Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict

297 Pages·2010·1.202 MB·English

by  Peter Andreas, ed.

Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts

Sex, Drugs, and
Body Counts
The Politics of Numbers
in Global Crime
and Confl ict
edited by
Peter Andreas
and
Kelly M. Greenhill
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Copyright © 2010 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this
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First published 2010 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2010
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sex, drugs, and body counts : the politics of numbers in
global crime and confl ict / edited by Peter Andreas and
Kelly M. Greenhill.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8014-4861-4 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8014-7618-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Statistics—Political aspects—Case studies. 2. Statistical
methods—Political aspects—Case studies. 3. Transnational
crime—Statistics—Political aspects—Case studies.
4. International relations—Statistics—Political aspects—
Case studies. 5. Policy sciences—Statistical methods—Case
studies. I. Andreas, Peter, 1965– II. Greenhill, Kelly M., 1970–
HA29.S558 2010
363.32072'7—dc22 2009046277
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible
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inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or
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our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.
Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Acknowledgments viii
1 Introduction: The Politics of Numbers 1
Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill
2 The Politics of Measuring Illicit Flows and Policy
Effectiveness 23
Peter Andreas
3 Traffi cking in Numbers: The Social Construction
of Human Traffi cking Data 46
David A. Feingold
4 Numbers and Certifi cation: Assessing Foreign Compliance
in Combating Narcotics and Human Traffi cking 75
H. Richard Friman
5 The Illusiveness of Counting “Victims” and
the Concreteness of Ranking Countries:
Traffi cking in Persons from Colombia to Japan 110
Kay B. Warren
6 Counting the Cost: The Politics of Numbers
in Armed Confl ict 127
Kelly M. Greenhill
vi Contents
7 Research and Repercussions of Death Tolls:
The Case of the Bosnian Book of the Dead 159
Lara J. Nettelfi eld
8 The Ambiguous Genocide: The U.S. State Department
and the Death Toll in Darfur 188
John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond
9 Accounting for Absence: The Colombian Paramilitaries
in U.S. Policy Debates 215
Winifred Tate
10 (Mis)Measuring Success in Countering the Financing
of Terrorism 247
Sue E. Eckert and Thomas J. Biersteker
11 Conclusion: The Numbers in Politics 264
Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill
Index 279
Contributors
Peter Andreas is associate professor of political science and interna-
tional studies at Brown University.
Thomas J. Biersteker is the Curt Gasteyger Chair in International Se-
curity and Confl ict Studies at the Graduate Institute of International and
Development Studies—Geneva.
Sue E. Eckert is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International
Studies, Brown University.
David A. Feingold is director of the Ophidian Research Institute and
International Coordinator for HIV/AIDS and Traffi cking for the United
Nations Educational Scientifi c and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
Bangkok.
H. Richard Friman is Eliot Fitch Professor for International Studies,
professor of political science and Director of the Center for Transna-
tional Justice at Marquette University.
Kelly M. Greenhill is assistant professor of political science and inter-
national relations at Tufts University and a research fellow at the Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s
Kennedy School of Government.
John Hagan is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law
at Northwestern University.
Lara J. Nettelfi eld is postdoctoral fellow at the Institut Barcelona
d’Estudis Internacionals and assistant professor at Simon Fraser Univer-
sity’s School for International Studies.
Wenona Rymond-Richmond is assistant professor of sociology at the
University of Massachusetts—Amherst.
Winifred Tate is assistant professor of anthropology at Colby College.
Kay B. Warren is the Charles B. Tillinghast Jr. ’32 Professor of Inter-
national Studies and professor of anthropology at Brown University.
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of a multi-year collaboration involving authors
who cross disciplinary boundaries as well as the boundaries between
academia and the policy world. The contributors include political scien-
tists, anthropologists, sociologists, policy analysts, and practitioners. De-
spite widely varying backgrounds, training, and professional experience,
all share a core interest in the politics of numbers and the use of numbers
in politics.
We thank the World Peace Foundation and the Belfer Center at the Ken-
nedy School of Government at Harvard University (and especially Robert
Rotberg) for funding and hosting the conference in December 2006 that
inspired the idea for this volume. We also thank the Watson Institute for
International Studies at Brown University (the Global Security Program,
the Politics, Culture and Identity Program, and especially Thomas Bier-
steker) for funding and hosting the December 2007 authors’ conference
where early drafts of many of the chapters were fi rst presented. Some of
the draft chapters were subsequently presented on a panel at the 2008 An-
nual Convention of the International Studies Association in Chicago. We
are grateful to Roger Haydon at Cornell University Press, who was suf-
fi ciently intrigued by the topic of this book to overcome his initial allergic
reaction to taking on another edited volume. Two external reviewers for
the press provided thoughtful and constructive comments. We also thank
Solomon Eppel for his research assistance and Elizabeth Bennett for her
help in getting this book ready for publication.
Acknowledgments ix
Finally, we would like to thank our co-authors without whose contribu-
tions this volume would have remained little more than an inchoate set of
ideas and concerns that we shared and believed warranted greater atten-
tion, both by the academy and in the policy world. We believe that taken
together the chapters herein represent far more than the sum of their parts,
and we appreciate the substantial effort each of the contributors devoted
to producing this volume.
Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill