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By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis
Intertwined Nature of Political Organizations and Criminal Organizations
Political organizations can become criminal organizations through corruption and by forming alliances with criminal groups, potentially using resources like money, violence, and support bases to exert influence on political and state officials. This can lead to state capture, where criminal organizations influence the formulation of laws and regulations, and undermine democratic processes.
Political and criminal organizations can thus become intertwined when the political actors collaborate with organized criminal groups, leveraging criminal resources for political gain and vice versa. This can manifest as corruption, where criminal organizations fund political campaigns or influence policy decisions in exchange for protection or favorable laws.
The relationship can also involve criminal organizations using their influence to exploit political and bureaucratic institutions for their own gain; for example by influencing the outcomes of elections or weakening state power (e.g., AI, citing Redalyc.org).
Skarbek (2024) has explored the political economy of criminal governance. He states that because of its illicit nature, people involved in criminal activity cannot rely on legitimate, state-based legal institutions. In this absence, a wide range of criminal governance institutions and organizations have emerged to facilitate illicit activities.
He adds that extra-legal criminal governance is not extraordinary. He identifies three main areas of operation in criminal governance. Citing Skarbek and Wang (2015) he identifies internal governance, whereby institutions regulate interactions within an organized crime group.
He then identifies criminal-market governance institutions, which focus on how crime groups regulate illicit markets and provide protection to people engaged in illicit activity in places with weak and failed states. Lastly, he identifies criminal-civilian governance in which institutions involve organized crime groups that govern civilian populations who are not actively involved in illicit activity.
The Strategy of Violence
Paolo Borsellino, an Anti-Mafia Prosecutor, assassinated by the Mafia, and cited by Alberto Alesina and Salvatore Piccolo and Paolo Pinotti (2017) said that “Politics and mafia are two powers on the same territory; either they make war or they reach an agreement”.
In many countries, criminal organizations capture parts of the polity. Captured politicians then may distort the allocation of public investment toward the areas of influence of criminal organizations (Schelling, 1971; Barone and Narciso, 2015) and promote leniency acts in their favor (Acemoglu et al., 2013).
Pre-electoral, electoral and post-electoral violence is often the outcome of the interests of political actors and criminal organizations. Violence is a strategy of criminal politicians and criminals benefitting form such politicians.
There are several reasons why criminal organizations may be particularly interested in influencing national politics. National politicians set the level of enforcement in the regions where criminal organizations operate: they can deploy special police forces, incorruptible investigators and judges, or even the army.
Government can also pass a variety of laws regulating public procurement and contract enforcement, making it easier or harder for criminal organisations to infiltrate public contracts. And reforms of the penal and commercial code voted by the national Parliament may deeply affect the (legal and/or illegal) businesses operated by criminal organisations (Alesina and Salvatore Piccolo and Paolo Pinotti, 2017).
Therefore, criminals that may be known by power and depended on by power, may join the politicians to reign violence in order to influence the outcomes of political processes in their favor.
National politicians set the level of enforcement in the regions where criminal organizations operate: they can deploy special police forces, corruptible investigators and judges, or even the army. Government can also influence Parliament to pass a variety of laws regulating public procurement and contract enforcement, making it easier or harder for criminal organizations to infiltrate public contracts.
And reforms of the penal and commercial code voted by the Parliament may deeply affect the (legal and/or illegal) businesses operated by criminal organizations (e.g., Alesina and Piccolo and Pinotti, 2017). Therefore, criminals that may be known by power and depended on by power, may join the politicians to reign violence in order to influence the outcomes of political processes, such as electoral processes, in their favor.
Criminal organizations strategically use pre-electoral, electoral violence and post-electoral violence as a signaling device to intimidate honest politicians and to facilitate the election of “captured” ones. Violence is a political tool, which criminal organizations (rationally) use in different ways depending on the electoral rules and the existing electoral balance between captured and honest parties.
Violence remains a key tool for criminal control and advancement at all points along the spectrum, with the strength of the state and the collusion between state actors and criminal groups often determining the form, intensity and targets of that violence (Shaw, 2019).
Moreover, beyond influencing elections, criminal organizations reduce the anti-Mafia effort of the honest politicians in office by signaling their military strength (and the willingness to use it) through pre-electoral violence ((Alesina and Salvatore Piccolo and Paolo Pinotti, 2017).
Intertwined Nature of Politics and Crime
Politics and crime can be and are frequently intertwined. When this is the case political organizations and criminal organizations are also intertwined with complex networks. Organized crime and corruption have existed in partnership from time immemorial. Some would argue that this has been so for as long as man has engaged in economics (Madzima, 2009).
In Africa, it is contended that the lack of sufficient resources, specifically skills and funding make it unlikely that organized crime and grand corruption can ever be brought under control. Organized crime and criminal networks in Africa appear in many different forms, shaped largely by the strength of the state, and the degree that political elites and state actors are themselves involved in them (Shaw, 2019).
Paolo Borsellino, Anti-Mafia Prosecutor, assassinated by the Mafia, and cited by Alesina and Piccolo and Pinotti (2017) said that “Politics and mafia are two powers on the same territory; either they make war or they reach an agreement”.
In many countries, criminal organizations capture parts of the polity. Captured politicians then may distort the allocation of public investment toward the areas of influence of criminal organizations (Schelling, 1971; Barone and Narciso, 2015) and promote leniency acts in their favor (Acemoglu et al., 2013).
Pre-electoral, electoral violence and post-colonial violence is often the outcome of the interests of political actors and criminal organizations. As stated above, violence is a strategy of criminal politicians and criminals, today frequently referred to as mafias, benefitting from such criminal politicians.
For God and My Country
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