Organized Crime in High-Capacity Democracies: A Sociological Explanation

• In Event: Crime, Law and Deviance Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 10: Politics & Capitalism

Abstract

The article advances a general sociological model to explain how legal-economic activity offers a distinct pathway for organized crime entrenchment in high-capacity democracies. While the societal and political embeddedness of organized crime is typically associated with contexts of institutional weakness, insecurity, and low trust, this article shifts the focus to the opposite setting: high-capacity democracies. Drawing on documentary sources and field interviews, it examines how organized crime in Germany has used legal-economic activity to acquire social and political protection. We argue that the mechanism at play is a self-reinforcing cycle of societal myopia, reciprocal benefit, and institutional inertia. The article contributes to sociological scholarship in three ways. First, it addresses a gap in the literature by exploring the embeddedness of organized crime in contexts of high trust and institutional capacity. Second, it offers a conceptual model that explains criminal entrenchment in terms of institutional routines and everyday practices of trust, rather than deviance and institutional weakness. Third, it provides an empirical foundation for future comparative and theoretical work on the sociology of crime, organizations, and democratic governance.

Author

• Zora Lea Hauser, University of Cambridge