here - Center on International Cooperation - New York University

III. KNOWING WHEN TO ENGAGE AND
WHERE TO PRIORITIZE EFFORTS
The previous section highlighted core areas around
which to target development assistance in settings w<strong>here</strong>
organized crime is prevalent, or w<strong>here</strong> it risks becoming
so because of its interactions with the political process.
As noted earlier, development actors’ room for political
maneuver is often limited, particularly in traditional
development settings w<strong>here</strong> political leverage is limited.
If a recipient country’s core interests (or the interests of
elite groups within a country) are threatened by external
actors, it can easily play the sovereignty card or impose
a range of obstacles to prevent donor agencies from
overstepping non-articulated boundaries. This is all the
more complex in countries w<strong>here</strong> decision-makers might
be complicit in different forms of organized criminal
activity. For development actors, knowing when to engage
on organized crime-related issues is t<strong>here</strong>fore critical.
The following section provides options for frameworks
that can help donors assess and analyze organized crime
in a given setting, and inform decisions on w<strong>here</strong> to
prioritize engagement within the five suggested areas for
targeted action.
1. Political Economy Assessments
As noted earlier, certain factors can serve as important
indicators for assessing a country’s exposure to the risk of
organized crime penetration and gauging the degree of
state involvement. These include the existence of internal
and external checks and balances; a strong culture of
freedom of, and access to, information; a culture of asset
disclosure among elected officials and political parties; the
existence, strength, and independence of anti-corruption
bodies; legislative drafting capacity (particularly regarding
resource extraction and trafficking in illicit substances);
and citizen perceptions of organized crime or specific illicit
activities. Applying these indicators in different settings
(conflict, post-conflict, transition, traditional development
settings) will likely yield very different results, and t<strong>here</strong>fore
development responses should evidently be attuned to
the political realities of a given setting, not least because
they will also have varying degrees of leverage to influence
change depending on the setting. 56
In addition to these indicators, we also suggest that
development actors should make more strategic use of
political economy assessment tools to determine when
to engage and guide prioritization of action. For example,
a recent USAID study included a focus on i) sources of
support for/ tolerance of drug trafficking; ii) sources of
opposition to drug trafficking; iii) government complicity
and opposition; and iv) stakeholder interest and influence
as core elements of a political economy assessment to guide
donor engagements in their responses to drug trafficking.
The section on government complicity and opposition
aimed at “examin[ing] who in government is complicit in
the trade, and who opposes it (…)” is particularly insightful
(see Figure 2 below). More specifically, it suggests that:
“Complicit officials, like their opponents, may be
concentrated within offices, ministries, levels of
government, political factions, or political parties or
may have networks working across these divides. The
complicity of higher-level officials denotes a greater
threat to governance than the involvement of just
56. For a more detailed discussion on the question of context and leverage, see for example,
Kavanagh and Jones (2011), Shaky Foundations: An Assessment of UN Rule of Law Support, NYU
<strong>Center</strong> on International Cooperation.
31
Organized Crime Sensitive Programming Framework
Core Area for Targeted Action
1. Protecting the
2. Mondernizing and
3. Supporting Smart,
4. Engaging Civil Society
5. Deepening the
Political Process
Strengthening the
crime-sensitive,
and the Media
Knowledge Base
Criminial Justice System
economic and Social
Policies
Figure 1
Responding to the Impact of Organized Crime on Developing Countries
NYU
CIC