Illicit Trade and Smuggling

In this article, illicit trade and smuggling refer to the unauthorized sale, purchase, exchange, or transport of goods, persons, animals, or technology across borders. Illicit trade across borders may entail goods considered dangerous, those that circumvent prohibitions in one or both countries, or mundane items and population movements that evade controls or regulations. However, smuggled goods may be produced, consumed, or recirculated legally, informally, or illegally. Lacking a universal, global set of norms and regulations across time, much of what is considered to be illicit trade may be legal in one place while prohibited in another, or tolerated in one time and banned in another. The forms smuggling takes and its profitability are shaped by regulations, their inconsistent application, and their differences across different regulatory spheres. Illicit trade often dovetails with legal global trade; forms of integration from below may proceed alongside, compete with, resist, or even complement and foster legal global economic flows. Power relations, within countries and wielded by more powerful nations with influence to shape trade agreements, trade policies, financial norms, and global prohibition regimes, normalize the kinds of international trade considered legal and beneficial and foster the criminalization of competing alternatives. Yet, such norms are not necessarily widely shared or consistently applied and implemented. Individuals engaging in forms of illicit trade and smuggling may not share the perspective of states or international organizations regarding the morality and legitimacy of their actions. Scholars contend that perceptions of illicit trade risk perpetuating seeing like a state, making historical and comparative perspectives paramount. Not everything the state does is moral and not every aspect of illicit trade is amoral. This may pertain especially with respect to the marginalized; extra-legal trade may provide a mode of subsistence, and state regulations may be experienced as selective, predatory, and protective of elite privilege and prevailing arrangements of inequality. States have the power to determine what is legal or criminal in the first place. Yet critical perspectives also point to how states and elite actors may benefit not only from forms of corruption, but also from illicit trade more broadly such that illicit trade is constitutive of state power, bureaucratic expansion, and international norms. Debate persists regarding whether illicit markets stabilize, build, compete with, or destabilize governance arrangements. Scholars also disagree whether illicit trade has grown, facilitated by globalization, or whether perceptions of this rising threat are shaped more by questionable numbers, state/private interests, and changing prohibitions.

When nature meets the divine: effect of prohibition regimes on the structure and tree species composition of sacred forests in northern Greece

Sacred forests are an integral component of the mountainous cultural landscape of northern Greece, hypothesized to be the result of both ecological processes and site-specific forest management regimes through strict religious prohibition. These practices acted as constraints on natural forest development by suppressing understory growth, while prohibition of woodcutting has preserved large trees. The aim of this study was to investigate the relative effects of physical site environment and management regimes on the structure and composition of woody plant groups in six such forests. Species rank–abundance curves, dissimilarity indices and cluster analyses were used to assess variation within and amongst the woody plant groups of the sites. Species abundance was found to be highly variable amongst the sites, with notable variation between canopy and understory layers indicating dynamic change in floristics and structure. Cluster analysis revealed four main woody plant groups statistically associated with environmental variables (aspect) and forest management (different forest prohibition regimes, and presence or absence of infrastructure). Our results indicate that tree composition is significantly associated with different prohibition regimes linked to the forests' sacred status, as well as the inherent environmental variation amongst sites. Exploring further the role of traditional management systems in shaping sacred forest structure is a relevant research path for designing effective conservation practices tailored to sacred natural sites facing cultural abandonment.

The Global Diffusion of Law: Transnational Crime and the Case of Human Trafficking

In the past few decades new laws criminalizing certain transnational activities have proliferated: from money laundering, corruption, and insider trading to trafficking in weapons and drugs. Human trafficking is one example. We argue that criminalization of trafficking in persons has diffused in large part because of the way the issue has been framed: primarily as a problem of organized crime rather than predominantly an egregious human rights abuse. Framing human trafficking as an organized crime practice empowers states to confront cross-border human movements viewed as potentially threatening. We show that the diffusion of criminalization is explained by road networks that reflect potential vulnerabilities to the diversion of transnational crime. We interpret our results as evidence of the importance of context and issue framing, which in turn affects perceptions of vulnerability to neighbors' policy choices. In doing so, we unify diffusion studies of liberalization with the spread of prohibition regimes to explain the globalization of aspects of criminal law.