Karlsruhe Dialogues 2010

is an award winning British author and journalist who has been working in Eastern and Central Europe for 20 years. He has written for all major British and European newspapers and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker. As a former BBC Central Europe Correspondent with overall responsibility for coverage of the region, Misha is also the author of the three best-selling books “The Rebirth of History: Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy”, “The Fall of Yugoslavia” and “The Balkans: 1804-1999”.

He has lectured at universities throughout Europe and the United States while the major diplomatic actors involved in the Balkans, including the Foreign Office and State Department at the highest level, continue to consult him regularly. For his work he has amongst others received the Sony Gold Award for Special Contribution to Broadcasting.

Misha is a distinguished Fulbright scholar and a former fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington. At the London School of Economics he has worked as a visiting research professor and has an honorary doctorate from the American University in Bulgaria. He is the Founding Director of SEE Change, an NGO which completed a two-year project developing cross-border cooperation between multi-ethnic municipalities in Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia. During this project, Misha started researching the rise of the shadow economy since the fall of communism and the advent of globalization. The research took him all over the world and his work “McMafia: Crime without Frontiers” was published in 2008 in New York, London and Toronto. It has already become an international bestseller and is being translated into over 30 languages.

ZAK asked Dr. h.c. Misha Glenny to answer the following question:

Globalization makes it possible that organized crime expands. What can be done against it at the local level?

Develop a clear anti-corruption strategy with practical flexible measures for good governance. Move to harmonization of policing and judicial norms. Legalize narcotics. Develop long-term strategy for the removal of income discrepancy within countries and between countries.