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Question 1

What factors enabled the expansion of transnational crime (TNC) in the 1990s?

a) Transnational crime developed as a result of the declining expenditure on defense and the standing down of armies which reduced the risk of activities.

b) TNC as a concept emerged in the academic sphere as linked to human security concerns and developmental opportunities in weak states as a means of conflict resolution and peace building in Europe.

c) Transnational criminal activities have always been a feature of the international system. The growth of the currency of TNC in the policy community however has been attributable to the increasing sophistication of intelligence and communications technology which has enabled the true representation of the scale and the scope of the problem to be known.

d) International trends such as globalization may have had the unintentional consequence of opening up new spaces for the development of transnational crime.

Question 2

Has TNC become a national security threat?

a) Transnational crime is regarded as a threat to economic development; good government was considered the prerequisite for economic growth. Organized crime is seen as a threat to development insofar as it undermines the rule of law and deters foreign investment by increasing the level of insecurity in the host communities. Additionally, criminals often reinvest their proceeds in the legal economy having an unequal advantage through access to cheap capital and their ability to intimidate commercial adversaries. In societies with high levels of TNC, legitimate investors are often reluctant to commit resources.

b) TNC is regarded to undermine democratic stability and in many states transnational criminal enterprises have taken advantage of the instability that has accompanied the democratic transitions to post communist societies, using their influence in the upper reaches of the state and thus shielding themselves from law enforcement. The corruption of public institutions and the perceived inefficacy of the rule of law in new democracies contribute to undermining public confidence in and loyalty to the new regime.

c) At a very basic level, the ability of transnational crime to evade state border controls and provide new avenues for the illicit transportation of goods and persons challenges the state's ability to exercise its core functions as guarantor of national sovereignty, the monopolization over the control of force, and as the provider of the common good. TNC criminal activities are corrupt and undermine numerous state agencies, providing mechanisms by which their activities can affect the very nature of government and state policy in the host countries.

d) All of the above

Question 3

In what ways may TNC be regarded as a new concept?

a) Organized transnational crime groups are those structured groups randomly formed or otherwise but do not have a formally defined role for its members or continuity of membership but have a developed purpose for the intent of committing crimes.

b) Transnational organized criminal activities is the profit driven crime for a high level return that may result in the subversion or infiltration of the legal economy through the reinvestment of illicit profits.
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c) Transnational criminal organizations are those organizations whose modes of operation result in breaking domestic laws, e.g. murder, theft or money-laundering, underlined by the employment of systematic violence.

d) The terms 'transnational crime' and 'organized crime' are sometimes used interchangeably but not all transnational crime will be committed by an organized group nor will all organized groups engage in transnational crime. The pursuit of profit for illicit activity eludes definition and may include those individuals or businesses who engage in occasional transnational criminal activity but are otherwise legitimate operatives.

Question 4

Is TNC a new phenomenon?

a) There is little evidence to substantiate the claim that there is a real and increasing threat posed by the scale and scope of transnational crime in the 1980s to 1990s beyond the consensus that concern over the levels of crime were generated by the military re-conceiving its role in light of the dissolution of the Cold War.

b) Whereas illegal markets were territorially bounded and isolated, the contemporary form illicit markets tend to be interrelated and mutually supporting and more embedded in the legal economy .

c) TNC is a response by the dispossessed in response to the asymmetric economic development of nation states and the inequity of global market capitalism married with environmental constraints on development.

d) Transnational crime is no longer the exclusive domain of certain geographic areas or ethnic groups becoming globalized in operation, increasing the number of groups and countries affected and increasing the size of the illegal market ratio to licit trade.

Question 5

In what ways have post-Cold War developments undermined state authority?

a) The increased levels of globalization in trade, finance, and movement has produced an environment conducive to TNC by making it easier for criminals to move illicit profits and illegal goods, provide service, and smuggle persons across borders.

b) The wave of political transitions to democracy and economic transitions to free market capitalism since the 1980s - a phenomenon of which frequently occurred simultaneously in the same country - have undermined state capacity to enforce rule of law and created new opportunities for organized crime groups to penetrate societies in transition.

c) The multiplication of ethnically and religiously based civil wars since the end of the Cold War has resulted in the breakdown of the rule of law and created new opportunities for organized crime groups to profit from smuggling weapons, supplies and people, often under the protection of the warring parties.

d) All of the above.

Question 6

What policy implications would a hierarchical vision of TNC have?

a) Hierarchical forms of transnational criminal activity are primarily territorially affiliated to a particular state / ethnic-cultural group and have limited transnational potential.

b) The hierarchical analysts believe that generally there has been a tendency of officials to have over inflated the estimation of the levels of violence and wealth generated by their activities. If the wealth is not as great as is widely believed, their threat to the licit economy is vastly reduced

c) Hierarchical forms of organization are highly adaptable and small fluid groups enable a pronounced degree of resilience (attributable to the logic of supply rising to meet demand) against law enforcement efforts confined to rigid ranking of cooperation.

d) Hierarchical groups pose a serious degree of harm by their profit-driven crimes under centralized leadership. Targeting the proceeds or leadership would therefore produce a reduction in their threat on the legitimate economy.

Question 7

What is the network form of organization?

a) Network operations developed as profit maximizing fluid units operating under the centralized group that could outsource counter-operatives. However the strategy of maximization correspondingly resulted in a strategy that maximized risks: the networked nature meant that the nodes crucial to the operation could be dismantled (although the leadership very often remained intact)

b) The network form of organization requires the recruitment of personnel with highly specialized skills necessary to conduct each operative 'node' coexisting within the network. Participation was highly elusive enabling the structures to remain intact against corruption.

c) The network analogy emphasizes the highly de-centralized structure of activities as the most efficacious compromise between profit-maximizing and risk-minimizing structural forms.

d) All of the above

Question 8

What is the market vision of transnational organized crime?

a) Market place scholars argue that transnational crime operates like a capitalist marketplace in its scope and extensity of operations. Criminal organizations are thus very resilient to law enforcement efforts by virtue of their sheer size. Of comparative difference however is the development of highly sophisticated networks of collaboration between criminal groups that has enabled them to survive under the conditions of the competitive logic of the marketplace.

b) Market analysts argue that the criminal alliances create organizations with a high level of wealth and power that far underestimates what government and official estimates attribute to them. Within this perspective the threat to the licit economy is vastly increased.

c) Market analysts believe that white-collar and corporate crimes contribute significantly to undermining the licit market. Those organized crime groups are more prone to use violence and corruption than ordinary criminal groups as a result of the extent of profits invested in their activities.

d) Emphasis on transnational organized crime writ large should be the primary concern of the international community based on the assessment that collaborators of organized crime groups in the licit sector should be targeted with significant political weight - policy makers should conduct market-by-market analyses of different illicit activities to yield strategies that are more useful than generic tactical advice to target criminal groups.

Question 9

Can TNC be linked to terrorism and in what ways?

a) There is growing evidence of direct partnerships between terrorist groups and transnational criminal organization resulting from the end of the Cold War and the need to secure new forms of financial sponsorship. For most terrorist groups criminal activity has been amongst the most important sources of funds with the diffusion of terrorist networks globally operating in correlation to the diffusion of illicit market activities.

b) The nexus between terrorist groups and criminal organizations are generally a temporary aberration. Differential long-term strategic goals meant that levels of cooperation were generally tactical temporary alliances that would have little pervasive effects.

c) There is increasing evidence over the convergence of terrorism and transnational crime, but there is no consensus about whether this phenomenon is a long-term strategic alliance or episodic "marriages of convenience".

d) Governments are increasingly recognizing the danger posed by the convergence of methods and movies in which the criminal activities to raise money to enact their operations e.g. forfeiting, smuggling, illegally crossing borders, for all intents are pursuant of the same aim: undermining the state structures directly (use of violence) and indirectly (through undermining the rule of law and economic structures.)

Question 10

In what ways have governments responded to the threat of TNC post-Cold War?

a) State responses to transnational crime have evolved in correlation to the increased threat posed to the integrity of the state. Organized crime has been regarded primarily as a national security threat to be addressed domestically. The institutionalized international approaches for information sharing have been predominately bi-lateral to the extent of bringing to justice perpetrators of crime that are seeking to evade justice.

b) Governments have increasingly come to perceive transnational crime as a national security threat leading to the temptation to use intelligence assets and the military to supplement law enforcement. At the same time however, the concern of international financial institutions and non-governmental organizations with state corruption and state failure - two issues closely related to TNC - holds the promise of more comprehensive national responses to supplement law enforcement.

c) The US war on drugs has heavily influenced the construction of the governmental response to the growing perception that the phenomenon of TNC represents a national security threat. The approach has an emphasis on bi-lateral and multilateral cooperation on law enforcement combined with sticks on a bi-lateral basis to induce states to increase regulation and enforcement against TNC.

d) The emergence of norms governing the response to address the specter of organized crime and to harmonize legislation occurred with the evolving Global War on Terror in which the terrorism-organized crime nexus resulted in the militarization of law enforcement: the use of military technology and intelligence as opposed to addressing the underlying conditions that facilitate illicit trade through an international institutionalist response.

Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 19.

Chapter 19

Instructions