The present article analyzes international organized crime as an international security problem. Its main purpose is to comprehend the rationale and the consequences of the interaction between political authority and organized crime, analyzing the implications of organized crime for sovereignty as well as domestic and international measures to control such organizations. The central argument is that the capacities developed by criminal organizations are functional to their main goal of illicit enrichment, and their development is not an alien or pathological feature, but a constituent part of the social structure. Since organized crime has negative implications regarding the public sector's ability to provide security and welfare to society, governmental control measures such as policing, intelligence and lawmaking are discussed. At the international level, there is ongoing multilateral and bilateral cooperation on the subject, but this agenda does not create an environment of unrestricted cooperation due to divergent internal interests and conceptions, as well as asymmetry in the distribution of costs and benefits of collective action.
Organized Crime; International Security; Drug Trafficking; Nonstate Actors; Security Policies