Totalistic Organizations – from Mafia to Global Terror

Alexander Korchak compares the organizational and functional structure of four types of totalistic organizations that pose the greatest danger to democratic society: mafias, terrorist groups, religious cults and mature autonomous bureaucracies. He shows how mafias penetrate the other three types of totalistic organizations and how such organizations converge in modern democratic societies. One example of such convergence is the use by criminal cults of a religious ideology (Aum Shinrikyo); another is the link between totalitarian organizations and totalitarian regimes.