Breaking the nexus: conceptualising ‘illicit sovereigns’

The present contribution critically engages with the theoretical and empirical nexus between ‘crime’ and ‘terrorism’. The Crime--Terror Nexus is understood first as the increasing cooperation between terrorist groups and criminal organisations, and second as the merging of terror/crime identities. I argue that the concept of the Crime--Terror Nexus reifies the identities of both criminal and terrorist organisations by pre-assigning exclusively economic motives to the former and exclusively political motives to the latter, even though in reality these categories, which underpin the concept of the nexus, are becoming increasingly blurred. This contribution draws upon concepts from political theory to unpack the identities of these violent non-state actors. In accordance with Carl Schmitt’s understanding of the political and of sovereignty, these identities can be understood as forms of ‘illicit sovereignty’. Through an empirical analysis of the discourse of the Sicilian Mafia, I show how the Mafia constructs its identity in relation to the Italian state by contesting the sovereignty of its ‘licit’ counterpart.