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The International Drug Prohibition Regime as Security Regulation: Stability and Change in an Increasingly Less Prohibitionist World

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Regulating Global Security

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Abstract

In this chapter, we introduce the international drug control regime (IDCR) and trace its emergence and later evolution by drawing on three successive waves of the international regime theory. We confirm the assumption that the prohibition in the IDCR as well as other features of the system have been the result of a series of political decisions taken by a specific group of powerful states at the centre of global capitalist economy, and the USA as the system hegemon above all. The regime, we argue, however also betrays powerful inertia factors associated with institutional, structural and productive types of power that pose an obstacle to its transformation even when, in some respects, there exists convincing evidence that suggests other approaches would be more effective and less costly. In view of the current challenge to the IDCR’s core prohibitionist rationality which we align with an evolutionary change in the operation of compulsory power, in the conclusion we discuss how a change to the status quo may be steered to avoid the regime’s gradual obliteration.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of International Relations Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Ondrej Ditrych

  2. International Centre for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service (ICEERS), Barcelona, Spain

    Constanza Sanchéz-Avilés

Authors
  1. Ondrej Ditrych
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  2. Constanza Sanchéz-Avilés
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Correspondence to Ondrej Ditrych .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Metropolitan University Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Nik Hynek

  2. Institute of International Relations Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Ondrej Ditrych

  3. Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Vit Stritecky

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Ditrych, O., Sanchéz-Avilés, C. (2019). The International Drug Prohibition Regime as Security Regulation: Stability and Change in an Increasingly Less Prohibitionist World. In: Hynek, N., Ditrych, O., Stritecky, V. (eds) Regulating Global Security . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98599-2_11

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