Smugglers and States: Negotiating the Maghreb at Its Margins by MaxGallien, New York, NY, Columbia University Press, 2024, xiv + 346 pp.

In Smugglers and States, Max Gallien challenges conventional narratives surrounding smuggling in North Africa, moving beyond simplistic portrayals of lawlessness and “state weakness.” Gallien's timely and groundbreaking work approaches smuggling through the lens of politics and development—rather than one of law and order, which has been dominating the debate. Instead of treating smuggling as an activity that exists outside state control, Gallien argues that smuggling is deeply embedded in informal governance structures, which are negotiated between state and non-state actors and serve as a mechanism of economic distribution and political stability. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Tunisia and Morocco, the book uses a political economy approach that is anchored in political settlements theory, arguing that informal economies are not external to the state but are actively regulated by the state. Smugglers and States offers an important analysis that challenges the idea of ungoverned spaces and porous borders. It pushes back against dominant policy approaches that focus on surveillance and border fortifications as solutions, which are based on the prevalent idea of “strengthening states” to counter smuggling. Instead, Gallien illuminates the political logic behind informal trade, showing how it serves as an integral mechanism for governance, economic distribution, and political stability. The book is empirically grounded, theoretically sophisticated, and accessible, allowing readers to move beyond common myths about smuggling toward a new granular understanding. As such, Smugglers and States is an essential read not only for scholars and students but also for policymakers and the general public. Smugglers and States is divided into nine chapters. It begins by laying the theoretical foundation, introducing a political economy framework to examine the relationship between smuggling and state-building. The first set of chapters sheds light on the regulation of smuggling, illustrating how informal institutions and state actors shape the control and governance of smuggling economies. The second set of chapters adds further depth by exploring how smuggling has been incorporated into political settlements over time, particularly in response to major upheavals such as Tunisia's 2011 revolution and Morocco's economic reforms. The conclusion ties together these insights, underscoring the broader implications for state-building, stability, and North Africa's political economy, alongside methodological reflections and a documentation of fieldwork in the appendices. Gallien's work is particularly compelling in its comparative approach, as it juxtaposes two North African borderlands with distinct political and economic dynamics. The Oriental region in Morocco, bordering Algeria and the Spanish enclave of Melilla, has long been a hub for cross-border trade, shaped by fluctuating state policies and security concerns. The Medenine region in Tunisia, near the Libyan border, serves as a major entry point for smuggled goods and has played a key role in Tunisia's postrevolutionary economic restructuring. These case studies allow Gallien to illustrate how different regulatory environments shape the role of smuggling in political settlements, offering an in-depth analysis of state–smuggler interactions across the Maghreb. Gallien's methodology is deeply immersive, combining extensive fieldwork, interviews, and participant observation across Tunisia and Morocco's smuggling hubs—an approach rarely applied to the study of what is commonly viewed as “illicit economies.” By engaging directly with smugglers, traders, security forces, and local officials, he captures the lived realities of informal trade, challenging conventional state-centric analyses that rely on official narratives or secondary data. This bottom-up, comparative approach is crucial because it reveals how smuggling is not simply a symptom of “weak governance” but an actively negotiated and regulated part of political and economic life in North Africa. One of the book's significant contributions is its challenge to the dominant narrative that smuggling occurs in ungoverned or lawless spaces. Smugglers and States debunks this assumption by demonstrating that informal trade networks operate within structured, though unofficial, regulatory frameworks. A common misconception in policy and academic circles is that what is frequently called “weak states”—on the basis of a misinterpretation of Weber's definition of the state—lack control over smuggling, and that stronger border enforcement is the solution. However, Gallien provides extensive evidence showing that smuggling economies are not only tolerated but are actively managed by state actors. He argues that rather than reflecting an absence of the state, informal trade often relies on state participation in different forms—whether through security forces collecting bribes, municipal authorities taxing informal markets, or local elites negotiating trade flows. For example, in Tunisia's Medenine region, Gallien describes a regulatory system at the Ras Jedir border crossing, where local smugglers, security officials, and municipal authorities negotiate an informal but structured arrangement determining how goods can move across the border. In Morocco's Oriental region, informal trade with the Spanish enclave of Melilla operates under a highly organized system of regulation, including designated lanes for informal traders and coded markings on goods to indicate negotiated payments to border officials. These examples illustrate that smuggling is not a failure of governance but rather a feature of governance, embedded within broader state strategies of control and resource distribution. Another important argument in Smugglers and States is that smuggling economies contribute to political stability rather than state collapse. Contrary to the perception that informal economies undermine governance, Gallien demonstrates that smuggling helps maintain political settlements by redistributing economic benefits to key actors, preventing unrest, and incorporating marginalized communities into governance structures. Drawing on political settlements theory, Gallien explains how rents generated from smuggling are not just tolerated but actively incorporated into governance mechanisms. He argues that states in contexts like North Africa often rely on informal economies as a tool for political stability. For instance, in Tunisia, postrevolutionary governments allowed smuggling networks to continue operating as a way of mitigating economic hardship and maintaining social order. Similarly, in Morocco, informal trade plays a stabilizing role by providing employment and economic lifelines to peripheral communities that might otherwise be excluded from formal state structures. This insight is particularly valuable for policymakers. Gallien suggests that a simplistic crackdown on smuggling—without addressing the underlying economic and political factors that sustain it—could have destabilizing consequences. At its core, Smugglers and States is a study of the Maghreb that challenges conventional assumptions about the relationship between borderlands and political centers. Hence, another significant contribution of the book is its demonstration that what is often considered “the periphery”—the smuggling networks operating in Tunisia's and Morocco's borderlands—is, in fact, deeply connected to “the center.” While borderlands are frequently viewed as marginal spaces, Gallien persuasively argues that they are not isolated from state power; rather, they are shaped by decisions made in the political and economic cores of both countries. More importantly, this relationship is reciprocal—smuggling economies are not merely reactive to state policies but actively influence them. Gallien concludes, “while the economies of North Africa's borderlands are more likely to routinely operate outside the law of the political center, they are shaped by rules and structures that cannot be entirely separated from the politics of the center” (p. 242). By making these connections explicit, Smugglers and States offers a crucial intervention in the study of informal economies, demonstrating that smuggling is not a sign of “state weakness” but an integral part of how political and economic power is negotiated in North Africa. Smugglers and States makes a major contribution to debates on informality, governance, and state-building. By shifting the debate from law and order to politics and development, Gallien provides a valuable framework for understanding smuggling not as an anomaly, but as an integral part of statecraft in North Africa. In this way, Gallien's work further develops the evolving field of smuggling studies, spearheaded by scholars such as Peter Andreas, Gregor Dobler, and Paul Nugent. By challenging outdated assumptions about border economies, Gallien aptly summarizes in his book: “What has been described as hidden can often be found in plain sight; what has been described as unregulated often follows clearly communicated rules. What has been described as nonstate often saw state involvement” (p. 228). Smugglers and States is a landmark book. Max Gallien has created a highly relevant and original new foundation for smuggling studies, underpinned by a nuanced analysis of the dynamics in North Africa that he explored through in-depth research. The book significantly advances our understanding of smuggling and addresses common myths about its character that continue to dominate our thinking, contributing to important debates on state-building, informality, and political settlements.