432 CHAPTER ElEvEn ■ TransnaTional issues
issues. What makes or ga nized crime increasingly likely to come into international rela-
tions theory nowadays is the vio lence that very often accompanies or ga nized criminal
activities, and the fact that many of these activities cross international borders in ways
that cause states to treat them more as foreign policy issues over time.
Realists, for example, only care about transnational crime to the extent that crime
might diminish a state’s military or economic power or a state’s ability to manage its
military or economic power. Counterfeiting is an older example of a crime that affects
state power, and cyber crime is more recent. Either sort of crime might harm a state’s
economy, its credit rating, and, in the case of cyber crime, even a state’s capacity to
direct its military. But it is only in cases where crime affects state power that realism
recognizes crime as a prob lem of theoretical interest.
By contrast, liberals share a deep concern about transnational crime precisely because
it affects a central pillar of liberal theories of cooperation and peace: trust. When cyber
criminals in, say, Ukraine hack into a financial network in London, the British gov-
ernment is likely to consider Ukraine’s government partly responsible, even though Brit-
ain itself hosts hackers and net criminals, and recognizes a need to do more to identify
and stop domestic netcrime. The same goes for human trafficking and narcotraffick-
ing. The existence of each causes states to worry that only “they” are working to really
control and stop the crime, and that o thers are likely either passively or actively con-
doning such criminal activity. This potential harm to trust in commerce and security
cooperation would count as a serious threat to the liberal ideal of incremental improve-
ment in global security and prosperity.
Radicals argue that transnational or ga nized crime has its roots in a system of
in equality and vio lence embedded in the system of states as such, and is caused ulti-
mately by the institution of private property, which acts to systematically impoverish
the masses so that a few might enjoy vulgar consumption and an unsustainable stan-
dard of living. The state may tolerate crime itself because the state represents the inter-
ests of wealthy elites, including their security interests.
Constructivists, by contrast, might argue that transnational “crime” tends to be
defined in ways that serve the interests of par tic u lar classes of international actors like
multinational corporations. Why is a corporation charging too much for a given prod-
uct like prescription drugs not classified as criminal, when a hacker who steals a for-
mula enabling a poor country to make a generic version of a costly prescription drug
is classified as a criminal? Constructivists, in short, focus on the po liti cal implications of
the meanings given to phenomena rather than accepting those meanings as universal.
For many feminist international relations scholars, the lack of serious engagement
at the international level with transnational crime confirms a narrow masculinist view
of what does and what does not matter po liti cally. Domestic abuse, economic and edu-
cational discrimination against women, and sex trafficking “do not matter” in this
account because they allegedly neither enhance nor diminish state “power.” But when