ABSTRACT
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As we sat in his smartly-appointed study in a suburb of Atlanta, Arturo, the former Miami-based
distribution manager for a Colombian cocaine network explained how decisions were made in his
operation:
My aim in this chapter is to explore how Arturo and other drug smugglers make decisions.
Traffickers, to be sure, are not the standard subjects of decision theorists, who for decades have
focused their empirical inquiries on legally-sanctioned firms and bureaucracies. My research, in
contrast, focuses on clandestine networks that operate outside the rule of law and beyond the
purview of governmental authorities. Drawing on dozens of in-depth interviews with U.S. and
Colombian law enforcers and several former drug traffickers, along with a range of secondary-
source materials, I seek to understand how participants in Colombian smuggling organizations
make decisions.
