Criminalized Power Structures: The Overlooked Enemies of Peace

Criminalized power structures (CPS) are illicit networks that profit from transactions in black markets and from criminalized state institutions while perpetuating a culture of impunity. The book articulates a typology for assessing the threats of CPS and for implementing appropriate strategies to achieve sustainable peace effectively and efficiently. The international case studies address interventions undertaken either to support the implementation of a peace agreement (i.e., a peace operation) or to stabilize a country entangled in an internal conflict in the context of a power-sharing agreement among key protagonists (i.e., a stability operation). In each of these cases, at least one of the parties to the agreement was a criminalized power structure that was a leading spoiler. The final chapter identifies strategies that are most effective for each type of CPS, including the ways and means (or tools) required for effective conflict transformation.

A companion volume, Combating Criminalized Power Structures: A Toolkit, provides practitioners with the means of coping with the challenges posed by CPS.

Michael Dziedzic is vice president of Pax Advisory and a retired US Air Force Colonel. He began this project this project while a senior program officer at the US Institute of Peace.

Contributors
David C. Beer, Dan Bisbee, Carlos Castresana, Michael Dziedzic, Karmen Fields, Carl Forsberg, Jennifer S. Holmes, Laura Mercean, Jana R. Alley Nyerges, Ismail Rashid, Elton Skendaj, Tim Sullivan, Oscar Vera, Phil Williams