Smugglers and States

Kate Meagher, author of Identity Economics: Social Networks and the Informal Economy in Nigeria:
Smugglers and States deftly exposes the informal social contract that has stabilized the crumbling formal societal bargains in two North African states, tracing the formal-informal regulatory orders linking traders, officials, and police in the borderlands. This book examines the role of smuggling as a technique of governance that shores up livelihoods and political consent at the margins of the state, revealing how international pressures for border regulation to control migration and terrorism serve to distort and destabilize rather than contain political risks.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, author of The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter It:
Scholars have long pointed out that an illegal economy may be seen as legitimate by many and that those who sponsor it may obtain significant political capital. In this terrific book, Gallien unpacks another contradiction—namely, that even as smuggling undermines key aspects of statehood and creates critical dependence vulnerabilities for governments, it is also extensively embraced and regulated by some governments and their components. Drawing on impressive fieldwork, he details how and why that happens in cases frequently neglected by scholars of the Maghreb and of illegal economies overall, adding geographic, empirical, and conceptual value to analysis.

Peter Andreas, author of Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America:
Deeply researched, masterfully written, and persuasively argued, Smugglers and States turns the conventional wisdom about illicit trade on its head. In this truly pathbreaking book, Max Gallien makes a compelling case that smuggling is about state-making rather than state-weakening, that it can serve core state interests in order and stability, and that it is essential to our understanding of the political economy of North Africa.