"North Africa provides a fascinating environment for the study of smuggling and state building. The region is home to large and diverse smuggling economies, the political role of which has been framed in various ways throughout the region's history-from peripheral to unruly, from marginal to subversive. In this book, Max Gallien re-examines smuggling's role in North Africa's borderlands and state building in the region. Drawing on over 200 interviews and several years of fieldwork in Tunisia and Morocco, Gallien explores the institutional regulation of smuggling in North Africa, the actors involved in it, and the rents that are generated through smuggling economies and their regulation. He argues that smuggling rents, in the form of taxes, profits, and kickbacks, are essential for the social stability of the borderlands, benefitting institutional state agents and structures, elite networks, and the borderland population more widely. And because the incorporation of the borderlands in these countries has been crucial to state stability, creating incentives to formalize smuggling economies, smuggling turns out to be a crucial part of state formation writ large. This detailed, comprehensive study speaks to multiple literatures in Middle East politics, political economy, and state power"-- Provided by publisher.

1. On the Radar -- 2. Smuggling in North Africa: Stakes and Structures -- 3. Regulating Smuggling at the Border -- 4. Regulating Smuggling in the Borderlands -- 5. Smuggling Rents and Social Peace -- 6. Tunisia: Smugglers and Revolution -- 7. Morocco: Smugglers and Reform -- 8. The Valley and the Mountain: Lived Political Settlements -- Conclusion: Remaking the Maghreb -- Appendix 1: Studying Smuggling in North Africa -- Appendix 2: Interview Lists.