ABSTRACT
Some Mexican scholars, like Salvador Maldonado-Aranda or Alfredo Zavaleta-Betancourt, have adopted the concept of ‘margins of the state’ to analyse different aspects of illegality and organised crime. By using this concept, they distance themselves from other theoretical approaches that consider illegality and organised crime as ‘dysfunctional’ features or shortcomings of the state. I argue that extending these approaches to their logical conclusion is useful in showing how they do not result from (nor are they placed in) the so-called ‘margins of the state’. I argue that, instead, they may reflect those states’ very core. I propose two new concepts to understand this core: on the one hand, hegemonic power network, which refers to the people who command the state institutions and their formal and informal regulation. On the other hand, institutional configuration for illicit purposes, which refers to the nomination of public officials and their operation within institutions to protect illicit practices of interest to the hegemonic power network. Although these categories are built upon the Mexican case, I argue that they provide insight into other cases where a mixture of predatory rulers, authoritarianism, illegality, organised crime, and high levels of impunity lead to a heterogeneous and arbitrary enforcement of the rule of law.
