IR and New Security Threats: Organized Crime and the Others

Abstract

The concept of security has radically changed over the last decades, in facing multi-layered and diversifies challenges. Recent events – the attacks in Paris, the political instability after the Arab Springs, the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, the conflict in Syria – have demonstrated that terrorism, organised crime, guerrilla, warlords – and their interactions - represent a serious threat to security, since they challenge states and international and regional organisations and their traditional policies and practices to provide a safe environment to people. The ability of organised crime to progressively increase its performance at a global level, to establish its “free areas” inside failed and weak States, and, more importantly, to link with other groups that violently oppose the state, that is to say, terrorist groups, should be evaluated with greater attention and in a more comprehensive theoretical framework. Thus, the analysis of the forms these linkages take, and how various gradations of them impact the security and stability on a global level may become more relevant. Over the last decades, sociologists, criminologists, lawyers and historians have studied organised crime. From a theoretical and empirical perspective, however, International Relations represent the ideal framework to analyse its more recent developments and the kind of threats it represents at various levels. This panel aims at promoting and strengthening such debate; theoretical reflections as well as empirical analysis and case studies are welcome.

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