The present doctoral dissertation pretends to develop a broad and deep investigation of the mechanisms drug traffickers design and implement to evade law enforcement in the contemporary world. These mechanisms consist of a sophisticated set of defense, coercion, and corruption devices, which pretend to weaken the control and persecution exerted by the law enforcement authorities in the context of world repression against drugs configured in the war on drugs for over six decades. The main result of this performance has been the production and reproduction of power ---both economic, military, political, and social--- outside the national states. The questions arising in this context are: ¿How effective are the drug-repression policies implemented over more than six decades? What strategic mechanisms implemented by drug traffickers explain the ineffectiveness of these policies? ¿Which other ---economic, criminal or incentives--- policy alternatives exist? ¿What are their strengths and weaknesses? To attack this problematic situation, the present research develops a broad analysis ---both theoretically and empirically--- of the drug-trafficking value chain at its different stages. It contributes to the comprehension of drug trafficking dynamics in the contemporary world, going from the evolution of coca crops over the past decade to the para-statal violence dynamics implemented by illicit organizations in urban zones to gain territorial control. The present doctoral dissertation consists of three different but intimately interconnected essays, all of which aim to understand the strategies and dynamics shaping the performance of illegal organizations nowadays. The first chapter empirically analyzes the effects of the ban of the aerial spraying policy that took place in Colombia in 2015. The main goal is to analyze the (short-run) impact of the aerial spraying banning of coca plantations and estimate its average treatment effect (ATE) on the coca-crops’ levels. With that purpose, I estimate a difference-in-differences model using municipal information on the coca crops for the period 2011-2018, which exploits the exogenous governmental decision to ban the spraying, as well as the variability of the intensity of fumigation between municipalities during the past decade. The main finding is that the ban on aerial spraying led to a statistically significant but modest rise in coca-growing after its interruption, explaining only a small percentage of the dramatic surge it exhibited since 2014. I also find that structural factors explain, to a great extent, the mechanisms behind the effects of the spraying ban. The findings imply that the spraying banning explains only a small percentage of the dramatic increase of coca crops during the period 2014-2018. They also confirm the ineffectiveness of aerial spraying during the period 2011-2014. Hence, in terms of public policy, this study implies that drug policy should focus more on public investments in infrastructure in the coca-producing municipalities. The second chapter paper presents a game-theoretical model to analyze the strategies used by traffickers to weaken law enforcement. The chapter’s main goal is to analyze the strategies of coercion and bribery used by traffickers to weaken the interdiction and prosecution efforts of law enforcement authorities. With this purpose, I model the strategic interactions between traffickers and law enforcement authorities in a context where the former uses a conjugation of bribes and violence to influence the latter’s actions in their favor, preventing the possibility of bargaining over the amount of bribes. These strategies hamper and neutralize the prosecution and interdiction efforts of control authorities. The model shows that despite the conditioning trafficker’s moves, the law enforcement effort’s fundamental determinant is prosecution and interdiction technology. The model also shows that the seizure probability depends positively on the premium rate received by officers in retribution for their effectiveness and that higher premium rates strengthen the bribery’s deterrence, but coming to certain levels can unleash more violence. This second essay departs from a profound reflection on the structure of powers and devices (in the broad philosophical sense of Foucault) configured by illegal organizations to reproduce themselves in a context of repression. The third chapter proposes another analytical model to explain the corruption processes traffickers boost at the midstream stages of the illicit value chain, with the pretension to transport and trafficking illegal drugs at medium or large scales at a transnational level. This third essay contributes to comprehending the recent upsurge of cocaine trafficking from Latin America to Europe, which has consolidated a problematic situation named by some researchers as a `` cancer of corruption''. The analytical framework of the `` cancer of corruption'' constitutes a three-stage sequential game in which traffickers and officers interact, determining the probability of successful bribery, the equilibrium levels of bribes, as well as the equilibrium quantity of drugs sold and the proportion of traffickers entering to illegal markets. This latter model proves several findings, among them that drug-market size is the most powerful force encouraging the performance of illicit organizations and weakening corruption deterrence. Concerning anti-drug policy, the model corroborates that, in general terms, traditional criminal policy instruments tend to be effective in deterring the entry of more traffickers to illicit markets in the presence of corrupt agents. However, it also shows that a premium rate given to the officers in retribution for their achievements in interdiction provides an alternative effective instrument to combat drug trafficking at the wholesale level. This alternative policy tends to be a powerful instrument for low premium rate levels.
