Uncovering the Transnational Networks, Organisational Techniques and State‐Corporate Ties Behind Grand Corruption: Building an Investigative Methodology

While grand corruption is a major global governance challenge, researchers notably lack a systematic methodology for conducting qualitative research into its complex forms. To address this lacuna, the following article sets out and applies the corruption investigative framework (CIF), a methodology designed to generate a systematic, transferable approach for grand corruption research. Its utility will be demonstrated employing a case study that centres on an Australian-led megaproject being built in Papua New Guinea’s capital city, Port Moresby. Unlike conventional analyses of corruption in Papua New Guinea, which emphasise its local characteristics and patrimonial qualities, application of CIF uncovered new empirical layers that centre on transnational state-corporate power, the ambiguity of civil society, and the structural inequalities that marginalise resistance movements. The important theoretical consequences of the findings and underpinning methodology are explored

Más allá del fetichismo del Estado: el desarrollo de un programa teórico para los estudios sobre crímenes de Estado (Beyond State-Fetishism: Developing a Theoretical Programme for State Crime Studies)

In ways that were perhaps unimaginable even a decade ago, state crime studies has the opportunity to become a rich intellectual resource for diverse struggles of resistance opposed to the crimes of the powerful. However, this role is by no means assured. One barrier that must be overcome is a disciplinary tendency to fetishize those organisational forms – principally states and corporations – through which capitalist relations of production function. This paper will examine the epistemological roots of organisational fetishism, and the consequential effects this analytical tendency has on understandings of state crime. We will then consider how the method, and conceptual framework, which Marx developed to inquire into the sinuous core of the capitalist mode of production can be used to move beyond fetishized understandings of the state.  To demonstrate the complexity of the theoretical task before us, I will draw upon the example of Papua New Guinea, a country that has witnessed a range of gross human rights violations associated with the Bougainville war, and which departs in many ways from archetypal models of capitalism. Nevertheless, it will be maintained that Marxism remains a vital framework for enriched understandings of state crime in Papua New Guinea, that move beyond fetishized accounts of elite offending. De un modo quizás inimaginable hace una década, los estudios sobre criminalidad estatal tienen hoy la oportunidad de convertirse en un poderoso recurso intelectual para las luchas de resistencia frente a los crímenes de los poderosos. Sin embargo, esta función no está asegurada. Una de las barreras que aún debe superarse es la tendencia a fetichizar las formas organizacionales, principalmente Estados y empresas, a través de las que funcionan las relaciones de producción capitalista. Este texto analiza las raíces epistemológicas de este fetichismo organizacional y los efectos que tal tendencia  analítica genera en el entendimiento de los crímenes estatales. Posteriormente veremos que el método y el marco conceptual desarrollados por Marx para analizar el complejo núcleo del modo de producción capitalista pueden emplearse para ir más allá de las interpretaciones fetichizadas del Estado. Para demostrar la complejidad teórica de la tarea, recurriré al ejemplo de Papúa Nueva Guinea, un país que ha sido testigo de un amplio abanico de violaciones de derechos humanos vinculadas a la guerra de Bougainville, y que está al margen, por diferentes motivos, de los modelos arquetípicos de capitalismo. Sin embargo, como se verá, el marxismo continúa siendo un marco teórico útil para ofrecer interpretaciones complejas de la criminalidad estatal en Papúa Nueva Guinea, que van más allá de los discursos fetichizados de las infracciones de las élites

Crime or social harm? A dialectical perspective

This paper proposes to examine some of the core philosophical issues to have arisen out of the recent calls to move "beyond criminology". It will be claimed that the dismissal of crime as a "fictive event" is premature, as crime does indeed have an "ontological reality". Nevertheless, it will be asserted that the relation between harm and crime is contingent rather than necessary. Accordingly, this paper will argue that there is merit to the claim that we should unify research on social harm through the creation of a new field, a step which would have the added benefit of constructing an alternative venue for crimes of the powerful scholars who wish to explore the destructive practices of states and corporations unconstrained. This paper, therefore, will also offer a dialectical definition of social harm based upon classical Marxist strains of ontological thought