Gangster States: Organized Crime, Kleptocracy and Political Collapse - Hardcover

by K. Hirschfeld (Author)

The author draws on behavioral ecology to predict the evolution of organized crime in unregulated systems of exchange and the further development of racketeer economies into unstable kleptocratic states. The result is a new model that explains the expansion and contraction of political-economic complexity in prehistoric and contemporary societies.

Author Biography

Katherine Hirschfeld is an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, USA. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Emory University in 2001. Her research interests include the political economy of health, disease ecology and post-Soviet transitions. Among her previous publications figures the monograph Health, Politics and Revolution in Cuba since 1898 (2007).