What's the organized crime scene in Slovenia like by the way ? I know it's a bit of a stretch to refer to the country as Balkan , however it's fitting for the purpose of this thread IMO .
Out of the former Yugoslavian states, Slovenia has always been hit the least by the "organized crime troubles" that region faced following the breakup. It seems to be the same in Slovenia as it is throughout the entire Balkans: a dominance by Serbian organized crime and Albanian organized crime.
It seems that Eastern European countries with an Orthodox culture tend to have more issues with organized crime than their Catholic counteparts . Anyways thanks for the information man .
I wouldn't say religion plays a really strong part in this. It seems that it has developed in some regions more than in others. In the Balkans in Serbia and Montenegro ("Serbian mafia" - Orthodox) and in Northern Albania, Kosovo and Western Macedonia ("Albanian mafia" - Muslim). Of course there is localized organized crime in for instance Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and other parts of Macedonia, but it's mostly very local and doesn't really have its tentacles spread all over Europe. In the former Soviet Union it has mostly developed in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus ("Russian mafia" - both Orthodox and Jewish), Georgia (Orthodox), Chechnya (Sunni Muslim), Azerbaijan (Shiite Muslim) and Armenia (Orthodox from the more Oriental variety). There's also organized crime in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Central Asia, but again it's extremely localized and not as far reaching as the aforementioned ones. I honestly don't know why organized crime developed in some regions more than in the others. I don't think that religion really has a lot to do with it and truth be told, neither does poverty and violence - there are extremely poor and violent nations that didn't give birth to any type of far reaching organized crime and there are comparatively more well off nations that nurtured a significant type of organized crime.
Yeah organized crime can definitely thrive in all sorts of places , however I think it's not too much of a stretch to state that Orthodox Byzantine culture provides more fertile ground for it than ( say ) Protestant Anglo culture , especially when it comes to the issue of thriving mafia style syndicates .
The whole Caesaropapist aspect of Orthodox Byzantine culture makes corruption of authorities much easier for a variety of reasons . Chief among them being the fact of a pronounced lack of institutional separateness , lack of transparency , lack of a strong tradition of civil society , as well as a more " accept things the way they are and suffer " mentality among the populace at large .
I'm not trying to paint Orthodox Byzantine nations in a bad light by the way , just fleshing out some reasons .
