In order to allow a fuller focus on state crime throughout the book, Chapter Two initially defines what is meant by the state and, more importantly, what constitutes an ideal state that will act as a foil to a criminal or immoral state. Taking a leaf out of Ruggiero's (1999) book, this chapter outlines the concept of an ideal state as a single, functioning whole, where resistance is managed, where social upheaval, separatist activity, revolution and ‘coups d’état’ are unthinkable, and where such a state appears to ensure uniformity in the name of legitimacy.

Of course, this pursuit of legitimacy depends on many factors. As a consequence, the chapter introduces the institutions, organisations and major protagonists involved in the maintenance of social order and, indeed, social control. We seek to balance this, however, by considering the introduction of a system of checks and balances through the extension of political citizenship as broadly as possible. Moving on, we turn to the issue of the socioeconomic structures of the modern state and the opportunities afforded by neo-liberal arrangements, with the full recognition that not all states are organised in such a way. Drawing on the work of Habermas, we then go on to demonstrate how the maintenance of order and the establishment of legitimacy require a delicate balancing act. As a result, we discuss the notion of democracy and, beyond that, the alliances that politicians make with business organisations, media moguls and the relationship and use of the armed forces, along with the policing arrangements deployed to achieve these ends.

By outlining an ideal state, it is then possible for the second part of the chapter to detail the ways that states do not, in many ways, constitute the given ideal (in terms of the dangers associated with the neo-liberal thinking and the maintenance of legitimacy and state power). We then take some tentative steps towards defining state crime and immorality, looking at how they can be conceived on a scale of realism to constructivism through their application as breaches of international rules and regulations, breaches of human rights legislation, as state organised deviance or as social harms.

Taken as a whole, this chapter thus initiates a discussion of the problem of trying to locate and define state crime and immoral acts.