Understanding Maritime Piracy Syndicate Operations

Abstract

In this article, I explain maritime piracy syndicates’ structure and behavior as based on two required inputs: the time needed between an attack and the realization of profit, and access to certain economic and security goods, namely a secure environment and market infrastructure. Pirates face two challenges. Internally, they must keep the organization together during the operation, a challenge I examine with a principal-agent framework to show how the inputs shape the security and control tradeoffs that exist, or not. Externally, pirates must maintain access to the external resources necessary for the success of their operation. I then turn to the adaptations in internal structure, targeting, and network connections that different types of pirate syndicates make to resolve principal-agent problems and external resource access problems during operations.