Maritime Piracy And Its Control An Economic Analysis

Maritime Piracy and its Control develops an economic approach to the problem of modern-day maritime piracy with the goal of assessing the effectiveness of remedies aimed at reducing the incidence of piracy.

This book examines the complex phenomena of modern maritime piracy. The work offers a cutting-edge analysis of modern maritime piracy in the two most pirate-prone regions – southeast Asia and northeast Africa – from the late twentieth century to the modern day. These case studies present a detailed exploration of how regional and international governments responded to upsurges of piracy and how responses have evolved over the course of the past 40 years. This analysis reveals the results of these efforts and what effect, if any, suppressing piracy at sea had on tensions and instability ashore. The book transcends a simple narrative, providing detailed and extensively researched case studies of contemporary manifestations and responses at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. New insights are offered, such as the role of external navies in the repression of piracy in northeast Africa before the well-documented escalation in 2005. In addition, this book constructs a comparative analytic framework to gauge the effectiveness and shortcomings of modern attempts to counteract piracy, which reveals lessons learned, future policy projections and wider implications. This analysis adds new classifications, innovative concepts and scholarly depth to the field of maritime security studies, naval history and theory and international relations. This book will be of much interest to students of naval history, maritime security, strategic studies and international relations.

In response to pirate attacks in the Western Indian Ocean, countries worldwide have increasingly authorized the deployment of armed guards from private military and security companies (PMSCs) on merchant ships. This widespread trend contradicts states’ commitment to retain a monopoly on violence and discourage the presence of arms on civilian vessels. This book conceptualizes the extensive use of PMSCs as a form of institutional isomorphism, combining the functionalist, ideational, political and organizational arguments used to account for the privatization of security on land into a synthetic explanation of the commercialization of vessel protection.

Maritime Piracy is now a pressing global issue, and this work seeks to provide a concise and informative introduction to the area. Never truly having receded into a romanticized past, seaborne banditry’s rapid growth was stimulated by low risks and increasingly high rewards. Currently, obsolete, incomplete and complicating structures and norms of governance, together with advances in technology, enable a lucrative business model for pirates, as they effectively operate with impunity and claim increasing ransoms. Beginning with an overview and historical development of piracy and the relevant maritime governance structures, this work progresses to examine how 20th century shifts in global governance norms and structures eventually left the high seas open for predatory attacks on one of the worlds fastest growing and essential industries. Moving through contemporary debates about how to best combat piracy, the work concludes that the solution to a chronic global problem requires a long-term, holistic, and inclusive approach. Examining militaristic, legalist and humanitarian strategies and offering a critical evaluation of the various problems they bring, this work will be of great interest to all students and scholars of international law, international organizations and maritime security.

Maritime piracy's improbable re-emergence following the end of the Cold War was surprising as the image of pirates evokes masted galleons and cutlasses. Yet, the number of incidents and their intensity skyrocketed in the 1990s and 2000s off of the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Somalia. As Ursula Daxecker and Brandon Prins demonstrate in Pirate Lands, Maritime piracy-like civil war, terrorism, and organized crime-is a problem of weak states. Surprisingly, though, pirates do not operate in the least governed areas of weak states. Daxecker and Prins address this puzzle by explaining why some coastal communities experience more pirate attacks in their vicinity than others. They find that pirates do well in places where elites and law enforcement can be bribed, but they also need access to functioning roads, ports, and markets. Using statistical analyses of cross-national and sub-national data on pirate attacks in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Somalia, Daxecker and Prins detail how governance at the state and local level explain the location of maritime piracy. Additionally, they employ geo-spatial tools to rigorously measure how local political capacity and infrastructure affect maritime piracy. Drawing upon interviews with former pirates, community members, and maritime security experts, Pirate Lands offers the first comprehensive, social-scientific account of a phenomenon whose re-appearance after centuries of remission took almost everyone by surprise.

The income share of the top one percent of the population in the United States has increased from a little over nine percent of national income in the 1970s to 22.46 percent in 2012 a 144 percent increase. What is driving this astronomic growth in incomes for some? Is it possibly the result of non-meritorious forces? If so, how has this incredibly unequal development coexisted, and indeed worsened, in a political system based on equality? In Economic Inequality and Policy Control in the United States, Stelzner tackles each of these questions, and, in order to further develop understanding, Stelzner looks to the past and analyzes our experience with income inequality and the orientation of laws and institutions from the Gilded Age through the New and Fair Deal. He concludes that we have the tools to tackle inequality at present the same policies we used during the New and Fair Deal. However, in order to make change durable, we have to eliminate the undemocratic elements of our political system.

The study of how the environment, local geography, and physical locations influence crime has a long history that stretches across many research traditions. These include the neighborhood effects approach developed in the 1920s, the criminology of place, and a newer approach that attends to the perception of crime in communities. Aided by new technologies and improved data-reporting in recent decades, research in environmental criminology has developed rapidly within each of these approaches. Yet research in the subfield remains fragmented and competing theories are rarely examined together. The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Criminology takes a unique approach and synthesizes the contributions of existing methods to better integrate the subfield as a whole. Gerben J.N. Bruinsma and Shane D. Johnson have assembled a cast of top scholars to provide an in-depth source for understanding how and why physical setting can influence the emergence of crime, affect the environment, and impact individual or group behavior. The contributors address how changes in the environment, global connectivity, and technology provide more criminal opportunities and new ways of committing old crimes. They also explore how crimes committed in countries with distinct cultural practices like China and West Africa might lead to different spatial patterns of crime. This is a state-of-the-art compendium on environmental criminology that reflects the diverse research and theory developed across the western world.

This comprehensive survey of historical and contemporary issues related to maritime crime and piracy, with a special focus on Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, explains why piracy is a growing problem and how it affects security policy making in the United States. Here, piracy is defined as taking place on the high seas, while maritime crime takes place within a country’s territorial waters. Seaborne terrorism may occur in either one of these maritime zones. Maritime piracy can be divided into several categories, from pirates robbing a ship or its crew of petty items while at sea to taking a ship’s cargo and taking control of a vessel, reflagging it, and then using this captured ship to smuggle drugs, transport illegal immigrants, or conduct further acts of piracy. This is the most dangerous, not only because pirates can use a captured ship to carry out more raids, but also because they can use the ship’s identity papers to transport goods and weapons—potentially WMDs—into otherwise secure port areas. A special concern to the US is that the threat of piracy is growing most quickly in parts of the world—such as Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia—where both global trade is rapidly expanding and where international terrorist groups are actively functioning or have supporters. This geographical overlap suggests that the risk that pirates and terrorists may one day cooperate to strike at the US or an ally is most likely also on the rise. While many important African, South Asia, and Southeast Asian cases have received insufficient attention, many well-known historical piracy events stand in need of a reappraisal. This book integrates a number of multinational, multiregional, and historical cases of piracy, maritime crime, and seaborne terrorism to investigate whether piracy and other forms of maritime crime are becoming a major United States national security concern. It analyzes some of the most important cases, especially of the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries, as well as specific historical events. This allows to draw lessons as to what are the components of successful and unsuccessful piracy, common causes, the type of navy necessary to control it, and finally, possible military, political, and economic consequences. The book also discusses various types of cases, including parasitic, intrinsic, episodic, and opportunistic piracy. Specific cases are also evaluated in terms of the changing interpretations of international law and the recent reported growth rates of piracy, maritime crime, and seaborne terrorism. These findings are used to explore the impact of piracy on maritime security, in particular in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia and their surrounding waters, which is where the majority of contemporary piracies and maritime crimes occur. Different methods of policing piracy and maritime crime are evaluated, including the viability of adopting greater Maritime Domain Awareness, which would require that all ships at sea—regardless of size or function—emit a signal beacon identifying their name, country of origin, and route. This combination of historical and modern day piracy and the many cases studied will provide readers with a broader understanding of maritime piracy.