Abstract
The concept of state-corporate crime is conspicuously missing from recent state-funded surveys of public attitudes towards white-collar and corporate crime. While these studies have reported increased condemnation of upper-class offenders, the scenarios used to elicit subjects' reactions did not specifically describe collusion between political and economic institutions. As a result, little is known about how the polity's role in encouraging or assisting corporate malfeasance may influence popular sentiments such as blame attribution and perceptions of just deserts. The present study asked 231 Facebook users to read two scenarios inspired by actual state-corporate crime cases, one in which the government initiated the offence, and another in which it merely facilitated the company's actions. After reading both scenarios, the respondents were asked to rate the blameworthiness of companies and government agencies and choose adequate punishments for key decision-makers. Results of statistical analyses suggest that the subjects were sensitive to variation in the role played by the state. The government was considered more blameworthy and deserving of tougher punishments when it initiated corporate wrongdoing, although a majority of participants felt that political and economic forces in both cases were equally to blame. These findings suggest that public opinion research should be used to engage the citizenry in evidence-informed policymaking by identifying commonly agreed upon solutions to state-corporate crime.
Highlights
As the state-corporate crime concept nears its 30th anniversary, it seems its core propositions have never been more relevant
Question #1: Do citizens assign equal blame to state and business actors in stateinitiated and state-facilitated corporate crime cases? Since perceived blameworthiness was measured with trichotomous variables, percentage comparisons were used to identify differences in the respondents’
While only 3 percent of the participants found the contractor to be more blameworthy in the space shuttle Challenger case, over 30 per cent felt that the company involved in the industrial fire bore a greater responsibility
Summary
As the state-corporate crime concept nears its 30th anniversary, it seems its core propositions have never been more relevant. The concept is conspicuously missing from recent national state-funded surveys on US citizens’ attitudes towards upper-class criminality While these studies have reported increased condemnation of corporate crime, even relative to street crime, the scenarios used to elicit the subjects’ reactions did not describe collusion between governments and corporations. It proposes an empirical validation of Kramer and Michalowski’s typology by applying it to a sample of US citizens’ perceptions It extends quantitative survey methods commonly used to gauge public response to white-collar and corporate crime to the realm of state-corporate crime. The following research questions are explored: Question #1: Do citizens assign equal blame to state and business actors in stateinitiated and state-facilitated corporate crime cases? Question #2: Do citizens assign similar sanctions to state and business actors in state-initiated and state-facilitated corporate crime cases?
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