Conflict, Crime, and the State in Postcommunist Eurasia examines the emergence and evolution of a crime-conflict nexus and the relationship between ideologically motivated insurgents and profit-motivated criminal organizations in the region.

In the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its zone of influence, few insurgent groups had the resources necessary to confront regular armies. At the same time, state-sponsored financial support for insurgencies dramatically decreased. The pressing need to raise funds for war and the weakness of law enforcement in conflict zones create fertile conditions for organized crime; indeed, there is a mounting body of evidence correlating armed conflict and illicit economy, though the nature of this link and its impact on regional politics has not been well understood. Conflict, Crime, and the State in Postcommunist Eurasia explores the relationship between ideologically motivated insurgents, profit-motivated crime, and state institutions in eight conflict zones. Through detailed case studies, the contributors demonstrate how the operations and incentives of insurgents may emerge and shift over time: for some armed groups, crime can become an end in itself beyond a financial means, but not all armed groups equally adapt to illicit commerce. They also show how the criminalization of state institutions is a lingering concerns even after armed conflicts end. Conflict, Crime, and the State in Postcommunist Eurasia places the case studies along a continuum of political and criminal behavior, examining the factors that motivate insurgents to seek out criminal alliance, how this connection affects the dynamics of conflict, and what risks remain during postconflict transition. These findings will provide a better understanding of the types of challenges likely to confront peacekeeping and statebuilding endeavors in other parts of the world. Contributors: Jana Arsovska, Svante Cornell, Johan Engvall, Michael Jonsson, Alexandru Molcean, Niklas Nilsson, Murad Batal al-Shishani, Natalie Verständig.

This book revisits and reframes the old, but active, debate on the relationship between criminality and civil war by bringing both the state and political power into the equation. It argues that the terms in which the debate is generally posed are still inadequate to address the complexities of this relationship, showing how criminalisation and de-criminalisation are deeply political and hotly contested processes. The shifting movements towards the separation -or convergence- between criminality and politics are part of the processes of constitution of both political power and state. The chapters in the volume flesh out the mechanisms and social dynamics through which this takes place. This edited volume will be of great interest to upper-level students, academics, and researchers in Politics, History and Criminology. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Political Power.

The first English-language book to document the men who emerged from the Soviet-era gulags to become Russia’s international criminal class. Mark Galeotti is the go-to expert on organized crime in Russia, consulted by governments and police around the world. Now, Western readers can explore the fascinating history of the vory v zakone, a criminal organization that has survived and thrived through Stalinism, the Cold War, the Afghan War, and the end of the Soviet experiment. The vory—as the Russian mafia is also known—was born early in the twentieth century, largely in the Gulags and criminal camps, where they developed their unique culture. Identified by their signature tattoos, members abided by the thieves’ code, a strict system that forbade all paid employment and cooperation with law enforcement and the state. Based on two decades of on-the-ground research, Galeotti’s captivating study details the vory’s journey to power from their early days to their adaptation to modern-day Russia’s free-wheeling oligarchy and global opportunities beyond.

4.5. The 2007-8 Banking Crisis, Resource Nationalism, and Samruk-Kazyna -- 4.6. Kazakhstan 2050 -- 4.7. Conclusions -- 5. Uzbekistan -- 5.1. The Uzbek Paradox, 1991-96 -- 5.2. The Reintroduction of Exchange Controls, 1996-2003 -- 5.3. Economic Reform and Social Unrest -- 5.4. Responding to Crisis and Facing New Challenges in 2014-16 -- 5.5. The Karimov Era in Retrospect -- 5.6. Prospects for the Mirziyoyev Era -- 6. Turkmenistan -- 6.1. The Turkmenistan Economic Model -- 6.2. External Relations -- 6.3. Economic Performance, 1991-2006 -- 6.4. Natural Gas: Part One -- 6.5. From Turkmenbashi to Berdymuhamedov -- 6.6. Natural Gas: Part Two -- 6.7. Conclusions -- 7. The Kyrgyz Republic -- 7.1. Creating a Market Economy -- 7.2. Economic Development -- 7.3. Kumtor -- 7.4. Transit Center Manas -- 7.5. Retail Trade and Value Chains -- 7.6. Migration and Remittances -- 7.7. Economic and Political Developments in 2010 and After -- 7.8. Conclusions -- 8. Tajikistan

International Organizations and Post-Soviet Conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine: The Limitations of Imagining Peace and the Failure and Success in Negotiations addresses the protracted history of international conflict resolution efforts to the Georgian-Abkhaz, Moldovan-Transnistrian, and Eastern Ukraine conflicts. The author explores the origins and onset of these first two conflicts in the early 1990s, but also looks at the eruption of conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 and at the first months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This book shows how, from a conflict-transformation perspective, local vested interests and strategic interests have created obvious obstructions that have both fueled the conflicts and prevented their resolution. This volume develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the success and failure of international engagement that offers a new understanding of the extent to which international responses may or may not be helpful. Through an analysis of over 500 closed-source documents and about 70 interviews, the efforts of pan-European international organizations — with mandates from the OSCE, EU, UN, and NATO — are examined on both political and cultural levels. This work’s innovative analyses of those institutions’ performances shows how successes have often been overlooked and identifies misperceptions that reshape our understanding of the limitations to imagining peace.

The Routledge Handbook on the European Neighbourhood Policy provides a comprehensive overview of the EU’s most important foreign policy instrument, provided by leading experts in the field. Coherently structured and adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this handbook covers the most important themes, developments and dynamics in the EU’s neighbourhood policy framework through a series of cutting-edge contributions. With chapters from a substantial number of scholars who have been influential in shaping the study of the ENP, this handbook serves to encourage debates which will hopefully produce more conceptual as well as neighbourhood-specific perspectives leading to enriching future studies on the EU’s policies towards its neighbourhood. It will be a key reference point both for advanced-level students, scholars and professionals developing knowledge in the fields of EU/European Studies, European Foreign Policy Analysis, Area studies, EU law, and more broadly in political economy, political science, comparative politics and international relations.

Exploring the dynamics of law-making in a world where the pace of technological change is outstripping our capacity to capture new forms of transnational crime, this book uses the innovative concept of unlawfulness to examine the crimes of the global overworld, forming a unique analysis of global order in the twenty-first century.

Conflicts in Eurasia have been receiving significant attention in the last few years from political scientists and international relations scholars. The geographic area of Eurasia lies at the intersection of global and regional conflicts and coordination games. On the one hand, regional controversies in Eurasia often affect relations among the great powers on a global scale – for instance, Russia believes it is engaged in a clash with the United States and its allies in post-Soviet Eurasia and that by obstructing EU and US policies in its neighbourhood, Moscow not only protects its security interests but also precipitates the demise of the US-centric world order. On the other hand, global rivalries can either exacerbate tensions or facilitate negotiated solutions across Eurasia, mostly as a result of competitive behaviour among major powers in conflict mediation. Few scholars have focused on the negotiation process or brought together the whole variety of seemingly disparate yet comparable cases. This volume, edited by two global security experts – one from Canada and one from Russia – examines negotiations that continue after the “hot phase” of a conflict has ended and the focus becomes the search for lasting security solutions. Tug of War brings together conflict and security experts from Russia, Eurasia, and the West to tackle the overarching question: how useful has the process of negotiation been in resolving or mitigating different conflicts and coordination problems in Eurasia, compared to attempts at exploiting or achieving a decisive advantage over one’s opponents?

How global organized crime shapes the politics of borders in modern conflicts Separatism has been on the rise across the world since the end of the Cold War, dividing countries through political strife, ethnic conflict, and civil war, and redrawing the political map. Gangsters and Other Statesmen examines the role transnational mafias play in the success and failure of separatist movements, challenging conventional wisdom about the interrelation of organized crime with peacebuilding, nationalism, and state making. Danilo Mandić conducted fieldwork in the disputed territories of Kosovo and South Ossetia, talking to mobsters, separatists, and policymakers in war zones and along major smuggling routes. In this timely and provocative book, he demonstrates how globalized mafias shape the politics of borders in torn states, shedding critical light on an autonomous nonstate actor that has been largely sidelined by considerations of geopolitics, state-centered agency, and ethnonationalism. Blending extensive archival sleuthing and original ethnographic data with insights from sociology and other disciplines, Mandić argues that organized crime can be a fateful determinant of state capacity, separatist success, and ethnic conflict. Putting mafias at the center of global processes of separatism and territorial consolidation, Gangsters and Other Statesmen raises vital questions and urges reconsideration of a host of separatist cases in West Africa, the Middle East, and East Europe.