Countering Illicit Trade Practices and Responses

How can illicit trade be effectively countered? This volume argues that there is no single best response. Because illicit trade emerges from multiple causes, crosses licit and illicit systems, and adapts to changes in law, enforcement, technology, markets, and political conditions, responses must combine different instruments, actors, and levels of intervention. The volume examines three broad families of responses. Legal and enforcement responses deter, punish, and disrupt illicit activity through criminal law, international cooperation, sanctions enforcement, and domestic legal frameworks. Technological and forensic responses use tracking and tracing, authentication, digital forensics, artificial intelligence, and data infrastructures to improve visibility, verification, and detection. Governance, policy, and societal responses address the broader conditions that sustain illicit trade through structural public policy, community mobilisation, public awareness, and collaboration between state and non-state actors. Rather than treating these approaches as alternatives, the volume develops the concept of response configurations, examining how different interventions can be combined, sequenced, and adapted to the mechanisms and contexts they seek to address. It also highlights their limitations and trade-offs, showing that effective responses must be integrated, adaptive, legitimate, and context-sensitive. Bringing together perspectives from law, criminology, political science, international relations, public policy, economics, sociology, technology studies, and digital forensics, the volume offers a comparative framework for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners working on illicit trade and global governance. This is the third and final volume of the GLITSS trilogy, a four-year collaborative endeavour involving nearly 300 researchers from 48 countries under the COST Action Globalization, Illicit Trade, Security and Sustainability (GLITSS).