State-Corporate Crime and Social Harm

State-corporate crime refers to the collusion or symbiosis between governmental authorities and private enterprises that enables, facilitates or conceals activities causing substantial social harm. This field examines how regulatory agencies, political elites and corporate actors jointly produce environmental disasters, public health crises, economic deprivation and human rights abuses. Rather than viewing illicit conduct as occasional failures of governance, scholars emphasise systemic features such as regulatory capture, impunity and the “regime of permission” through which harmful practices become normalised. Research has revealed that state-corporate crime is underpinned by neoliberal policy frameworks that prioritise market efficiency over social welfare, reproducing structural inequalities and undermining democratic accountability. The study of social harm extends beyond legal definitions of crime to encompass the diffuse and cumulative hardships experienced by communities—from toxic pollution and industrial disasters to the denial of essential services and the exploitation of marginalised groups. International in scope, this scholarship highlights diverse contexts in the Global North and South, stressing the need for stronger oversight mechanisms, corporate transparency, participatory governance and remedies that centre the voices of those most affected.

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State-Corporate Crime and Social Harm publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in state-corporate crime and social harm across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

State-corporate crime: Harmful or illegal actions resulting from collaborative or complicit relationships between government authorities and private corporations.

Regulatory capture: A process by which regulatory agencies become dominated by the industries they are charged with overseeing, leading to weakened enforcement and policy bias.

Regime of permission: A systemic framework of laws, norms and institutional practices that implicitly authorises harmful corporate and state conduct under the guise of legality.

References

1. Corruption as state -corporate crime: the example of the health sector in Greece. Trends in Organized Crime (2023).
2. Crimes of the powerful in Latin America and the Caribbean: Toward a research agenda. Sociology Compass (2023).
3. State-Corporate Crime and the Process of Capital Accumulation: Mapping a Global Regime of Permission from Galicia to Morecambe Bay. Critical Criminology (2016).