Caught Up in the Madness? State Power and Transnational Organized Crime in the Work of Susan Strange

Susan Strange's (1996, 1998) assessments of the threats posed by transnational organized crime to state power are reconsidered. An overview of Strange's central contentions is presented, emphasizing her assertion that states are losing their "value-allocating" authority to various nonstate actors, economic markets, & other states. Although Strange has criticized contemporary international relations scholarship for failing to develop models capable of explaining transnational organized crime's emergence, it is demonstrated that Strange's explanatory paradigm actually accepts several aspects of the state-centric perspective she critiques; for instance, it is revealed that Strange delineates organized crime groups as unitary actors within an anarchical global society. In addition, Strange's assertion that transnational organized crime jeopardizes states' capacity to raise revenue & control acts of violence within national boundaries is deemed valuable yet questioned on the grounds that her account overlooks state discourses of transnational organized crime groups as threats to state power. Recommendations for building upon Strange's noteworthy work on transnational organized crime are subsequently offered. J. W. Parker