Smugglers and states: illegal trade in the political settlements of North Africa

This project explores the political economy of informal and illegal cross-border trade in North Africa, focusing in particular on Tunisia’s border with Libya, and Morocco’s North-East bordering Algeria and the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Based on extensive fieldwork, the project traces the informal institutions that regulate smuggling across the region, examines the resulting rent streams, and analyses their relationship to the region’s states through a political settlement framework. Following shifts in the domestic politics of Tunisia and Morocco as well as the regional border infrastructure, the project also traces the recent re-negotiation of the role of smuggling in the region. It argues that contrary to common assumptions, smuggling rarely occurs 'under the radar' of the state, but is instead embedded in a tight network of institutional regulation in which the regions' states play a key role. Furthermore, rather than subverting states, smuggling activities are a central feature of the region’s political settlements. The project highlights that the ability of different groups to navigate and negotiate the terms of their inclusion into these settlements is highly uneven, posing serious challenges for borderland populations

A prize winning essay: Why it matters to understand the informal economy

Max Gallien, PhD candidate in The Department of International Development, is the joint runner-up of this year’s Economic and Social Research Council writing competition. Max’s eloquently written piece makes a strong case for examining the informal economy through a fresh pair of eyes

Is Tunisia really democratising? Progress, resistance, and an uncertain outlook

January 2019 marked the eighth anniversary of the end of the Ben Ali dictatorship - the celebrations however were marred by massive social protests. Opinions both in Tunisia and abroad differ about the state of Tunisia's political development as it gears up for its second parliamentary and presidential elections since the adoption of the new constitution in 2014. While some consider its democratisation to be virtually complete, others fear a relapse into autocracy. Despite its considerable democratic achievements, Tunisia is in danger of developing into a hybrid system: part democratic, part authoritarian. This is not only due to the difficult economic and regional con­text. Critically, the political, economic and administrative networks of the old system, as well as persistent authoritarian practices and "old" rhetoric in politics and society, complicate the deepening of its fragile democracy. Tunisia’s international partners should make it their explicit objective to weaken these counter-currents. (author's abstract

Clickbait and impact: how academia has been hacked

It has become increasingly clear that prevailing academic incentive structures have a potentially damaging and distorting effect on the nature of academic debates. Portia Roelofs and Max Gallien use the example of a controversial recent journal publication to illustrate how deliberately provocative articles have the capacity to hack academia, to privilege clicks and attention over rigour in research. This is consistent with equally troubling trends in the wider news media; where equal prominence is seemingly always afforded to extreme opposing views, where actual progress in debates becomes impossible, and false dissent is created on issues which are overwhelmingly sites of academic consensus

Researching the Politics of Illegal Activities

Researching illegal activities, while an object of increasing interest, generates a range of methodological challenges for political scientists. Rather than an exhaustive discussion, this article provides a simple framework that structures these challenges. It highlights that illegality itself is an insufficient guide to method development and needs to be supplemented by an analysis of three further dimensions: enforcement, normalisation and ethics. The article notes that beyond providing insights into the feasibility and challenges of different methodologies, examining these dimensions also directly point researchers to key political science questions about illegal activities themselves

Informal institutions and the regulation of smuggling in North Africa

Contemporary writing on North African borderlands invokes the idea of a general, unregulated porosity through which small-scale informal traders of food or textiles move alongside drug smugglers and terrorists. I challenge that conception, demonstrating that the vast majority of smuggling activity is in fact highly regulated through a dense network of informal institutions that determine the costs, quantity, and types of goods that can pass through certain nodes, typically segmenting licit from illicit goods.While informal, the institutions regulating this trade are largely impersonal and contain third-party enforcement, hence providing a direct empirical challenge to common characterisations of informal institutions in political science. I argue that revisiting the characteristics associated with informal institutions, and understanding them as contingent on their political environment, can provide a new starting point for studying institutions, the politics of informality, state capacity, and the regulation of illegal economies

Tunesiens Demokratisierung: erhebliche Gegenbewegungen; große Fortschritte, alte Seilschaften, unklare Perspektiven

Mitte Januar 2019 jährte sich das Ende der Ben-Ali-Diktatur zum achten Mal - die Feier­lichkeiten wurden jedoch durch massive soziale Proteste getrübt. Im Jahr der zweiten Parlaments- und Präsidentschaftswahlen seit Verabschiedung der neuen Ver­fassung 2014 gehen die Meinungen zu Tunesiens politischer Entwicklung ausein­an­der - und zwar sowohl in Tunesien selbst als auch im Ausland: Während die einen die Demokratisierung für quasi abgeschlossen halten, befürchten andere einen Rück­fall in die Autokratie. Nüchtern betrachtet zeigt sich, dass Tunesien trotz erheblicher demokratischer Errungenschaften in Gefahr ist, sich zu einem hybriden - teils demo­kratischen, teils autoritären - System zu entwickeln. Dies liegt nicht nur am schwierigen wirtschaftlichen und regionalen Kontext. Vielmehr erschweren politische, wirt­schaftliche und administrative Seilschaften des alten Systems sowie nach wie vor existierende autoritäre Praktiken und eine "alte" Rhetorik in Politik und Gesellschaft die Vertiefung der fragilen Demokratie. Klares Ziel für Tunesiens internationale Partner sollte es sein, diese Gegenbewegungen zu schwächen. (Autorenreferat

Channeling Contraband: How States Shape International Smuggling Routes

Although smuggling is commonly assumed to happen in remote and difficult-to-access borderlands, in reality, smuggling is most prevalent in areas that states tightly control, including at formal border crossings. To understand this puzzle, this article explores the relationship between states and smugglers at international borders. Based on extensive empirical research in various borderlands in North Africa and Southeast Asia, it argues that different kinds of smugglers prefer different types of relationships with the state. The article outlines six ideal types of such relationships. It contends that these types of relationships are the dominant factor in how different smuggling networks choose routes along a border. The findings have implications for our understanding of smuggling and policies that aim at addressing smuggling, especially regarding the effects of border fortifications and corruption prevention