IFCO 2755 - State, Organized Crime and the Mafia: Interactions and Conflicts

This course aims to untangle the nature of state, organized crime (OC) and the mafia, and highlights their interactions and conflict. Ultimately, we will show that these three phenomena exist on a shared continuum. We first discuss existing definitions of OC. We then present a framework that distinguishes three key activities of OC groups: Production, Trade and Governance. We will ask: How do groups engaged in (criminal) Production, Trade or Governance differ from each other? Do they each have a different organizational structure, members with different ‘professional' profile and skills? The second part of the course focuses on Governance, with a particular emphasis on traditional mafias and their state-like nature. We will discuss a broad range of phenomena in depth: from cybercrime to the international trade of drugs from Colombia to Europe, mafias, mafia states, and the interactions and conflict among the last two. Breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries between the social sciences and adopting a global outlook, the course is multidisciplinary and draws upon concepts from political theory, industrial economics, political economy, and Social Network Analysis, as well as on the history and sociology of different countries, such as Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States.

Federico VARESE,Anna PERETI

Cours magistral seul

English

This is an in-depth course. The course is deeply rooted in academic research, and it hopes to attract students from a wide and diverse range of backgrounds, including political science, sociology, economics, and journalism.

Autumn 2024-2025

The course is assessed by a midterm exam and a final paper. 1) The midterm (40%) will be based on exam questions to be answered by the candidates in an exam lasting three hours. // 2) The final essay (60%) consists in the production of one assessed essay written unsupervised and unaided, to be written after the end of the course.