CALL FOR PAPERS Prevention of organised crime and corruption: International efforts in post-communist countries.

4th ECPR Conference, Pisa (Italy)
6-8 September 2007

Section: Representing a Crisis: Organised Crime between New and Old Threats (Standing Group
Organised Crime)

PANEL SIX:

Organised and other forms of crime and corruption in post-communist transformation countries are receiving continuing attention on part of international bodies and Western countries, recently increasingly from a security perspective. On a European regional level, in the course of the 2004 EU enlargement, new security concerns have been raised about an expansion of transnational organised crime from Russia and other CIS countries. At the same time, corruption is increasingly viewed as a national and international security issue, as it has been an important factor leading to the colour and flower revolutions in the post-communist world since 1999. Corruption is also said to foster unpredictability in foreign policy-making as well as transnational (organised) crime and terrorism.

This panel discusses how international actors such as the EU or the UN seek to deal with crime and corruption in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA). Transnational crime prevention is a considerably young, but very significant field of co-operation across West-East dimensions. While it may be too early to assess successes, it is time to address conceptual approaches towards the prevention of crime and corruption in the post-communist region. First, it is vital to examine how respective efforts, expectations, and initial disillusionments may affect the unfolding relations between international bodies and various post-communist countries. Second, scholars need to revisit conceptual challenges of studying organised and other forms of crime, corruption, and terrorism.
Identification of differences and overlaps, synergies and spill-over effects is crucial when seeking to prevent one or the other criminal element, especially in post-communist contexts where old and new characteristics are considerably blurred. The panel seeks to integrate discussions on different international bodies (such as the EU and the UN) and different country cases (including Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, new EU member states) in order to allow for insightful comparative
discussion.

Deadline for abstracts (max. 300 words): 19 JANUARY 2007

Full papers to be submitted until August 2007

Reimbursement possibilities are managed via ECPR: http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/funding/index.aspx

For applications and further questions please contact the panel chairs:

Diana Schmidt (Research Centre for East European Studies, Bremen),
diana.schmidt@uni-bremen.de

Holger Moroff (Friedrich Schiller University Jena),
holger.moroff@web.de