Transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking

Transnational criminal organizations, particularly drug-trafficking organizations, operate unrestricted across international borders. They are very similar in kind to legitimate transnational corporations in structure, strength, size, geographical range and scope of their operations. Above all other features they engage in unregulated forms of capitalist enterprise. To fully understand transnational criminal organizations it is necessary to examine them as organizations responding to economic opportunities and focus on the factors that influence their emergence. Those factors can be understood as a result of the confluence of opportunities, pressures, incentives and resources at the global and national level. The present article identifies the key environmental factors relevant to the emergence of transnational criminal organizations, and explores the intrinsic relationship between those organizations, their home States and host States. It is those conditions which not only give rise to transnational criminal organizations, but also help to sustain them.