Governing Transnational Organized Crime with Disciplinary Power

Abstract

This paper views the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC) efforts to facilitate the implementation of the UN Convention of Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) through the lens of Michel Foucault's notion of disciplinary power. Viewing its endeavours in this way brings into focus the unequal power relations generated on the underside of the binding treaty law. In particular, the paper focuses on the way state recipients of technical and financial assistance for the purposes of UNTOC implementation are disciplined through processes of development programming. The paper considers how, given the non-binding nature of its micro-norms, disciplinary power effects are resistant to challenge particularly when disciplinary processes are seen as part of a collective security initiative.

Keywords: transnational organized crime, foucault, indicators, disciplinary power, global governance, collective security