Organized crime, political transitions and state formation in post-Soviet Eurasia / Alexander Kupatadze.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kupatadze, Alexander, 1978-

Series:

Transnational crime, crime control and security

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Organized crime--Former Soviet republics--Case studies.

Organized crime.

Power (Social sciences).

Former Soviet republics--Politics and government--Case studies.

Former Soviet republics.

Power (Social sciences)--Former Soviet republics.

State, The.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xi, 256 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Summary:

For this innovative study, the first situating organized crime in the debate on state formation, Alexander Kupatadze interviewed over one hundred respondents including criminals, law enforcement officials, and politicians in post-Soviet Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan to map the divergent patterns of organized crime in the these countries following their Coloured Revolutions. Drawing upon unique case studies of criminal activity, the author traces the thin line dividing the licit and illicit spheres, or 'upper' and 'under' economic and political worlds. Kupatadze argues that state formation in post-Soviet Eurasia has been heavily marked by struggle for the dominance between political elites and organized crime groups that involved various forms of contention and collaboration. In reassessing the nature of state criminalization, Kupatadze introduces three dimensions of the state that determine the patters of dominance: political-coercive, economic-taxation and ideological-informational. He distills the variables surrounding organized crime into contextual (geography, regional wars) and intermediate (related with the Coloured Revolutions such as participation of civil society, resources of competing political groups). This work is an important contribution to the study of organized criminality and state formation. Book jacket.

Contents:

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The political-criminal nexus and patterns of dominance

Impact of Soviet and post-Soviet organized crime

Ukraine : privatization and re-privatization : from shadowy takeovers to corporate raiding

Georgia : extortion : from professional criminals to the "revolutionary government"

Kyrgyzstan : drug trafficking : from sportsmeny and ugalovniki to police and elites

The coloured revolutions and their consequences

Organized crime, political transitions and state formation

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230299801

0230299806

OCLC:

748328906