Introduction: Deconstruction in progress: Towards a better understanding of organized crime?

This book is the result of collaboration within the ECPR Standing Group on Organized Crime which seeks to break down barriers between disciplines, nationalities, academics and practitioners working in the area of organized crime. There is a debate about the usefulness of this kind of project; however, we seek to develop a dialogue so that our understanding and ideas about organized crime can evolve in order to improve, in turn, the ‘fight against organized crime’. Many of the chapters in this volume were developed after discussions at the ECPR’s fourth general conference in Pisa in September 2007 where topics such as measuring organized crime, perceptions of organized crime and the relationship between organized crime and terrorism were examined. From these discussions, we were left intrigued by the relationship between political discourse, social perceptions and the reality of organized crime and wanted to pursue this further. In particular, using these concepts we wanted to deconstruct organized crime so that we can define and analyze it better, but also so that society and the polity can defy it more efficiently. Developing the notions of perception, discourse and reality, we contend that the dialectic between the ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ reality leave us with puzzling problems about the way we study, define and analyze organized crime. Does organized crime exist? Can it be an objective fact or is it always a subjective interpretation? And as for reality, what is real in all this? The aims and objectives of this book are primarily to raise questions about the use of these different concepts in relation to organized crime.