewhat different approaches, these two volumes offer a number of in-depth case study reflections on the prominent place that global criminal activity plays in shaping state responses to such activity, whether domestically or internationally. Conclusions from the two volumes demonstrate that domestic institutional and cultural structures play a significant role in the acceptance and integration of criminal activities, and globalization has been a facilitating factor in making trafficking and other transnational crimes a part of contemporary politics and economics. These same factors, however, also drive the effective implementation …