Week 8 Post Class

After reflecting on the material from class the previous two weeks, I started to wonder what the role legitimacy has in when examining transnational criminal organizations. Professor Jackson provides the definition for authority as simply "the right to do something" and while we haven't defined legitimacy in class, it can be best summarized as the acceptance of authority. Essentially, legitimacy is the mandate of the people and provides democratic support to authority. An actor or entity can have authority without legitimacy, this is often the case in autocracies, however their hold on power is less stable without legitimacy.

When examining transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and whether they can supplant the state as the main authority within a given territory, their legitimacy has a huge influence on their overall ability to maintain authority. When TCOs are the predominant authority in an area it is mostly due to some capacity gap of the state which is unable to either provide some kind of service or enforce it. More often than not, when TCOs are the predominant authority in an area they acquire their authority through the use of coercion and physical violence. Whatever authority they have is therefore based on their ability to maintain their capabilities of coercion in order to remain as the authority, because when confronted with a viable alternative authority will be granted to the actor with both capabilities to enforce laws, as well as with the legitimacy granted by the people. Without legitimacy therefore, TCOs don't have any real staying power as an authority.