A new article by PAIS's Tom Long and Warwick History's Benjamin Smith examines the intertwined development of organized crime and the state in post-revolutionary Mexico. Entitled, "State, crime and violence in Mexico, 1920–2000: Arbiters of impunity, agents of coercion," the interdisciplinary piece riffs on Charles Tilly's famous model of the state as analogous to a criminal enterprise. However, in the context of lucrative illicit markets, state-building takes an unexpected turn, with these states like post-revolutionary Mexico developing not as one protection racket, but as two. While the orthodox or licit protection racket collects tax from businesses and individuals in return for the protection of property and persons, the illicit protection racket (like that of a traditional mafia organization) collects extortion money from criminal groups in return for protection from prosecution. The granting of impunity acts to bind these two sides of a Janus-faced state. The article has been published by the leading history journal Past & Present. It is available open access here.Link opens in a new window