Globalization and the contemporary global order have facilitated the emergence of new aspects of governance within, between, and across the state scale. The re-articulation and re-scaling of the state involves the devolution of specifi c aspects of governance capacities to supraand sub-state scales, constituting a vast transglobal arena where a bewildering array of private, non-state actors, networks and polities take on roles previously performed by the state. This reconfi guration of the position of the nation-state transcends the Westphalian “territorial trap,” when it comes to produce new sites of power, new forms of authority and regulation through a reshuffl ing of traditional sociopolitical relationships. The distinguishing feature of these alternative authority structures is that they tend not to be embodied at what has been historically constituted as the national or local scale, but rather are represented along the multiple, overlapping scales that make up global relations. Within those hybrid scales a broad spectrum of actors interact and struggle for power and control: from public and private alternatives to sovereign states, from institutions of global governance to the transnational third sector, from religious movements to complex criminal organizations. Among the most signifi cant developments that has taken within this arena and has been fostered by the attendant sociopolitical and economic changes is the emergence and empowering of criminal organizations, whose cross-border networks and ability to continue their activities depends on their capacity to delegitimize governmental efforts to control their behavior. Complicating matters further, the strengthening of regulatory regimes usually creates perverse incentives for organized crime groups to expand their activities and increase their profi ts. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it became increasingly clear that the rise of transnational organized crime was inextricably connected with contemporary changes in the scope and competence of states’ authority over their societies and territory,