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A mafia state is a state system where the government is tied with organized crime, including when government officials, police, and/or military take part in illicit enterprises. The term mafia is a reference to any organized crime groups strongly connected with the authorities.

The term has been used to describe the modern peculiarities of the Putin regime of Russia, of several new underrecognized territories like Kosovo and Transnistria, as well as to refer to the historical legacy in Italy and Japan.

According to the critics of the mafia state concept, the term "has now been so used and abused in popularized descriptions of organized criminal activity that it has lost much of its analytic value".

Particular applications of the concept

Balkan states and territories

Kosovo has been called mafia state by Italian MEP Pino Arlacchi in 2011, and also by Moisés Naím’s in his 2012 essay “Mafia States” in Foreign Affairs journal. Moisés Naím pointed out that Prime Minister of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, allegedly is connected to the heroin trade. Many other crime allegations have been made, and investigated by several countries, against Thaçi.

Moisés Naím's also has labeled Montenegro as "mafia state" in the same essay, describing it as a hub for cigarette trafficking.

Moldova's unrecognized breakaway territory of Transnistria has long been described as a quasi-state whose economy is dependent on contraband and gunrunning - similarly to Kosovo.

Italy and Japan

Historically, Italy was a birthplace of mafia, one of the most fabled forms of organised crime. In a critical review of Moisés Naím's essay in Foreign Affairs, Peter Andreas pointed to the long existence of Italian mafia and Japanese Yakuza, citing close relationships between those illicit organisations and respective governments. According to Andreas, these examples speak against incidences of mafia states as a historically new threat.

Russia

The term has been used by some Western media to describe the political system in Russia under Vladimir Putin's rule. This characterization came to prominence following the United States diplomatic cables leak, which revealed that US diplomats viewed Putin's Russia as a "a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a 'virtual mafia state.'" Former Russia correspondent of The Guardian, Luke Harding, who was expelled from Russia in 2011, released the book Mafia State in 2011. According to Harding, Putin has "created a state peopled by ex KGB and FSB officers like himself, bent on making money above all." In the estimation of American diplomats, "the government effectively the mafia."

According to the New Statesman, "the term had entered the lexicon of expert discussion" several years before the cables leak, "and not as a frivolous metaphor. Those most familiar with the country had come to see it as a kleptocracy with Vladimir Putin in the role of capo di tutti capi, dividing the spoils and preventing turf wars between rival clans of an essentially criminal elite." In 2008, Stephen Blank noted that Russia under Putin is "a state that European officials privately call a Mafia state" that "naturally gravitates toward Mafialike behavior."

Nikolay Petrov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said "it's pretty hard to damage the Russian image in the world because it's already not very good," referring to Russia's image as a mafia state.

See also

Related concepts

• Counterintelligence state
• Narco-capitalism
• Failed state
• Terrorist state

National issues

• Crime in Russia
• Thief in law

References

1. Mafia States: Organized Crime Takes Office by Moisés Naím.
2. David Leigh; Luke Harding (2011). WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy. PublicAffairs. p. 223. ISBN 978-1-61039-062-0.
3. Marcel Van Herpen (25 January 2013). Putinism: The Slow Rise of a Radical Right Regime in Russia. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 161. ISBN 978-1-137-28280-4.
4. ^ Andreas, Peter (2012-07-01). "Measuring the Mafia-State Menace: Are Government-Backed Gangs a Grave New Threat?". Foreignaffairs.com. Retrieved 2013-05-25.
5. "Kosovo is "mafia state", says Italian MEP". B92.net. Retrieved 2013-05-25.
6. Andreas, Peter (2012-07-01). "Measuring the Mafia-State Menace". Foreignaffairs.com. Retrieved 2013-05-25.
7. Putin's Russia 'now a mafia state', BBC
8. Wikileaks: Russia branded 'mafia state' in cables, BBC
9. British MPs paint scary picture of Putin's Russia, EUObserver
10. WikiLeaks cables condemn Russia as 'mafia state', The Guardian
11. 'Mafia state' leader Putin knew of poison plot that killed former KGB spy in London, Daily Mail
12. Russia - Mafia State: It's important to tell the truth about Putin's Russia, CNN
13. Stephen Holmes, Fragments of a Defunct State, London Review of Books
14. Expelled Moscow correspondent claims Russia is mafia state, abc.net.au
15. Below Surface, U.S. Has Dim View of Putin and Russia, The New York Times
16. Review: Mafia State, New Statesman
17. Stephen Blank (2008): What Comes After the Russo–Georgian War? What's at Stake in the CIS, American Foreign Policy Interests, 30:6, 379-391
18. Russia’s “mafia state” image no disaster, euronews

Further reading

Luke Harding (2012). Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia. Guardian Books. ISBN 978-0-85265-249-7.

• Organized crime
• Forms of government
• Political corruption
• Political terminology