State–Crime Cooperation and Extra‐legal Governance in Colombia and Venezuela

ABSTRACT This article examines cooperation in roadblock politics. It discusses how the border closure between Colombia and Venezuela from 2015 to 2022 and the subsequent bilateral tensions created a political economy of smuggling whereby state officials delegated basic state functions to organized crime groups in order to contain political dissidents and rival non‐state actors, to oversee illegal economies and to maintain social control. The roots of this political economy are instances of negotiated mobility that occur at checkpoints along the multiple informal border trails, where smugglers, organized crime groups and state officials interact. The article builds upon previous research on borders and extra‐legal governance in Colombia through direct observations, in‐depth interviews and secondary data. It contributes to the crime‒conflict nexus literature, improving our understanding of the rationales behind the arrangements that exist between organized crime groups and states at borders and expanding the research agenda on extra‐legal governance.