Corruption as state -corporate crime: the example of the health sector in Greece

Abstract

The study analyses the relations and processes underpinning grand corruption in the health sector in Greece. Viewed from a systemic-structural perspective, corruption is examined as a phenomenon emerging from the interactions and interconnections between the organized structures of venture capital and the state apparatus. Applying an integrated theoretical model of state-corporate crime and drawing on extensive empirical qualitative research, this paper traces the processes of normalization and institutionalization of corruption within the context of social networks and organizations. It is argued that corruption is not a deviant response to a normal system but a normal response to a system fostering illicit practice in accordance with capitalist ethos, profiteering, and the distribution of economic resources. In this wide political economy context, existing power relations and structures within the health sector are being reproduced.

Anticorruption Markets: Law, Public Procurement, and the Colonial Regime of Permission in Puerto Rico

“…This anticorruption market operates as an additional instantiation of a colonial regime of permission enabled by a contrived legal and political history of US colonial domination. This conceptualization contributes to the scholarship on crimes of the powerful, enriching the analysis of the interconnection between state-corporate crime, corruption, and anticorruption (Stamouli et al, 2023a, 2023b), portraying corruption not merely as a disruption in normal state-corporate relations, but as a constitutive dimension of the colonial relationship.…”

“…While there is substantial criminological scholarship on corruption in public procurement (Davies, 2022;Hudon & Garzon, 2016;Nicolas-Carlock & Luna-Pla, 2023;Stamouli et al, 2023a), the processes of commodification and outsourcing of anticorruption interventions have been underexplored. For instance, the term anticorruption industry typically refers to the exchange of knowledge, strategies, and techniques to combat corruption among transnational and national advocacy networks, corporations, and governments (Sampson, 2010).…”