Cooperating against Crime: Information-sharing among Governments and the Role of Trust

In the era of globalization, efforts against transnational crime require governments to share information with each other. For example, the UN Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons encourages law enforcement and immigration authorities of concerned states to cooperate with one another by exchanging information in order to enhance investigations, prosecutions and detection of trafficking networks. However, sharing of information faces significant challenges: There is a real risk that information sharing might result in leaks that could compromise internal investigations or scandals that could embarrass domestic regulators. Moreover, bureaucracies may face domestic political incentives to use shared data for other purposes than those agreed upon in advance. There is also the risk that the foreign authorities will be unable or unwilling to provide the necessary information. Adapting work from organizational sociology, we focus on the role that interorganizational trust may play in facilitating information-sharing agreements among governments. We define interorganizational trust as the expectations held by decision-makers in a cooperating state concerning the predictability, reliability, and fairness of organizations in potential partner states. Decision-makers that have a high degree of interorganizational trust for a potential partner will view that partner as being more likely to fulfill the duties of the agreement and less likely to act in an opportunistic manner. Institutional arrangements and procedures, such as checks and balances or judicial independence, play a key role in building organizational trust as they signal the credibility of a partner’s commitments as well as the perception that they will follow through with the agreement in a consistent and fair manner. In contrast to dispositional trust, which is often seen as an inherent characteristic of individuals, interorganizational trust is a relational concept, in which cooperating states evaluate potential partner organizations with an eye to their own internal rules and practices as a reference. In order to test our argument about interorganizational trust, we examine a set of information-sharing agreements that are critical in the efforts against crime: Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) that allow states to obtain legal evidence from abroad. Using an original dataset of MLATs, we find that trust among legal systems is an important foundation of information sharing. MLATs are more likely to be established between states that have a similar level of judicial independence and rule of law; a shared legal tradition (common or civil law) also fosters trust and increases the likelihood of an MLAT. Additional qualitative evidence complements the statistical analysis and suggests that mutual trust among legal systems is important for the efforts against transnational crime. The paper concludes with broader implications and suggests how inter-state trust may be fostered in order to facilitate international cooperation against crime.