Organized crime networks dedicated to illicit trafficking of drugs, people and wildlife—as well as money laundering and cybercrime, among other activities—are engines of instability.

On 4 May 2017, International IDEA hosted the workshop ‘Political corruption and organized crime: Drivers, effects and responses’ at the 2017 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development, organized by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The workshop aimed to discuss potential future trends regarding corruption linked to organized crime and strategic policy responses. It gathered scholars and practitioners in anti-corruption, international crime prevention and peacebuilding in a common dialogue.

This Discussion Paper, written from the perspective of a fictitious criminal network, depicts a scenario where conflict, democratic decline and new technologies exacerbate the negative impact of organized crime on the state. By describing an imaginary future, it includes the most relevant concerns for practitioners within the field.