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Mafia state is a term which has been used to describe state systems of some countries, where the government is allegedly tied with organized crime, including a situation when government officials, legislators, officers of police and military take positions in illicit enterprises.

The term mafia originated in the 19th century Italy, where it is used to describe the organized crime groups strongly connected with the authorities.

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".

Today, the term is often used to describe the Putin regime of Russia.

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 out 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 the concept of "mafia state" as 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. The term 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."

References

1. Mafia States: Organized Crime Takes Office by Moisés Naím.
2. ^ Measuring the Mafia-State Menace: Are Government-Backed Gangs a Grave New Threat?
3. Putin's Russia 'now a mafia state', BBC
4. Wikileaks: Russia branded 'mafia state' in cables, BBC
5. British MPs paint scary picture of Putin's Russia, EUObserver
6. WikiLeaks cables condemn Russia as 'mafia state', The Guardian
7. 'Mafia state' leader Putin knew of poison plot that killed former KGB spy in London, Daily Mail
8. Russia - Mafia State: It's important to tell the truth about Putin's Russia, CNN
9. Stephen Holmes, Fragments of a Defunct State, London Review of Books
10. Expelled Moscow correspondent claims Russia is mafia state, abc.net.au
11. Below Surface, U.S. Has Dim View of Putin and Russia, The New York Times
12. Review: Mafia State, New Statesman
13. 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
14. Russia’s “mafia state” image no disaster, euronews

Literature

• Luke Harding, Mafia State, The Guardian (Publishing), 2011, ISBN 085265247X, 320 pages

See also

• Counterintelligence state
• Narco-capitalism

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