Marketness and Governance: A Typology of Illicit Online Markets

The preceding decade has seen an explosive growth in illicit online commerce, and scholars are increasingly occupied with the study of illicit products, their buyers and sellers, and the platforms and markets in which they are found. Despite sharing one basic characteristic, the exchange of illicit goods and services, there is extensive variation between illicit online markets: Some markets employ currencies, others are based on barter. Some markets exhibit strong social control, others appear anarchic. Traditional theoretical explanations to the organization of illicit markets, which assume that optimization or evolution drives their organization, find it difficult to explain these variations. I propose a typology of illicit online markets that appreciates this heterogeneity and uses it as a theoretical point of departure. Drawing on social control theory and economic sociology, I argue that illicit online markets can be separated across two axes: administrative governance and "marketness." This conceptual framework is not prone to functionalist inference and instead implies a less deterministic understanding of how illicit online markets come to be. In turn, this framework encourages the classification and comparison of individual markets, as well as comparative analyses of marketplaces.