Securing cross-border collaboration: transgovernmental enforcement networks, organized crime and illicit international political economy

Abstract

In a globalizing world, cross-border enforcement networks are rapidly emerging as important mechanisms to tackle illicit transnational markets. As a relatively recent mode of cross-border governance, both the IPE and public policy literatures have only just begun to explore the dynamics and implications of cross-border policy networks in general and security networks in particular. Cross-border enforcement networks are similar to current IPE conceptions of transgovernmental networks, yet the comparative analysis of such networks in this article shows that they extend, and differ, from transgovernmental networks. Instead, transgovernmental enforcement networks are emerging as a comparable but distinct transnational model and thus warrant emancipation as an object of study in their own right. By exploring two network cases concerned with US-Canada cross-border tobacco smuggling, the article discerns and describes factors and conditions that account for different outcomes among select U.S-Canada cross-border security networks: IBET/Shiprider and MYGALE. Data was collected by analyzing open primary sources and conducting interviews with subject participants in these policy networks. Based on these observations, the article generates insights that can subsequently be scrutinized using other cross-border policy case studies.

Keywords

• transgovernmental
• illicit international political economy
• cross-broder enforcement
• policy networks