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This paper argues that the concept of resilience is a fruitful way of understanding the impact of repressive policies on illegal drug markets. For the purpose of this article, resilience is defined as the ability of market participants to preserve the existing levels of exchanges between buyers and sellers, despite external pressure aimed at disrupting the trade. The first part of the paper highlights how some of the core features of illegal drug markets, a decentralized structure and high prices, contribute to increasing their resilience to attacks. The second part develops a framework that can be used to compare markets on the basis of their resilient properties. Some of the empirical and policy implications of the framework are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs the modified Wald (MWALD) causality test to re-examine the relationship between crime and its determinants (inflation and unemployment) in the United States from 1960 to 2005. Bounds test approach is employed to investigate the existence of a long-run relationship. The empirical evidence suggests that inflation and crime rates are cointegrated with a positive relationship. Moreover, the causal link is from inflation and unemployment to crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds light on the European Union's (EU) efforts to facilitate the fight against corruption and promote good governance through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Our analysis shows that the level of corruption in the Eastern Neighbourhood is strongly connected to the success of democratic and economic reforms. The ENP theoretically corresponds to the complex nature of the phenomenon by placing equal emphasis on strengthening state institutions, restructuring the economy, and pushing for democratic reforms. As the EU, however, by and large seeks cooperation with state actors and pursues a 'one-size-fits-all' approach mostly based on 'soft' mechanisms such as socialisation and capacity-building, the implementation of politically sensitive reforms seems to be unlikely. Moreover, the EU potentially allows its partner governments to 'pick and chose' from the overall reform agenda and evade real political and economic change towards better governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]