Transnational Organised Crime in a Globalised World

Transnational organised crime is undoubtedly considered and perceived as a dangerous threat. The political and academic consensus, however, stops here, as the way towards a common definition and authentic multilateral policies and strategy seems to be very long and troubled. The major transformations dealing with global security and its political, economic, cultural and social implications on the international community are part of the scholarly debate. Nevertheless, any serious and competent discussion on TOC - aiming at being also policy-oriented – should consider a larger set of variables (ability to perform at a global level, mobility, organisational capacity), several actors (convergence with terrorism, paramilitaries, corrupted state officials and representatives), several levels of action (economics, society, virtual space, politics), and of governance (national, bilateral and multilateral cooperation). Furthermore, a deep interdisciplinary approach, as well as a genuine dialogue with practitioners, would constitute the ideal framework for such overall analysis. The section wishes to contribute to this discussion by welcoming theoretical papers, as well as empirical and/or comparative ones. The idea for this section stemmed from discussions within the ECPR Standing Group on Organised Crime, which revealed the need to provide a meeting point where graduate students, advanced researchers, established academics and practitioners could discuss their projects. Considering the disciplinary diversity existing in this area, this section could be instrumental in building bridges across academic traditions by considering theoretical and methodological frameworks, research questions and empirical data.