Corruption, Organised Crime and Functionality: The Growing Risk of Policy Fratricide

Efforts to tackle corruption and organised crime often fail to achieve their intended aims and, in some cases, inadvertently undermine other policy goals that the same actors simultaneously pursue. This paper introduces the concept of “policy fratricide” to explain how well-intentioned interventions can end up working at cross purposes within a wider policy mix. Drawing on research on the functionality of corruption and organised crime, the paper argues that policy failure is not merely a technical challenge but a political and systemic one, rooted in inherited policy legacies, siloed institutional structures, and a persistent moralistic approach to interventions that obscures real world incentives and constraints. A functionality lens examines how corruption and organised crime often act as informal mechanisms through which individuals and communities solve everyday problems, particularly under conditions of resource scarcity, insecurity, exclusion, and limited aspiration. In many contexts, corruption and organised crime provide access to basic services, livelihoods, safety, and belonging when states are unable or unwilling to do so. Interventions that successfully reduce corruption or organised crime without dealing with the underlying functions risk undermining the real objectives. This creates fertile ground for unintended consequences, for which there is extensive evidence, yet policymakers and politicians seem unable – or unwilling – to take this evidence on board when making policy choices about interventions. Policy fratricide occurs when the pursuit of one policy aim, whether effectively or ineffectively, undermines another policy that the same actors support, thereby compromising its ability to achieve its goals. This may arise unintentionally or intentionally as a form of policy trade off in which one goal is knowingly prioritised at the expense of another. Through case material ranging from migration policy in the EU, UK and US; counter insurgency in Afghanistan; and long-standing austerity measures imposed on both developing and developed countries alike, the paper demonstrates how failure to recognise the functional roles of corruption and organised crime contributes to policy fratricide, with often terrible real-world consequences. We argue that reducing policy fratricide requires a more honest, politically aware, and system wide approach to policy design, one that acknowledges trade offs, anticipates tensions across domains, and meaningfully engages with the functional realities that shape behaviour in complex governance environments. The paper makes two principal contributions. First, it advances the functionality literature by integrating insights from corruption studies, criminology, and political science to illuminate why corruption and organised crime persist and why counter efforts often produce harm. Second, it introduces the concept of policy fratricide as a tool for understanding how siloed policy processes, political constraints, and inherited legacies generate conflicting interventions that undermine one another, even when each is pursuing legitimate objectives. The paper situates policy fratricide within broader theories of policy change - particularly layering, drift, and conversion – that lead to inconsistent, incoherent, and ultimately incongruent policy mixes. While the paper focuses on corruption and organised crime, the paper aims to make clear the potential of policy fratricide as a concept for understanding of the politics of policymaking and implementation.