This book revisits and reframes the old, but active, debate on the relationship between criminality and civil war by bringing both the state and political power into the equation. It argues that the terms in which the debate is generally posed are still inadequate to address the complexities of this relationship, showing how criminalisation and de-criminalisation are deeply political and hotly contested processes. The shifting movements towards the separation -or convergence- between criminality and politics are part of the processes of constitution of both political power and state. The chapters in the volume flesh out the mechanisms and social dynamics through which this takes place.This edited volume will be of great interest to upper-level students, academics, and researchers in Politics, History and Criminology. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Political Power.