The Economic Factors Behind Legal Integration: A Jurimetric Analysis of the Latin American Experience

This paper shows that the international harmonization of commercial legal rules and commercial legal standards in Latin America have been the result of very specific legal and economic country-specific factors. The paper proposes that international legal harmonization within a regional bloc of countries is a function of the convergence of three broad conditions: (1) first, the a priori international country-to-country compatibility in the form and scope of their legal rules applied to domestic commercial transactions; (2) second, the emergence and growth of intra sectoral international markets supported by foreign direct investment; and (3) third, the emergence and growth of domestic trade-related industries seeking compatible legal rules in their exporting markets abroad. A jurimetric model is introduced in Part III showing that the drive to seek international legal harmonization has been explained by these specific economic and legal domestic factors.

THE VERTICAL INTEGRATION OF ORGANISED CRIME LINKED TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF ASSET FORFEITURES AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The analysis presented in this study shows that greater scopes of criminal organizations’ vertical integration within the legal economic domains – where, for example, a transnational criminal network acquires the legal economic capacity to generate its own raw materials, produce the goods or services to be later trafficked, transport the goods or services to be trafficked, distribute the good or service and also control the wholesale and retail legal businesses – always come hand in hand with political corruption within the electoral campaign financing and public procurement domains in countries with more acute state failures to legally and judicially dismantle criminal syndicates through asset forfeitures. In this context, this analysis extends previous findings by providing conceptual and empirical foundation to the greater diversification of organized economic crimes associated with a more intense degree of vertical integration in legal businesses that are politically protected through illegally funding electoral campaigns and by engaging in public procurement bids. Building on Williamson’s theoretical frameworks, the vertical integration of legal economic activities by criminal enterprises is aimed at the criminal organizations’ aim to reduce transaction costs linked to the frequency, specificity, uncertainty, bounded rationality, and opportunistic behaviour in market transactions within economic environments where other criminal organizations also compete with violence and with corruption to capture legal markets in order to support their more diverse criminal activities. Moreover, the theory and empirical verification presented here will show that greater vertical integration of economic activities of a criminal network in the midst of State failures to provide public services (such as state failures in providing clean political elections and court services) will also come hand in hand with the greater organized crime supply of quasi-public goods and services (such as alternative dispute resolution mechanisms) aimed at the demand of the most economically vulnerable segments of the population located within the geographic areas where this same organized crime group operates. In this scenario, a systemic violation of political and civil rights, such as the systemic violation of the human rights to access justice or to cleanly elect public officials, will act as a pre-condition for the social empowerment of organized crime. In short, there is a chain reaction within which judicial system failures foster more frequent provisions of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms supplied by organized crime armed groups that are linked to a greater diversification of criminal markets and a greater vertical integration of legal markets supporting the criminal markets. One of the main implications of this piece is that a more efficient judicial performance in forfeiting criminal assets will strengthen the human right to access justice for the most vulnerable segments of the population and will positively impact on the right to cleanly elect public officials with less organized crime interference. Therefore, a more efficient judicial performance in dismantling criminal networks will enhance punitive/deterrence against criminal enterprises but also prevent the growth of social and political protection bubbles within which organized crime thrives

La paradoja mexicana de la delincuencia organizada: Policías, violencia y corrupción

This paper describes the contextual conditions and organizational dimensions by which the Mexican criminal structures have evolved to become complex federations with a national base and extensive geographical presence. Also, it looks at the way organized crime has expanded from Mexico to more than forty countries on five continents. One issue of deep concern is the fact that Mexico has implemented only 46 percent of the measures contained in the Palermo Convention and 23 percent of those on the Merida Convention. Therefore, this highlights the degree of absence in Mexican public policy of the four types of measures listed in both operational and legal instruments concerning: coordination, combating and preventing corruption, international legal cooperation and social crime prevention. Resources and mechanisms have been successful in other countries such as Colombia and Italy where they have been implemented at more than 97 percent. The thesis presents the paradox of criminal punishment, in which to a larger deployment of police and state repression, criminal groups have responded with more corruption and violence, the strength of the latter is made possible by the fact that their assets lie untouched and hidden in the legal economy. Mexico has been the recipient of new criminal investments because of its heritage safe-haven conditions, a situation that has coincided with the phenomenon of paramilitarism, which given the social powerlessness of citizens, is increasingly a recourse to replace the state through private security providers.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5377/rpsp.v1i2.1365Este texto describe las condiciones contextuales y dimensiones organizativas mediante las cuales las estructuras criminales mexicanas han evolucionado para constituirse en complejas federaciones de base nacional y amplia presencia territorial. También explica cómo se ha producido la expansión de la delincuencia organizada desde México hacia más de 40 países en los cinco continentes.Un aspecto que expone el texto y es de profunda preocupación, es el hecho de que en México solo se ha implementado el 46% de las medidas contenidas en la Convención de Palermo, y el 23% de las referidas a la Convención de Mérida. Por ello, se destaca el grado de ausencia en las políticas públicas mexicanas de los cuatro tipos de medidas operativas recogidas en ambos instrumentos jurídicos y que conciernen a: La coordinación interinstitucional, el combate y prevención de la corrupción, la cooperación legal internacional y la prevención social del delito, recursos y mecanismos que han sido exitosos en otros países como Colombia e Italia, donde se han implementado en más de un 97%. Se presenta la tesis de la paradoja de la sanción penal: a mayor despliegue de fuerza pública y represión estatal, los grupos criminales han respondido con mayor corrupción y violencia. La fuerza que estos últimos han tenido ha sido posible debido a sus patrimonios intactos y escondidos en la economía legal. México ha sido el destinatario de nuevas inversiones criminales debido a sus condiciones de paraíso patrimonial, situación que ha coincidido con el fenómeno de la proliferación de agencias de protección de índole privada (paramilitarismo), recurso al que, ante la indefensión social, las y los ciudadanos han recurrido en forma creciente para suplir la ausencia estatal.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5377/rpsp.v1i2.136

The Self Model and the Conception of Biological Identity in Immunology

The self/non-self model, first proposed by F.M. Burnet, has dominated immunology for sixty years now. According to this model, any foreign element will trigger an immune reaction in an organism, whereas endogenous elements will not, in normal circumstances, induce an immune reaction. In this paper we show that the self/non-self model is no longer an appropriate explanation of experimental data in immunology, and that this inadequacy may be rooted in an excessively strong metaphysical conception of biological identity. We suggest that another hypothesis, one based on the notion of continuity, gives a better account of immune phenomena. Finally, we underscore the mapping between this metaphysical deflation from self to continuity in immunology and the philosophical debate between substantialism and empiricism about identity

La Paradoja Mexicana de la Delincuencia Organizada: Policías, Violencia y Corrupción

Este texto describe las condiciones contextuales y dimensiones organizativas mediante las cuales las estructuras criminales mexicanas han evolucionado para constituirse en complejas federaciones de base nacional y amplia presencia territorial. También explica cómo se ha producido la expansión de la delincuencia organizada desde México hacia más de 40 países en los cinco continentes.Un aspecto que expone el texto y es de profunda preocupación, es el hecho de que en México solo se ha implementado el 46% de las medidas contenidas en la Convención de Palermo, y el 23% de las referidas a la Convención de Mérida. Por ello, se destaca el grado de ausencia en las políticas públicas mexicanas de los cuatro tipos de medidas operativas recogidas en ambos instrumentos jurídicos y que conciernen a: La coordinación interinstitucional, el combate y prevención de la corrupción, la cooperación legal internacional y la prevención social del delito, recursos y mecanismos que han sido exitosos en otros países como Colombia e Italia, donde se han implementado en más de un 97%.Se presenta la tesis de la paradoja de la sanción penal: a mayor despliegue de fuerza pública y represión estatal, los grupos criminales han respondido con mayor corrupción y violencia. La fuerza que estos últimos han tenido ha sido posible debido a sus patrimonios intactos y escondidos en la economía legal. México ha sido el destinatario de nuevas inversiones criminales debido a sus condiciones de paraíso patrimonial, situación que ha coincidido con el fenómeno de la proliferación de agencias de protección de índole privada (paramilitarismo), recurso al que, ante la indefensión social, las y los ciudadanos han recurrido en forma creciente para suplir la ausencia estatal

Legal and Economic Factors Determining Success and Failure in the Fight against Organized Crime: An Empirical Assessment of the Palermo Convention

The legal and economic analysis presented here empirically tests the theoretical framework advanced by Kugler, Verdier, and Zenou (2004) and Buscaglia (1997). This paper goes beyond the prior literature by focusing on the empirical assessment of the actual implementation of the institutional deterrence and prevention mechanisms contained in the United Nations' Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo Convention). A sample of 107 countries that have already signed and/or ratified the Convention was selected. The paper verifies that the most effective measures against organized crime linked to high level public sector corruption (that captures and feudalizes public sectors) are mainly founded on three pillars: (i) the introduction of more effective judicial decisionmaking control systems causing reductions in the frequencies of abuses of procedural and substantive discretion; (ii) the higher frequencies of successful judicial convictions based on evidentiary material provided by financial intelligence systems aimed at the systematic confiscation of assets in the hands of criminal groups; and (iii) the operational presence of government and/or non-governmental preventive programs (that are funded by the private sector and/or governments and/or international organizations) addressing technical assistance to the private sector, educational opportunities, job training programs and/or rehabilitation (health and/or behavioral) of youth linked to organized crime in high-risk areas (with high-crime, high unemployment, and high poverty)