Reports and articles
Checkpoints, Transnational Trade, and Conflict
This Working Paper proposes that checkpoints along transnational trade routes are central to conflict economies, facilitating the extraction of rents by armed groups without the need for extensive territorial control or bargaining with local populations. In addition, the paper explores the distributional impacts of checkpoint taxation.
Escaping isn’t for everyone: How Kurdish smugglers navigate checkpoints
This Working Paper looks at how smugglers navigate state and insurgent checkpoints in the Kurdish region of Iran. Through bribes that secure negotiated passages or using modified cars that enable evasion and circumventions, Kurdish smugglers co-produce contingent informal orders that vary significantly across these spatial nodes of power along illegal trade routes.
Border control paradox: The political economy of smuggling between Colombia and Venezuela
In this working paper, Jorge Mantilla explores state-criminal cooperation in roadblock politics. His study discusses the way in which, between 2015 and 2023, the bilateral tensions and border closure between Colombia and Venezuela created a political economy of smuggling in which state officials delegated basic state functions to organised crime groups to contain foes, domesticate illegal economies, and maintain social control.