Thugocracy: bandit regimes and state capture

ABSTRACT In this paper I analyze the Trump, Putin, and Zuma regimes as “thugocracies”: projects of sophisticated state capture, through organized crime networks at every level of scale, and utilizing complex arrays of mafia tactics, personnel, and practices. With a basis in first-hand ethnography on the modalities of the mafia in Russia in the 1990s, I delineate critical interconnections between thugocrats operating in South Africa, the Russian Federation, and the United States, arguing that their networks are simultaneously local, extensively transnational, and closely intertwined. Though thugocratic regimes target the rule of law and civil society in order to “make crime legal,” I conclude that inquiries like the South African Zondo Commission help create public outrage and awareness of the threat thugocracy poses to democracy.