Review of 'State Crime' Literature Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Of 'State Crime' - Literature review Example hat dealing with state crime is inevitable, since there is no state that enjoys immunity from the breaching of human rights and liberties as a way of attaining its goals. Green and Ward (2005, 161) contend that state crime is instrumentally propounded by prevailing structural conditions. To this effect, corruption is factored into this debate as being furthered by two explanatory concepts of patrimonialism and clientelism. Clientelism is seen as referring to an exchange system whereby public officials and patrons accord political favours to their constituents or clients. As such, state-corporate crime, police crime and state-organised crime are the kind of aberrations that may follow clientelism. Green and Ward (2005, 161) also advance the notion that in countries where the government practices clientelism, state violence may surface, but those who are governed readily consent to the system, and thereby making this form of deviance less objectionable. Green and Ward (2005, 161) argue that patrimonialism readily invites the violent forms of state corruption because there are societies that profit through corruption and have thus made corruption their goals. In the instance when the interests of the ruler and the nation become inflated the door is left ajar for all manner and levels of corruption, with war crimes, state terror, torture and genocide being included. Green and Ward (2005, 162) maintain that a state’s predisposition to the use of patrimonialism, corruption or clientelism is underpinned by political and economic factors. Particularly, democratically mature capitalist states may have a predisposition to clientelism, but the heavy presence of civic organisations inhibits the patrimonialism from becoming full-fledged. In another wavelength, these two scholars postulate that proto-states and colonies or former colonies are the worst of predatory states, as far the breaching of human rights and civil liberties is concerned. According to Green and Ward,