Nicholas Lord - Böcker

This book offers a novel perspective for conceptualizing legality in market exchanges. It challenges the conventional binary of ‘legal’ versus ‘illegal’ markets by introducing the concept of variably legal markets—arenas of exchange where legality is conditional, multidimensional, and context-dependent.Drawing on criminology, law, economics, and regulatory studies, the editors argue that many contemporary markets—such as those involving commercial sex, performance-enhancing drugs, and cryptocurrencies—operate in a blurry middle ground shaped by overlapping legal regimes, inconsistent enforcement, and shifting socio-political norms. To advance this perspective, this collection includes illustrative case studies from experts in this field to reveal how legal status fluctuates across jurisdictions, supply chains, and actors, and how this ambiguity complicates both scholarly analysis and policy interventions. Paoli and Lord call for a more nuanced approach that moves beyond rigid classifications and instead embraces the complexity of realworld market dynamics. This work not only bridges gaps between organized crime and white-collar crime literature but also sets a new agenda for empirical research and regulatory reform.This collection will be essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, economics, and law. It will also be useful for policymakers and practitioners seeking to understand and govern the messy realities of modern markets.

This edited collection analyses, from multiple disciplinary perspectives, the issue of corruption in commercial enterprise across different sectors and jurisdictions. Corruption is commonly recognised as a major ‘social bad’, and is seriously harmful to society, in terms of the functioning and legitimacy of political-economic systems, and the day-to-day lives of individuals. There is nothing novel about bribes in brown envelopes and dubious backroom deals, ostensibly to grease the wheels of business. Corrupt practices like these go to the very heart of illicit transacting in both legal markets – such as kickbacks to facilitate contracts in international commerce – and illegal markets – such as payoffs to public officials to turn a blind eye to cross-border smuggling. Aside from the apparent pervasiveness and longevity of corruption in commercial enterprise, there is now renewed policy and operational attention on the phenomenon, prompting and meriting deeper analysis. Corruption in commercial enterprise, encompassing behaviours often associated with corporate and white-collar crime, and corruption in criminal commercial enterprise, where we see corruption central to organised crime activities, are major public policy issues. This collection gives us insight into their nature, organisation and governance, and how to respond most appropriately and effectively.

This edited collection analyses, from multiple disciplinary perspectives, the issue of corruption in commercial enterprise across different sectors and jurisdictions. Corruption is commonly recognised as a major ‘social bad’, and is seriously harmful to society, in terms of the functioning and legitimacy of political-economic systems, and the day-to-day lives of individuals. There is nothing novel about bribes in brown envelopes and dubious backroom deals, ostensibly to grease the wheels of business. Corrupt practices like these go to the very heart of illicit transacting in both legal markets – such as kickbacks to facilitate contracts in international commerce – and illegal markets – such as payoffs to public officials to turn a blind eye to cross-border smuggling. Aside from the apparent pervasiveness and longevity of corruption in commercial enterprise, there is now renewed policy and operational attention on the phenomenon, prompting and meriting deeper analysis. Corruption in commercial enterprise, encompassing behaviours often associated with corporate and white-collar crime, and corruption in criminal commercial enterprise, where we see corruption central to organised crime activities, are major public policy issues. This collection gives us insight into their nature, organisation and governance, and how to respond most appropriately and effectively.

This book explores how we can re-constitute our approach to analysing and empirically investigating the organisation of white-collar and corporate crimes, with a view to building fuller theoretical and empirical accounts. The work demonstrates how knowledge can be produced and systematised within a conceptual and analytical framework concerned with understanding how such crimes are organised, why they are organised as they are, who gets involved in them as primary offenders and as facilitators, and the ‘real’ factors that shape these organisational dynamics over time in particular contexts and under varying conditions. In doing so, the book examines the distal (far-off) and proximal (close) social arrangements and relations that create and shape emergent white-collar crime opportunities and their structures. It also investigates the mechanisms, relationships, processes, and conditions that are necessary for the commission, or the unfolding, of white-collar crimes, or for their non-commission. How these are contingently connected to particular contexts is explored. The work also considers the people who collaborate, connect, and otherwise associate, whether ephemerally or for longer periods, in the pursuit of criminal goals and the actual or potential skills, expertise, and abilities of these people to accomplish or resist particular behaviours that are required of them. Finally, the book assesses the human, social, cultural, and material antecedents that enable white-collar crimes to flourish or fade. The work will be of particular interest to scholars theorising about and empirically investigating white-collar and corporate crimes, or seeking to understand empirical approaches to analysing such behaviours and other types of crime. It is primarily aimed at critical social scientists, including criminologists and sociologists, as well as socio-legal, business, economics, and political studies scholars. The work will also be of interest to practitioners and policymakers keen to learn more about how and why these crimes are organised as they are.

This book is about the regulation of corporations that use bribery in international commerce to win or maintain overseas business contracts and interests. Recent large-scale cases involving multinational corporations demonstrate how large commercial ’non-criminal’ enterprises are being implicated in substantive overseas bribery scandals and illustrate the difficulties faced by responsible enforcement authorities in the UK and Germany. The book imports concepts from regulation theory to aid our understanding of the emerging enforcement, self-regulatory and hybrid responses to transnational corporate bribery. Lord implements a qualitative, comparative research strategy involving semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis to provide empirical insights into this relatively invisible area of criminological interest. Despite significant cultural differences between the jurisdictions, this book argues that UK and German anti-corruption authorities face procedural, evidential, legal, financial and structural difficulties that are leading to convergence in prosecution policies. Although self-regulatory and hybrid mechanisms are aiding the response and gaining some level of regulation, the default position is one of accommodation by state agencies, even where the will to enforce the law is high. This book is essential reading for academics and students researching corporate and white-collar crimes and the concept of regulation more generally, as well as law enforcement agencies and international and intergovernmental organisations concerned with anti-corruption.

This book is about the regulation of corporations that use bribery in international commerce to win or maintain overseas business contracts and interests. Recent large-scale cases involving multinational corporations demonstrate how large commercial ’non-criminal’ enterprises are being implicated in substantive overseas bribery scandals and illustrate the difficulties faced by responsible enforcement authorities in the UK and Germany. The book imports concepts from regulation theory to aid our understanding of the emerging enforcement, self-regulatory and hybrid responses to transnational corporate bribery. Lord implements a qualitative, comparative research strategy involving semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis to provide empirical insights into this relatively invisible area of criminological interest. Despite significant cultural differences between the jurisdictions, this book argues that UK and German anti-corruption authorities face procedural, evidential, legal, financial and structural difficulties that are leading to convergence in prosecution policies. Although self-regulatory and hybrid mechanisms are aiding the response and gaining some level of regulation, the default position is one of accommodation by state agencies, even where the will to enforce the law is high. This book is essential reading for academics and students researching corporate and white-collar crimes and the concept of regulation more generally, as well as law enforcement agencies and international and intergovernmental organisations concerned with anti-corruption.

From corporate corruption and the facilitation of money laundering, to food fraud and labour exploitation, European citizens continue to be confronted by serious corporate and white-collar crimes. Presenting an original series of provocative essays, this book offers a European framing of white-collar crime. Experts from different countries foreground what is unique, innovative or different about white-collar and corporate crimes that are so strongly connected to Europe, including the tensions that exist within and between the nation-states of Europe, and within the institutions of the European region.This European voice provides an original contribution to discourses surrounding a form of crime which is underrepresented in current criminological literature.

From corporate corruption and the facilitation of money laundering, to food fraud and labour exploitation, European citizens continue to be confronted by serious corporate and white-collar crimes. Presenting an original series of provocative essays, this book offers a European framing of white-collar crime. Experts from different countries foreground what is unique, innovative or different about white-collar and corporate crimes that are so strongly connected to Europe, including the tensions that exist within and between the nation-states of Europe, and within the institutions of the European region.This European voice provides an original contribution to discourses surrounding a form of crime which is underrepresented in current criminological literature.