Crimilegal Orders, Governance, and Armed Conflict

This lecture presents a novel perspective on the relationship between what is conventionally termed organised crime and the political order in the contemporary developing world. The book's author, Prof. Markus Schultze-Kraft, proposes the concept of crimilegality: In hybrid crimilegal orders the moral, normative, and social boundaries between legality and illegality-criminality are blurred, and through the violation of the official law, the illegal-criminal sphere of social life becomes legitimate and morally acceptable, while the legal becomes illegitimate and immoral. Several examples of crimilegality and crimilegal governance in Colombia and Nigeria, including in relation to armed conflict termination, are used to illustrate these complex processes.

Speaker:

Markus Schultze-Kraft is an associate professor in the Department of Political Studies at Universidad Icesi, Colombia. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Politics from the University of Oxford and focuses on comparative peace processes and civil-military relations in Central America. Prof. Schultze-Kraft was formerly programme director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Crisis Group.