The Growing Nexus between Italian Organised Crime and Islamic Terrorist Groups and the Public Policies to Contrast Them

The 90s of last century can be described as the decade in which the crime-terror nexus was consolidated: the rise of transnational organised crime and the changing nature of terrorism mean that two traditionally separate phenomena have begun to reveal many operational and organisational similarities: network structure, high flexibility, connectivity and interethnicity. Several studies highlighted also how criminal and terrorist organizations carry out their activities in dynamic contexts, in which the competitive pressure and repressive intervention by the governments constantly test their existence. For this reason, in order to survive and keep on growing up, they developed a high resistance ability as well as a high adaptability to the changing conditions of the environment they operate in. The nature and source of such abilities in terrorist groups have been deeply analysed in several researches, but they remain under-investigated in the current research landscape with particular reference to the criminal organizations. In his presentation, prof. Salvatore Villani will analyze these aspects with particular reference to the structure of some Italian dangerous criminal networks using an interdisciplinary approach which combines the typical tools of the Social Network Analysis and the assessment of the specific skills held by the members of the criminal networks examined.