Beyond networks and institutions: Rethinking the role of organization in illicit drug market interaction

Abstract

Social network and sociocultural approaches generally dominate current research on illicit drug markets. The main argument of these perspectives is that networks and social norms are more important elements than organization in drug markets. However, there is a need to understand aspects of interaction in drug markets that actors explicitly make decisions about – aspects that are the result of organization – alongside the emergent aspects emphasized in the social network and sociocultural approaches. In this conceptual article, we argue that partial organization theory offers a much-needed complement to existing approaches, and is useful in understanding how different groups, gangs, networks, states and market organizers in drug markets use decisions to organize their activities and the market as such.

Introduction

Contemporary criminological research covers a wide variety of approaches to illicit drug markets. Scholars have developed market typologies based on the ways in which buyers and sellers locate one another; the social characteristics of distributors or buyers; distribution styles, methods, or levels; or the scale and complexity of transactions (Curtis and Wendel, 2000; Dorn et al., 1992; Johnson, 2016; May and Hough, 2004; Reuter and Pollack, 2012). As opposed to the early bureaucracy model of organized crime, which focused on the dominant role of large, hierarchical criminal organizations in illicit drug distribution (e.g. Cressey, 1969; Firestone, 1993) and attracted extensive critique (Kleemans, 2014), one of the currently predominant theoretical models instead highlights the transient ties between actors involved in drugs distribution, trafficking and supply, arguing that networks are more important than organizations in drug markets (Dorn et al., 1992; Natarajan et al., 2015; Zaitch, 2002). In a recent review, Bichler et al. (2017: 2, emphasis added) conclude that both the connections within crime groups and the ‘connections between groups in a distribution chain’ tend to be loosely organized, taking this as a sign that illicit drug markets are loosely organized in a dual sense. Thus, the network is currently conceptualized as the dominant social formation in illicit drug markets, sometimes in combination with a sociocultural approach where shared norms, values and local cultures, are understood as necessary driving forces behind drug market interaction (Dwyer and Moore, 2010a, 2010b; Moeller, 2018; Moeller and Sandberg, 2017; Ritter, 2006; Sandberg, 2012; Taylor and Potter, 2013).

While social networks and shared norms are undoubtedly important in understanding illicit drug market activities, existing research tends to disregard the fact that markets may be more and less organized, as well as organized in different ways (Ahrne et al., 2015; Beckert and Wehinger, 2013). Since markets are arenas of social interaction that are dependent on the social roles of buyers and sellers (Beckert, 2009), both the relations within and between crime groups involved in drugs supply, and the relations between drug sellers and buyers, may be more and less organized. Paradoxically, however, much of the research on drug market organization lacks a proper terminology for talking about organization. Concepts such as hierarchy, division of labour and membership are adopted from organizational research but are used without much explanation or consistency (Curtis and Wendel, 2000), while typologies based on structure and tasks (Natarajan and Belanger, 1998; Natarajan et al., 2015) cover only a limited set of an organization’s activities.

The contribution of this article is, therefore, to provide a framework for better understanding organization in illicit drug markets by introducing ideas inspired by partial organization theory (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). In partial organization theory, institution, network and organization correspond to three forms of social order, respectively ¹ (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). Shared norms and traditions are considered part of an institutional order (Berger and Luckmann, 1967); decisions are central in organizational interaction and hence part of an organizational order (Ahrne et al., 2015); and informal relations, reciprocity and trust are considered important aspects of a network order (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). Network, institution and organization are not mutually exclusive, but they are different. As opposed to network and institution, organization is ‘a decided order’, which involves decisions about one or more of the elements of membership, rules, monitoring, sanctions and hierarchy (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011: 84). Moreover, organization should be distinguished from organizations, which often implies the idea of a material structure of formal and complete organization. Attempts to organize do not necessarily emanate only from formal organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). The constituent elements of organization may appear alone or in different combinations outside formal organizations, and the notion of partial organization is designed to capture this phenomenon. In this perspective, even loosely connected groups of individuals may decide to use one or more of the five elements of organization in trying to achieve their goals, such as securing drug transactions or eliminating competitors, without having to be conceived as a complete, formal organization.

In this article, we examine organization in illicit drug markets through the lens of partial organization theory. In acknowledging that networks, institutions and partial organization coexist in illicit drug markets – as they do in the organizational world at large – partial organization theory introduces an analytical perspective geared to distinguishing between these forms of interaction. In this article, we suggest that this approach adds an additional dimension to established knowledge about illicit drug markets, allowing greater analytical flexibility in identifying and studying organization in and of markets. Furthermore, since durability is a central aspect of organizational logic (Ahrne, 1994), the partial organization framework allows us to better understand persistence in drug markets (Ayling, 2009). While the drug market literature is replete with market typologies, the present framework is more comprehensive than existing typologies in that it distinguishes between but connects institutions, networks and (partial) organization. Unlike previously suggested typologies, it also emphasizes the role of organizational decisions, an issue that is highly central in drug market interaction. In a practical and policy-focused respect, the article presents an alternative to the view of drug markets as alien and essentially different from legal markets that sometimes appears in public and policy debates, adding logical structure to a phenomenon that has been hard to grasp and has been seen as suspect. Finally, from a law enforcement perspective, elements of partial organization can be more accurately targeted by the police and the approach may help facilitate an analysis of possible unintended consequences of state sanctions.

In the following section, we draw on existing research on illicit drug markets to demonstrate the benefits of the partial organization concept. To introduce our argument, we begin with an overview of general sociological theories of markets, focusing on the role of social networks and institutions.

Conventional markets and illicit drug markets

Markets share some fundamental features. They are constructed around a product or service, a set of market actors, supply and demand, exchange, competition and property rights (Aspers, 2011; Beckert and Wehinger, 2013; North, 1990). Products, whether legal or illegal, are objects that are assigned value, for example, according to their quality and are exchanged for money under conditions of competition (Beckert, 2009); market actors are individuals, groups or organizations active on the market, for example, in the roles of buyers and sellers. For a market to emerge, there must be supply and demand for the product, and exchange, that is, the activity of buying and selling goods, has to extend beyond a single, non-recurring interchange (Beckert and Wehinger, 2013). To separate the concept of markets from the concept of trade, and allow for comparison and competition between offers, at least three market actors must be present, who all know what is being traded, what the object’s exchange value is and what the rules, or institutional frameworks of exchange, are (Aspers, 2011; Beckert, 2009). Competition is an ideal-typical prerequisite of any market; in practice, the extent of competition varies widely across marketplaces and contexts (Beckert and Wehinger, 2013). Property rights, in turn, define who has the right to own an asset; without mutual recognition of property rights, we cannot speak of market interaction (robbery or gift-giving is a better fit in those cases) (Aspers, 2011). Property rights also need to be protected or granted by the state or another actor, for example, a drug-trafficking organization or corrupt state official, capable of imposing sanctions or refraining from enforcing the law (Aspers, 2011; Beckert and Wehinger, 2013; Durán-Martínez, 2015a, 2018; Gundur, 2019). Finally, market actors need to align their actions, even though they have different and partly conflicting interests; that is, some degree of coordination is a prerequisite of market exchange (Beckert and Wehinger, 2013).

To coordinate their actions, actors may rely on institutions, networks or organization (Ahrne et al., 2015). Market actors may not only attempt to organize their own activities (i.e. organization in markets), but might also attempt to organize all or some of the above-mentioned fundamental market features (i.e. organization of markets). For example, market actors may attempt to organize the rules of exchange in a market and hence attempt to organize the market itself. Thus, one may speak of market organizers – the state is one example of an important market organizer – and a set of market types, ranging from markets that are highly organized (e.g. stock exchanges and state-governed bureaucracies) to markets that are only marginally organized (e.g. garage sales) (Ahrne et al., 2015; Aspers, 2011).

Many of the characteristics of conventional markets also apply to illicit drug markets (Reuter and Caulkins, 2012), including the exchange of products for money or other commodities, for example, weapons (Baird et al., 2023; Pérez Esparza and Weigend, 2015; Squires, 2021), laptop computers, mobile phones, packets of cigarettes or other drugs, in the form of barter (Dwyer and Moore, 2010a), the presence of several buyers and sellers, and at least some competition between offers, even though the extent of competition depends on the type of marketplace and product traded (Bakken et al., 2018; Dwyer and Moore, 2010a, 2010b; Ritter, 2006). As in conventional markets, there are examples of collusion and cooperation in illicit drug markets as well. Nevertheless, several differences may also be observed, including the fact that property rights in illicit drug markets generally are not protected by the state (because most states are actively hostile to the products exchanged), there is no legal regulation of competition and cooperation, and no state monitoring of formal rules of exchange for contracts or insurance (Bichler et al., 2017; Moeller, 2018). As a market organizer, the state often engages in attempts to monitor and sanction illicit drug market activity, although its hostility to drug market operations should not be taken for granted. In weak states, there are examples of state actors that shape and regulate illicit drug markets, or function as key facilitators of organized crime (Durán-Martínez, 2015b; Flom, 2018, 2022; Snyder and Durán-Martínez, 2009). However, in contexts where the state is actively hostile to illicit drug markets, drug market exchange is patterned by the need to avoid detection from state authorities. According to the social network approach, this explains the centrality of the network as the primary social formation in illicit drug markets, whereas the institutional approach highlights how local, unspoken norms and habitual patterns of interaction emerge in such covert marketplaces. Both approaches are discussed in more detail below.

The social network and institutional approaches to markets

The social network approach to legal market interaction emphasizes that economic action is embedded in ongoing, tangible social relationships between people or organizations, and that these social networks are a prerequisite for durable economic relations (Granovetter, 1985). The long-term and informal nature of economic relations is considered key to market interaction – markets acquire order and stability from repeated interaction between buyers and sellers within a social network.

Inspired by Granovetter (1985), many scholars of illicit drug markets similarly argue that drug distributors, traffickers and sellers are linked to one another through networks of social relations. For example, Zaitch (2002) showed that the Colombian drug trade was dominated by short-lived business operations including a wide-ranging network of enterprises and people living on both sides of the law. The within- and between-group relations among distributors, and sometimes the relations between buyers and sellers, are described as informal and based on friendship, kinship or ethnicity; these networks operate without formal organization (Desroches, 2007; Zaitch 2002). Drug distributors are dependent on longer-term interpersonal relations to establish trust in the chain of distribution and in their relations with buyers. At the same time, keeping ties in the chain of distribution relatively loose allows sellers to ‘quickly react to shifting market conditions’ (Bichler et al., 2017: 2). Many drug trafficking networks tend to ‘be sparse with central individuals connecting the group and linking between different groups’, although existing research also suggests that individuals may relatively easily be replaced should they be targeted by law enforcement (Bichler et al., 2017: 15).

In legal market studies, the social network approach highlights the importance of ongoing social relations in shaping market interaction, while the institutional approach is focused on interactional patterns generated by habits, norms and institutions. Institutions are sets of ‘shared rules, which can be laws or collective understandings, held in place by custom, explicit or tacit agreement’ (Fligstein, 1996: 658) that shape and stabilize market interaction.

The institutional approach to legal markets has not been central in research on illicit drug markets, but the large body of research on the norms, routines and cultural practices of illicit drugs supply arguably belongs to a broader cultural-institutional research tradition. Most notably, this research suggests that market institutions vary widely across illicit marketplaces, for example, in the extent to which norms of fairness and trust impact the process of deciding the price of drugs (Dwyer and Moore, 2010b; Taylor and Potter, 2013) and the extent to which exchange, competition and contracts are regulated through norms or explicit rules (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu, 2016; Bakken et al., 2018; Dwyer and Moore, 2010a, 2010b; Martin et al., 2020; Moeller, 2018).

While the network and institutional approaches address some of the key features of illicit drug market interaction, they both tend to de-emphasize the role of active decision-making – the social network approach because networks arise spontaneously and are rarely being decided (Granovetter, 1985), and the cultural-institutional approach because it is focused on taken for granted, routinized patterns of interaction. Conditions in drug markets demand flexibility, concealment, and innovation of actors; taking things for granted implies taking serious risks (Bouchard, 2007). Therefore, it is highly likely that drug market operations in fact demand at least some degree of continuous decision-making – actors cannot only rely on networks, institutions or habitual action. We now turn to partial organization theory, which is focused on the pivotal role of decisions in distinguishing organization from network and institution.

The role of organization in illicit drug markets: Decisions and elements of organization

According to Ahrne and Brunsson (2011), one of the main differences between organization, network and institution is that networks and institutions are spontaneous or emergent, whereas organization is the result of decisions. A social network emerges as social relationships are formed between growing numbers of people none of whom would have had to make an explicit decision to create such a network (Granovetter, 1985) and an institution emerges out of a longer process of habituation that involves repeated interaction, mutual adaptation and reciprocal acknowledgement of other people’s actions (Berger and Luckmann, 1967). Institutions are shared and taken for granted by larger groups of people and are perceived as external forces (Berger and Luckmann, 1967). Although active decisions may once have been made, the fact that institutions are taken for granted suggests that these decisions have been de-emphasized or forgotten.

Compared to these spontaneous processes, organization is defined as an active attempt at establishing an order that is different from the current one (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). Making an active attempt involves deciding what other people should do, thus attempting to create certainty or bring order to other people’s future actions. In this sense, an organized order is a decided order (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). Importantly, attempts to decide what others should do are attempts in the true sense of the word; they may or may not succeed or get implemented, rendering organized orders less stable than institutions or networks, which do not rely on decisions (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). Moreover, decisions are contingent and must be communicated to those who are concerned. Consequently, decision-makers are visible and perceived as responsible for their decisions – there is someone to blame if one does not like a decision (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019). By comparison, the internalized beliefs and norms that are characteristic of institutions are more difficult to question because of their status as taken for granted knowledge (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). Thus, when compared to network and institution, ‘[o]rganization implies a higher degree of visibility and contestation [. . .] and leads to specific dynamics’. (Ahrne et al., 2015: 19).

In explaining the concept of partial organization, Ahrne and Brunsson (2011, 2019) draw from the literature on formal organizations, such as private firms, public sector organizations and non-governmental organizations. In formal organizations, persons in positions of authority – whom we will call organizers – have access to and decide on a set of elements to create order in the organization, including: (1) who can be a member, (2) rules regulating what members should do, (3) monitoring of what members do, (4) positive and negative sanctions related to decided expectations of members and (5) how decisions shall be made and who shall make them (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). In other words, organizers decide on membership, rules, monitoring, sanctions and hierarchy – the five constituent elements of organization mentioned in the introduction. In contrast to other parts of the organizational literature (e.g. Scott and Meyer, 1994; Thompson, 2003), the theory of partial organization suggests that these elements are also available to individuals and groups outside formal organizations, who may use them in various combinations in attempts to organize (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). In the following section, we explain and discuss each organizational element using examples from existing research on illicit drug markets.

Membership

In formal organizations, organizers use membership to decide who may be involved in organizational interaction and what is required of those who want to be affiliated to the organization (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019). For example, members may have to support the organization financially through membership fees or may have to submit their names, personal information and contact details, such as in an employment contract. Anonymous individuals are seldom allowed to participate in organizational activities, and membership distinguishes participants who are perceived as legitimate, including both participants that would normally be considered members (e.g. employees in a firm) and participants that traditionally may be considered external to the organization, such as customers (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). In the perspective of partial organization theory, relevant examples of membership therefore include subscriptions and customer loyalty programmes, which allow formal organizations to organize their interactions with customers, in addition to employees. Socially, being a member amounts to a promise to return and meet again (Ahrne, 1994). In this sense, membership may also entail an opportunity for repeated interaction; being a member is one way to sustain a relationship with an organization or group. A membership directory or list of contact details may help fulfil this function. As a category of affiliation, membership is more distinct and rigid than other forms of affiliation such as friendship (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019), and it is different from being affiliated with a network since this category of affiliation is not subject to a decision (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011).

In research on illicit drug markets, membership has primarily been a topic in studies of gangs involved in drugs trafficking, distribution and supply, indicating that we currently know more about the role of membership in organizing sellers in the market. For example, according to Leverso and Matsueda (2019), many contemporary gang researchers argue that membership is a key concept in understanding gang activities. The literature on gangs involved in illicit drugs supply suggests that membership is an object of decision in some but not all gangs. Apart from their potentially violent nature, various ‘rites of passage’ being used by some gangs (e.g. Vigil, 1996) also signify that membership is decided to the extent that such rites generate a collective decision to approve or deny a new member.

While membership in legal organizations tends to be formalized through documentation such as contracts or membership cards, the need for secrecy in illicit drug markets renders such documentation potentially problematic. However, membership need not be documented in such a formal sense. Dealers higher up in the hierarchy having access to lower-level dealers’ contact information allows for repeated interaction with these, hence fulfilling one of the important criteria of membership. A mobile phone with numbers to lower-level dealers may be compared to a membership roster, which allows higher-level distributors or dealers to make decisions about the organization of sales and communicate these to the lower-level dealers. Similarly, a mobile phone with contacts to an established clientele allows sellers to organize their interaction with buyers within a social circle (Jacques and Wright, 2015), although this might not be the standard case in contexts such as open-air markets and trap houses, which do not necessarily involve any form of repeated interaction between individual sellers and buyers (Gundur, 2020a).

There are several motives for joining a group of other drug suppliers, such as reducing the likelihood of being exploited by others, preserving one’s street status, being part of a community or a family and reducing uncertainty (Leverso and Matsueda, 2019; cf. Augustyn et al., 2017). Because there is a strong need to organize members that are well known and have proved themselves trustworthy and able to keep silent in contacts with authorities (Duck, 2016; Duck and Rawls, 2012; Gundur, 2020b), organizing in drug markets often starts out from kinship, friendship and neighbourhood or prison-based contacts, which are founded on institutions and local patterns of interaction rather than the result of decisions. However, friendship may begin to morph into membership if organizers start to decide on and communicate explicit expectations of an individual, assigning him the role and responsibilities of a drug runner, lookout or cornerboy (cf. Duck, 2016). In that case, an attempt to organize based on a combination of the two elements of membership and hierarchy has been made (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). In many drug cryptomarkets, the membership element is more explicit; someone who wants to buy or sell would at least have to have a registered account (Barratt and Aldridge, 2016). In this sense, cryptomarket membership is similar to stock exchange membership (Ahrne et al., 2015).

Moreover, membership grants an individual access to collective resources that are hard to ‘get and keep on one’s own’ (Ahrne, 1994: 14). In drug markets, collective resources include money and material resources such as guns, human and social capital, and access to and control over urban space for one’s drug business. In terms of human capital, being a member ‘can open doors to learning new criminal competencies while providing additional opportunities to practice them’ (Augustyn et al., 2019: 455). Records exist of drug market organizers utilizing what can be identified as membership fees, which grant members protection and a reliable supply of drugs (Levitt and Venkatesh, 2000). Furthermore, members may be allowed benefits such as access to a network of customers that would take time and effort to build on one’s own. To the extent that drug suppliers have access to the contact details of a clientele of buyers and use these to decide how the exchange should take place, we suggest that sellers use membership to attempt to organize their relations with buyers.

Managing the collective monetary resources accumulated from drug dealing is an important and potentially conflict-producing task for drug suppliers. Attempts to organize this practice are likely to occur relatively frequently, and different elements of organization are likely to be used in combination. For example, in examining the role of commission and monthly payments in the well-organized gangs of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Carvalho and Soares (2016) showed that each individual member incrementally acquired access to different collective resources by showing the required attributes for rising through the ranks. In this case, membership and hierarchy together contribute to the organization and distribution of the gang’s collective monetary resources.

Rules

The theory of partial organization holds that rules should be differentiated from social norms. Norms are spontaneous, unwritten, informally enforced and tend to lack an identifiable source, whereas rules are explicitly decided, tend to be more precise than norms (among other things because they often appear in written form) and have a clearly identifiable source (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019). According to Catino (2015: 538), ‘written rules [are] impersonal, explicit, and predictable and are a distinctive feature of formal organizations’, even though decisions in formal organizations are not always based on written rules. In the perspective of partial organization theory, the main purpose of rules is to communicate and explain to others what they are expected to do (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019).

Even though rules in drug markets are seldom written down, there are some indications in research of non-spontaneous, decided rules (Decker and van Winkle, 1996). For example, findings indicate that rules regulate exchange in drug markets. Duck and Rawls (2012: 61) describe how an experienced street dealer explains ‘the rules of the drug game and how to turn a major profit’ to a less experienced dealer. In this example, the source (the experienced dealer) verbally but explicitly communicates a set of specific rules to another market actor. It is difficult to tell whether rules precede division of labour in markets, or if division of labour generates rules. Still, the more a group or gang wants to engage in selling drugs, the more tangible is the need to allocate work tasks and organize the division of labour within the group (cf. Strauss, 1985). Rules for allocating work might therefore be helpful to stabilize operations in the drug market.

Furthermore, Dwyer and Moore (2010a: 396) argue that street dealers had ‘declared “rules”’ for handling interactions with customers, such that ‘[i]f a customer had approached a dealer, then it was inappropriate for another dealer to try to take that customer’, unless the customer was a regular of that specific dealer. Moreover, mafias active in drug markets use rules that are formalized without being written down to fulfil the three purposes of establishing organizational order, containing conflicts and violence, and maintaining secrecy (Catino, 2015). In the meticulously regulated activities of American and Italian Cosa Nostra organizations, one set of rules delineates the organization’s decisional processes: voting quorum, who can attend [. . .], who can speak [. . .], the frequency of the meetings, the dress code, the table for the meeting [. . .], how to start and how to conclude the meeting, the time to begin [. . .] and other rules (Catino 2015: 542).

Research also documents how prison gangs that expand into drug-trafficking activities, such as the Barrio Azteca in the Paso del Norte area, establish rules and obligations for new recruits to ‘put in work’ (Gundur, 2020b).

Overall, the relation between rules and sanctions are central to drug market suppliers, since the enforcement of rules may reduce uncertainty, help to establish discipline among the sellers and confirm their status relative to other market actors (Leverso and Matsueda, 2019). Thus, what matters most is how the rules are effectively applied and connected to sanctions.

Research on illicit drug cryptomarkets suggests that rules are often communicated in written form. For example, a study of 10 online marketplaces found that all had publicly posted ‘rules of engagement’ that were visible to vendors and non-vendors. The rules were ethical (e.g. banning the sale of certain items) and functional, with the purpose to prevent theft and scams (Morselli et al., 2017). In another cryptomarket study, rules regulating the process of ordering goods, shipping time, refunds and delivery information were found explicitly posted on the websites. Typically, these rules authorized site administrators to implement sanctions for both vendor and buyer violations (Bakken et al., 2018).

Monitoring

Closely related to rules is the element of monitoring in organizations. Monitoring is a tool that organizers in formal organizations decide to use to acquire knowledge of members’ performance in relation to organizational expectations. Monitoring takes on different forms depending on the type of organization, situation and environment, and ranges from simple to more advanced, including the registration of attendance as well as sophisticated forms of performance control of employees (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019).

Existing research on illicit drug markets indicates that drug market actors monitor the performance of both affiliates and non-affiliates. Some studies suggest that sellers may be monitoring buyers, for example, by walking behind or ahead of a potential buyer before a transaction (Olaghere and Lum, 2018) or by monitoring digital information about buyers and punishing attempts to scam the seller (Berry, 2018). Research also suggests that actors involved in the chain of trafficking and distribution monitor other actors, usually according to a pattern where actors higher up in the hierarchy monitor those that are lower in the hierarchy. For example, escorts, supervisors and coordinators are engaged in monitoring larger shipments of drugs accomplished by drug couriers in accompanying the shipment or providing continuous instructions about the route. Market actors also use GPS-fitted buoys to monitor drug shipments that are transported at sea and dropped in open water (Boerman et al., 2017) and GPS-trackers to monitor opponents’ vehicles to impose negative sanctions.

Furthermore, research shows that retail sales distributors coordinate and monitor the performance of sellers via mobile phones and other communication technologies (Berry, 2018), including monitoring the performance of sellers who are in debt, a practice that allows the creditor to intervene before the debtor fails to earn what they owe (Moeller and Sandberg, 2017). In street-level markets, lookouts are singled out as responsible for monitoring the surroundings and identifying potential customers, law enforcement and others who may intervene; drug market actors also collaborate by communicating information about approaching police to warn other dealers in the marketplace (Duck, 2016; Johnson and Natarajan, 1995; Olaghere and Lum, 2018). Moreover, in Mexico and Colombia, some large drug-trafficking organizations over time began to control low-level street dealers, requiring them to pay their ‘right to sell’ to the organization, as part of an effort to secure territorial control (Durán-Martínez, 2015a).

Cryptomarkets, in turn, explicitly authorize administrators to monitor how exchange progresses and to offer buyers and sellers escrow services and dispute arbitration (Bakken et al., 2018; Barratt and Aldridge, 2016; Martin et al., 2020). The most obvious example of monitoring by non-affiliates includes the activities of law enforcement monitoring a courier or shipment, geographical location or digital marketplace through infiltration, CCTV or covert cameras, or tracking of postal packages and online transactions (Johnson, 2003; Natarajan et al., 2015). Obviously, the purpose of law enforcement monitoring is to impose negative sanctions on drug market actors, and often ultimately to stop market activity altogether.

Needless to say, monitoring efforts – like other attempts to organize – are not always successful (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). For example, research shows that market actors throughout the supply chain rely on compartmentalization and smoke-screening, keeping actors ignorant about the other players involved in the trade (Gundur, 2022).

Sanctions

In general, and as a result of monitoring, formal organizations can take measures to manage poor or superior performance using positive or negative sanctions. As positive sanctions, organizers can decide to use bonus payments, promotion to better positions, and awards or prizes, while negative sanctions may involve wage cuts, warnings or even getting thrown out of the organization (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2019).

Sanctions have attracted a lot of attention in research on illicit drug markets. Since drug market actors cannot lean on the state to guarantee property rights, market transactions take place in a ‘virtually stateless society’ (Jacques, 2010) where ‘mediatory law is relatively unavailable to disputants’ (Jacques and Wright, 2008: 236). Therefore, when conflicts arise, market actors may use violence and threats as sanctions, although the extent to which actual violence is used varies widely across marketplaces (Desroches, 2007; Dwyer and Moore, 2010a; Moeller, 2018), cities and nation states (Durán-Martínez, 2015b; Gundur, 2022). For example, in Colombia and Mexico, violence was more frequent and visible in settings where the state security apparatus was fragmented, where there were high levels of competition between drug trafficking organizations and where trafficking organizations exercised control over lower-level dealers (Durán-Martínez, 2015a, 2015b). Furthermore, sanctions may be organized and are not always just ‘meaningless violence’, as there may be an intention behind them. Violence has a symbolic dimension; its different manifestations may carry a message or signal, a point that someone wants to make (Durán-Martínez, 2015b).

Common forms of violent sanctions in drug markets include physical violence, threats, extortion and forcing someone to act as a courier or perform a robbery (Moeller and Sandberg, 2017). However, the drug market literature consistently highlights that deadly violence, while being used more by some groups and in some contexts (Durán-Martínez, 2015a, 2015b), nevertheless is often used reluctantly and much more seldom than what media reports may suggest (Desroches, 2007; Gundur, 2022), among other things because it is ‘costly, attracts attention from law enforcers, drains organizational resources, and creates enemies’ (Moeller and Sandberg, 2017: 273).

Accordingly, common forms of non-violent sanctions include to cease doing business with, or boycott, the partner or client (cf. Dickinson, 2017); stealth, where an actor covertly confiscates resources from a perceived wrongdoer; and fraudulent retaliation, where the wrongdoer is tricked into an unfair trade that may involve fake drugs or the underweighting of drugs (Jacques, 2010). Furthermore, the cooperative and adversarial modes of managing debts in drug markets identified by Moeller and Sandberg (2017) each involves what we would call, following the theory of partial organization, different types of sanctions. The cooperative mode involves ‘light sanctions’ such as the refinancing of debts with new and more coercive conditions for repayment, whereas the adversarial mode relies on the creditor’s willingness to use violence, although less violent sanctions such as extortion are more common in practice (Moeller and Sandberg, 2017). Additional types of negative sanctions identified in the literature on drug cryptomarkets resemble strategies for displaying dissatisfaction in markets for legal products, including bad reviews for sellers or buyers and banning wrongdoers from the site (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu, 2016; Barratt and Aldridge, 2016; Morselli et al., 2017).

Although negative sanctions have gained the most attention in the literature, some studies suggest that positive sanctions are also present in illicit drug markets. For example, drug dealers may get promoted by senior dealers and receive the opportunity to sell larger quantities of drugs and earn more money (Duck, 2016). Moreover, in cryptomarket feedback systems, positive feedback of vendors or buyers is an example of positive sanctions that may facilitate future transactions (Bakken et al., 2018).

In general, sanctions may be spontaneous or decided; if a group or its leader(s) decide how and when to use sanctions, we may speak of sanctions being used in an attempt to organize. A crime group’s, gang’s, or network’s ability to use violent or non-violent sanctions is partly determined by the type of collective resources they can organize access to (Zaitch, 2005). Some sanctions require access to coercive material resources such as guns. At the same time, a reputation for violence may be a valuable resource for some groups or gangs (McLean et al., 2019). Membership allows this reputational resource to be shared among affiliates who may not have the capacity or time to build such a reputation on their own.

Hierarchy

In formal organizations, organizers also decide on how to regulate power; that is, they decide ‘who shall have the power to influence others by their decisions’ and they decide how decisions shall be made (Ahrne and Brunsson 2019: 13). Making decisions about the regulation and delegation of power implies making decisions about organizational hierarchy: ‘a right to oblige others to comply with central decisions’ (Ahrne and Brunsson 2011: 86). A legitimate decision-maker in a legal organization is less dependent on charisma, private resources and status as sources of authority (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011).

Previous research has been divided on the issue of organizational hierarchy in illicit drug markets. Scholars have argued either that drug trafficking and drug markets are dominated by freelance and entrepreneurial networks lacking formal hierarchy, or that formal hierarchy is evident only in groups that are highly structured, as opposed to those that are loosely structured (Natarajan et al., 2015). Scholars have identified such formal hierarchies among several drug trafficking and drug selling groups (Curtis and Wendel, 2000; Gundur, 2020b; Johnson, 2003; Levitt and Venkatesh, 2000; Natarajan and Belanger, 1998; Natarajan et al., 2015), as well as in the Mafia and among Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (OMC: s) (Ahrne and Rostami, 2019). However, according to the theory of partial organization, hierarchical positions among drug actors need not only be of the elaborate, formal and multilevel corporate kind often ascribed to the latter groups. Hierarchical positions are also visible in the fact that some groups or gangs have leaders; this ‘creates a rudimentary hierarchical structure in which authority is greater at higher levels’ (Leverso and Matsueda, 2019: 801 cf. Natarajan and Belanger, 1998). The latter type of leadership may be attributed to someone because of their status, charisma or kinship ties (e.g. being the oldest brother in a group of siblings) (cf. Weber, 1978, on charismatic authority), which authorizes them to decide what others should do. While status, charisma and kinship derive from tradition, norms, and culture rather than from organization, it may be possible to identify aspects of a decided hierarchy in such groups in the sense that an informal leader may still decide how (future) decisions shall be made and oblige others to comply with those (future) decisions.

Along these lines, Duck (2016) identified a hierarchy of dealing among street dealers, which was based on age, experience and the quantity of drugs they sold. Others decided whether an individual was allowed to move ‘up’, from selling on the street corner to supplying, and this move was dependent on performance. The supplier role meant that one would decide, among other things, on the return one wanted from street corner sellers (Duck, 2016). Similarly, Olaghere and Lum (2018: 474) identify an ‘organized hierarchy of dealing on the street’ visible in the different roles and responsibilities of street dealers, including that of supervising and collecting the money earned as compared to those of serving as a lookout or escorting clients to a dealer. Creating such a ‘managerial hierarchy of co-offenders’ is a strategy that drug markets actors may use to guard against law enforcement (Jacques and Reynald, 2012), whereas elaborate formal hierarchies within a traditional corporate structure may present a problem since it exposes the organization to law enforcement intervention (Bichler et al., 2017; Moeller, 2018). To guard against law enforcement is to manage risks, a task that is also unevenly distributed in the hierarchy of drug selling groups – low-level actors often assume more risk, whereas mid-level actors are at ‘the sweet spot, where operation hazards are generally less risky’ (Gundur, 2020a: 380).

To conclude, organization incorporates five central elements: membership, rules, monitoring, sanctions and hierarchy. All these elements are the objects of decisions, which in turn must be communicated and mediated among the intended actors (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011). When these five elements occur together, we may speak of complete organization, and when actors attempt to use one or more elements of organization to create order outside formal organizations, we may speak of partial organization, or of a partially organized order (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011, 2019). While the five elements do not have to be connected to one another, it is common that some of the elements are combined, as implied in our discussion of each element above.

Conclusion

Our purpose in this article was to examine organization in illicit drug markets through the lens of partial organization theory (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011, 2019), in suggesting that institutions, networks and (partial) organization exist in parallel in illicit drugs markets, like they do in the legal world. The fact that large corporations decide on rules for workplace conduct does not exclude the possibility that informal norms, gossip or bullying will emerge and influence workplace interaction. In the same way, even though some crime groups decide on rules for regulating drug distribution, informal norms are still likely to influence the actions of buyers and sellers in those markets. We suggest that studying organized orders, institutional orders and social network orders allows for a broader and more flexible understanding of social interaction in drug markets. In this sense, the theory of partial organization can bring together and integrate research findings from studies of social networks (Bichler et al., 2017) and studies of organizational hierarchy, tasks and roles (Curtis and Wendel, 2000; Natarajan and Belanger, 1998; Natarajan et al., 2015) within a common conceptual framework.

The concept of partial organization is also useful in understanding the persistence or durability over time of groups and markets. So far, research suggests that while crime groups or networks – what we might call partial organizations – in drug markets are not always long-lived (Bichler et al., 2017; Gundur, 2020b; Ouellet et al., 2019), gang organization or group cohesion (Leverso and Matsueda, 2019; Ouellet et al., 2019) are important in understanding which crime groups persist over time. Likewise, persistence is a fundamental element in formal organizations, as most organizations aim to persist over time (Ahrne, 1994; Simmel, 1898). Persistence involves the problem of substituting members and securing the ability to replace those who fall ill, quit or misbehave, such as having rules for the replacing of members and securing the recruitment of new affiliates (Ahrne, 1994). When applied to drug market interaction, this perspective suggests that group persistence is challenged by forces in the environment, such as the incarceration of central actors, and challenges from within, such as limited collective resources or difficulties recruiting new members (Ouellet et al., 2019). However, research shows that law enforcement intervention may not always be enough to disrupt a group, since other individuals replace those who are arrested (Ayling, 2009; Bichler et al., 2017; Bouchard, 2007). Partial organization theory implies that drug market actors who decide to use the organizational elements of membership, rules or hierarchy create a potential for substitutability, which may in turn increase the likelihood of group survival; membership because it provides access to desired collective resources, rules through their instructive and supra-individual character, and hierarchy because it involves the future-oriented task of deciding how and by whom (in terms of position rather than individual attributes) decisions shall be made.

Moreover, one possibility is that attempts to organize at the group level also shape the overall drug market structure, producing market order and organization. Market actors may attempt to organize all or only some of the fundamental features of markets (Aspers, 2011; North, 1990). As an example, cryptomarket administrators actively favour and seek to promote the exchange of illicit drugs. From the perspective of partial organization theory, they are market organizers who apply several elements of organization – most notably membership, rules, monitoring and sanctions – in attempts to organize some of the fundamental features of drug markets such as regulating the characteristics of accepted market actors, establishing rules of exchange and establishing procedures for securing property rights. In street drug markets, stronger groups or collectives may attempt to organize market exchange and competition by imposing and enforcing rules regulating drug dealing practices or sales territories.

In conclusion, using partial organization theory allows us to identify how illicit drug markets are shaped and organized by the existing multitude of more and less organized market actors; how different groups, gangs, networks, market organizers and state actors (Flom, 2022) in these markets use decisions to organize their activities and the market as such; and how attempts to organize contribute to the persistence over time of groups and markets. It may also allow us to better understand how drug trafficking organizations ‘operate and respond to state structures’ (Durán-Martínez, 2017: 153). Using this approach thus allows future research to identify both the degrees and types of organization of different crime groups or networks, and different illicit drug market types according to the relative importance of the different organizational elements in structuring different markets. In identifying degrees and types of organization, future research can avoid the pitfall of exaggerating the advanced or ‘corporate’ nature of groups or networks active in drug markets while still maintaining an interest in organization analysis.

Considering the practical utility of the approach, it allows law enforcement to develop strategies and operational tools that focus more on the organizational elements of market interaction, which in turn may reduce the potential for organizational resilience (cf. Ayling, 2009). This is because groups that use several elements of organization – for example, membership, rules or hierarchy – may be more difficult to destabilize through arrests, as these groups have a greater potential for persistence.