A 'virtuous circle' of illicit markets? Smuggling and colonial state building in the Italian interwar Dodecanese

Abstract

Can illegal markets play a role in a state’s conscious strategies and efforts to establish and further order? Are there conditions under which law enforcement takes second place to wider considerations of national interest? The relationship between state policy and illicit economic activity is typically understood as an oppositional one: beyond a sense of lawlessness, illegal markets exist as a threat to the state’s economic and fiscal interests. In fact, our contemporary understanding of illegal markets is underpinned by the understanding of ‘organised crime’, which is often equally seen as inherently oppositional to a state’s claim on law and order over its territory. Contemporary discourses leave very little margin for a consideration of the relationship between state policy makers and regulators as anything other than conflictual