Curbing Criminal Behavior

February 6, 2008 by Jay Taber.

In his now classic paper on fundamental forms of social organization, Tribes Institutions Markets Networks, RAND’s David Ronfeldt lays the foundation for further discussion on the dynamics of conflict over such values extended in his and John Arquilla’s paper Networks and Netwars, which is also the title of an anthology edited by them that considers the implications of questions like how civil society networks can effectively curb or overcome the criminal, anti-democratic behavior of other social actors.

Perhaps of further interest to the discussion are questions of how the moral and ethical lessons learned within the structures of family, clan, tribe, and (ethnic) nation can be applied in negotiating such remedies as autonomy, sovereignty, and power-sharing within the modern state and multi-state institutions. Dr. Rudolph Ryser’s paper Toward the Coexistence of Nations and States is probably the most enlightening in that regard.

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