Criminal Organizations’ Strengths and Weaknesses: A Comparison of the Sinaloa and Gulf Cartels

This article compares two criminal organizations to shed light on why the first, the Sinaloa Cartel, continues to be hegemonic, while the second, the Gulf-Zeta Cartel, is currently weakened and fragmented. The author examines the two cases by tracing mechanisms involved in each. Con-cretely, he compares two dimensions that develop differently in the two organizations: 1) interaction with the federal government, and 2) leaders-hip dilemmas. He uses static game theory to clarify the dynamic of each of their processes through behavior modeling of both actors.