Variably Legal Markets

This chapter presents the rationale for, and conceptualization of, ‘variably legal markets’. In the first part elaborating on the rationale of this new perspective, the chapter discusses the limitations of existing legal/illegal/criminal market classifications and delineates several conceptual problems surrounding ‘markets’, ‘crime’, and ‘illegality’. It also identifies issues with the imbalanced focus of inquiry on purported ‘criminal’ markets, and the compartmentalization of research on markets into the ‘organized crime’ and ‘white-collar crime’ literatures. The second part of the chapter is devoted to the conceptualization of variably legal markets. After defining the key concept of ‘market’ on the basis of several criteria, the chapter argues for using the latter to assess the ‘degree of marketness’ of different exchanges. Lastly, it unpacks the specifics of the variably legal markets perspective, identifies three types of such markets along the spectrum of variable legality in-between legal and criminal markets, and discusses the many circumstances that might generate variation in the legal status of many products and their exchanges. In doing so, the chapter provides a conceptual architecture for analysing complex market dynamics, encouraging a shift from binary thinking toward a more integrated understanding of crimes and illegalities in market contexts, and their regulation and enforcement.