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Organized crime is a term used to refer to structured groups that exist for the purpose of committing serious crimes and/or other offences for financial or other material gain.[1] The most common activities of these organizations include trafficking of humans, migrants, drugs, firearms, environmental resources and counterfeit goods, as well as maritime piracy and cybercrime.[2] Organized crime affects the state and, particularly, the security forces in a different way than other violent actors. These groups sometimes seek to ‘capture’ the state, meaning that they take control of the state’s institutions in order to achieve their economic objectives.[3] They do this through corruption[4] and extortion, among other things.[5] Thus, when the state has been captured and loses the ability to deliver, these groups tend to hollow out both state institutions and overall political legitimacy.[6]
Organized crime networks, while not necessarily having political aspirations, are interested in protecting their ‘territories’. This often translates into seeking to ensure that local bureaucracies, the security sector, judges and prosecutors as well as local politicians are all on their ‘side’. In such contexts organized crime plays a major role in affecting electoral processes,[7] and can use violence as a tool to achieve or maintain its aspirations to territorial control.[8]
Empirical cases: Guatemala presidential, legislative and local elections 2011. Guatemala has been trying to deal with the problem of organized crime for many years, and there have been repeated exposures of the alleged involvement of government officials in this regard.[9] Organized crime is associated with the flow of drugs and weapons from/to Mexico and the United States. Levels of violence have increased even beyond those experienced during the country’s 36-year armed conflict.[10] Among other things, elections represent an opportunity for organized crime to enhance their role by seeking to build relationships with elected officials.[11] The violence that surrounded the 2007 elections[12] was repeated in 2011. During the pre-election period, violence included the murder of candidates, their families, party activists and electoral staff.[13]Interrelated factors: poor socio-economic conditions (external); conflict relating to changing power dynamics (external);[14] provocative and violent actions by political parties (internal); inadequate electoral security arrangements (internal); an inadequate system for resolution of electoral disputes (internal).[15]Guinea-Bissau presidential elections 2009. Organized crime networks, mainly drug traffickers seeking to use the country as a transit route, have brought a wave of violence and corruption, affecting all areas of governance.[16] This situation spilled over into the 2009 elections held after the president had been killed.[17] Despite a largely orderly pre-election period,[18] a general sense of tension and insecurity surrounded the elections themselves. Incidents such as the killing of one candidate and political party members, as well as allegations of killings and arbitrary arrests of government officials, were recorded.[19]Interrelated factors: poor socio-economic conditions (external); conflict relating to changing power dynamics (external); human rights violations (external);[20] lack of training of security sector agencies (internal).[21]
[1] United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, Article 2 lit. b.
[2] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment (Vienna: UNODC, 2010), p. 1, available at <http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/tocta/TOCTA_Report_2010_low_res.pdf>, accessed 5 July 2011.
[3] Hellman, Joel S. et al., ‘Seize the State, Seize the Day: State Capture, Corruption, and Influence in Transition, Policy Research Working Paper no. 2444 (World Bank, Policy Research Dissemination Center, 2000), pp. 2–4.
[4] Reed, Quentin, Squeezing a Balloon? Challenging the Nexus between Organised Crime and Corruption (Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, 2009), pp. 9–14.
[5] Dobovšek, Bojan, ‘Economic Organized Crime Networks in Emerging Democracies’, International Journal of Social Economics, 35/9 (2008), pp. 683–7.
[6] Ferreira et al., Dirty Money in Politics.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Dunne, Sean, ‘Elections and Security’, Focus On, ACE, The Electoral Knowledge Network, 2006, available at <http://aceproject.org/ace-en/focus/elections-and-security/onePage>, accessed 6 July 2011.
[9] Panner, Morris and Beltrán, Adriana, ‘Battling Organized Crime in Guatemala’, Americas Quarterly (Americas Society and Council of the Americas), 2010, available at <http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/1899>, accessed 7 July 2011; and International Crisis Group, ‘Guatemala: Squeezed between Crime and Impunity’, Latin America Report no. 33 (Bogotá/Brussels: ICG, 2010), pp. 3–6, available at
<https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/central-america/
guatemala/guatemala-squeezed-between-crime-and-impunity>, accessed 2 May 2018
[10] Ibid., p. 1.
[11] Ferreira et al., Dirty Money in Politics.
[12] Alston, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur’, pp. 18, 19.
[13] International Crisis Group, ‘Guatemala’s Elections: Clean Polls, Dirty Politics’, p. 1.
[14] Ibid., p. 2; and Panner and Beltrán, ‘Battling Organized Crime in Guatemala’.
[15] International Crisis Group, ‘Guatemala’s Elections: Clean Polls, Dirty Politics’, accessed 26 January 2012.
[16] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), ‘Cocaine Trafficking in West Africa: The Threat to Stability and Development (with special reference to Guinea-Bissau’, 2007, p. 5, available at <http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/West%20Africa%20cocaine%20report_10%2012%2007.pdf>, accessed 7 July 2011; and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), The Globalization of Crime, pp. 6, 97, 100, 221, 236.
[17] Moncrieff, Richard, ‘Guinea-Bissau: The Post-Election Test’, OpenDemocracy, 2009, available at <http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/guinea-bissau-the-post-election-test-0&action=edit>, accessed 7 July 2011.
[18] European Commission, ‘Commissioners Ferrero-Waldner and De Gucht on the Second Round of Presidential Elections in Guinea Bissau’, Brussels, IP/09/1196, 26 July 2009, <http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-1196_en.htm?locale=en>, accessed 2 May 2018
[19] European Union Election Observation Mission, ‘Guinea Bissau: Final Report, Early Presidential Election 2009’,
2009a, <http://eeas.europa.eu/archives/eueom/pdf/missions/guinea_bissau_pres_election_2009_final_report_final_eng.pdf>, accessed 2 May 2018
[20] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), ‘Cocaine Trafficking in West Africa’, pp. 11–16; and European Union Election Observation Mission, ‘Guinea Bissau: Final Report, Early Presidential Election 2009’, p. 5.
[21] ‘Bissau Military Kills Politicians’, BBC News, 6 June 2009, available at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8084525.stm>, accessed 1 January 2012.
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