Organised crime is now a major threat to all industrial and non-industrial countries. Using an inter-disciplinary and comparative approach this book examines the existing, official institutional discourse on organised crime to examine whether, or not, it has an impact on perceptions of the threat and on the reality of organized crime.

Felia Allum is Lecturer in Politics and Italian at the University of Bath, UK. She is co-editor of Organized Crime and the Challenge to Democracy (also published by Routledge).

Francesca Longo is Professor of Political Science and Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Public Policy at the University of Catania, Italy

Daniela Irrera is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Catania, Italy.

Panos A. Kostakos is a doctoral candidate at the University of Bath, UK

Part 1: Discourse and Definitions 1. Discoursing Organized Crime: Towards a Two Level Analysis? 2. The Criminal not the Crime: Practitioner Discourse and the Policing of Organized Crime in England and Wales 3. The Evolution of the European Union's Understanding of Organized Crime and its Embedment in EU Discourse 4. International Policy Discourses on Transnational Organized Crime: The Role of an International Expertise Part 2: Perceptions 5. Transnational Organized Crime and the Global Security Agenda: Different Perceptions and Conflicting strategies? 6. Evolving Perceptions of Organized Crime: The Use of RICO in the United States 7. The Yakuza and its Perceived Threat 8. The Social Perception of Organized Crime in the Balkans: A World of Diverging Views? Part 3: Reality 9. The Fire behind the Smoke: The Realities of Human trafficking in Northern Ireland 10. Organized crime in transition-era Bulgaria: The Elites and the State 11. Organized Crime and Local Politics in Contemporary Italy: Willing or Unwilling Bedfellows? 12. The Crime-Terror Nexus: Do Threat Perceptions Align with 'Reality'? Conclusion: Getting to Grips with the Deconstruction of Organized Crime