Mafia state
In politics, a mafia state is a state system where the government is tied with organized crime to the degree when government officials, the police, and/or military became a part of the criminal enterprise. According to US diplomats, the expression "mafia state" was coined by Alexander Litvinenko.
Particular applications of the concept
Mafia in Italy and Yakuza in Japan
In a critical review of Moisés Naím's essay in Foreign Affairs, Peter Andreas pointed to the long existence of Italian mafia and Japanese Yakuza, writing that there were close relationships between those illicit organisations and respective governments. According to Andreas, these examples speak against incidences of mafia states as a historically new threat.In Italy, three main mafia organisations originated in the 19th century: the Cosa Nostra originating from the region of Sicily, the Camorra originating from the region of Campania, and the 'Ndrangheta originating from the region of Calabria.
Former Prime Minister of Italy, Giulio Andreotti, had legal action against him, with a trial for mafia association on 27 March 1993 in the city of Palermo. The prosecution accused the former prime minister of " available to the mafia association named Cosa Nostra for the defense of its interests and attainment of its criminal goals, the influence and power coming from his position as the leader of a political faction". Prosecutors said in return for electoral support of Salvo Lima and assassination of Andreotti's enemies, he had agreed to protect the Mafia, which had expected him to fix the Maxi Trial. Andreotti's defense was predicated on character attacks against the prosecution's key witnesses, who were themselves involved with the mafia. Andreotti was acquitted on 23 October 1999. However, together with the greater series of corruption cases of Mani pulite, Andreotti's trials marked the purging and renewal of Italy's political system.
The Camorra Casalesi clan rose in the 1980s, gaining control of large areas of the local economy "partly by manipulating politicians and intimidating judges". The clan was heavily involved in the Naples waste management crisis that dumped toxic waste around Campania in the 1990s and 2000s; the boss of the clan, Gaetano Vassallo, admitted to systematically working for 20 years to bribe local politicians and officials to gain their acquiescence to dumping toxic waste.
Countries described as mafia states
Republics, mobs and territories of the former Yugoslavia
, a partially recognised break-away state from Serbia, was called a "mafia state" by Italian MEP Pino Arlacchi in 2011, and also by Moisés Naím in his 2012 essay "Mafia States" in Foreign Affairs. Naím pointed out that Prime Minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi is allegedly connected to the heroin trade. Many other crime allegations have been made and investigated by several countries against Thaçi.Naím also labeled Montenegro as a "mafia state" in the same essay, describing it as a hub for cigarette smuggling.
Transnistria
, an unrecognised break-away state from Moldova, has long been described by journalists, researchers, politicians and diplomats as a quasi-state whose economy is dependent on contraband and gunrunning, with some having directly referred to Transnistria as a mafia state.For instance, in 2002, Moldova's president, Vladimir Voronin, called Transnistria a "residence of international mafia", "smuggling stronghold", and "outpost of Islamic combatants". Attempts of customs blockade followed the allegations. Reacting to the allegations, Russian state-run RTR aired an investigative program revealing that Transnistrian firms were conducting industrial-level manufacturing of small arms purposely for subsequent illegal trafficking via the Ukrainian port of Odesa. According to the program, the trade was controlled by and benefited from Transnistria's founder and then-ruler Igor Smirnov.
However, more recent investigations and monitoring missions did not prove continuity in arms trafficking concerns. According to regular reports of the European Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine, there have been no signs of significant weapons smuggling from Transnistria. During the press conference on 30 November 2006, head of EUBAM Ferenc Banfi officially stated that organised smuggling of weapons in Transnistria did not exist. In 2013, Ukrainian Foreign Minister and acting chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Leonid Kozhara gave an interview to El País, commenting on the situation in Transnistria and results of work of the EUBAM mission. According to Kozhara, there have been no cases of arms traffic found.
Some experts from Russia and Transnistria state that allegations of Transnistria being a "mafia state", "black hole of Europe", and "heaven for arms trafficking", etc. are a carefully planned defamation campaign paid by the Moldovan government and aimed at producing a negative image of Transnistria. Officials from the European Union and the OSCE say they have no evidence that the Tiraspol regime has ever trafficked arms or nuclear material. Much of the alarm is attributed to efforts by the Moldovan government to increase pressure on Transnistria.
Russia
The term has been used by slain Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko and media to describe the political system in Russia under Vladimir Putin's rule. This characterization came to prominence following the United States diplomatic cables leak, which revealed that US diplomats viewed Russia as "a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a 'virtual mafia state.'" In his book titled Mafia State, journalist and author Luke Harding argues that Putin has "created a state peopled by ex-KGB and FSB officers, like himself, bent on making money above all." In the estimation of American diplomats, "the government effectively the mafia." Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen has also described Russia as a "mafia state".According to the New Statesman, "the term had entered the lexicon of expert discussion" several years before the cables leak, "and not as a frivolous metaphor. Those most familiar with the country had come to see it as a kleptocracy with Vladimir Putin in the role of capo di tutti capi, dividing the spoils and preventing turf wars between rival clans of an essentially criminal elite." In 2008, Stephen Blank noted that Russia under Putin is "a state that European officials privately call a Mafia state" that "naturally gravitates toward Mafia-like behavior."
Nikolay Petrov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said "it's pretty hard to damage the Russian image in the world because it's already not very good".
The term pakhanate, created from the underworld slang, has also been used to describe Russia's political system.
Iran
cannot be considered a nation-state or a constitutional state, but the closest interpretation of the political model governing Iran would be a criminal state or a mafia state. The government governing Iran has completely ended the rule of law, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, as a criminal organization, has monopolized all the means of political, military, and economic power, and a small group of close associates of the Iranian leader, who consider ownership of all aspects of the individual and collective life of society as their inherent right, and do not consider themselves responsible to society and do not see any obligation to be accountable. This government has abandoned all legitimate means of political and economic control and, like a criminal gang, is trying to keep society under its control through threats, extortion, kidnapping, hostage-taking, assassination, and the spread of terror through the display of cruelty and torture. This control is not applied to govern the country and society, but only to earn income and expand the scope of money-making. The contradictory foreign policy of the Iranian government is also understandable only from the perspective of a criminal organization with the tools of governance that is focused on the interests of a specific group and only thinks about expanding the sphere of influence and earning income for this specific group.Hungary
A 2001 article conducted an analysis of actions undertaken by Fidesz, the then newly established governing party in Hungary, which it deemed to be aimed at dismantling the institutional framework of the rule of law. This approach introduced novel concepts such as the 'organized over-world', the 'state employing mafia methods', and the 'adopted political family'. While initially met with skepticism by many, who regarded these concepts as metaphors rather than integral elements of a coherent framework, a significant shift occurred a decade later. In the 2010 elections, Fidesz secured a commanding two-thirds majority in Parliament.Subsequently, both the party and the state itself came under the sway of a single individual, who adeptly applied techniques honed within the party to exert control over society at large. In a departure from the trajectory observed in other post-communist systems, where segments of the party and secret service assumed control over both political power and wealth, Fidesz, as a relative newcomer, aggressively reshaped the elite landscape to assert dominance.
The modus operandi of the post-communist mafia state revolves around concentrating power and wealth within the confines of the clan. However, unlike traditional mafia structures reliant on direct coercion, the mafia state achieves its objectives through ostensibly legitimate means such as parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax enforcement, police action, and utilization of secret services.
According to journalist Masha Gessen, in 2016, sociologist Bálint Magyar popularized the term "mafia state" to describe the administration of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Magyar argued that Orbán's method of taking power in Hungary, removing rivals and politicizing institutions for personal power, created a kind of regime known as a "mafia state". Magyar said that other states besides Hungary included Azerbaijan, Russia, and Kazakhstan as of 2016.