ABSTRACT
The issue of delinquency and criminality perpetrated in the context of public governance presents another significant contemporary site for exploring the interaction of individual and organisational actors. Put simply, when confronting the ‘criminal’ or ‘delinquent State’, should responsibility for such conduct be attached to the State or to individuals exercising State authority? It may be observed that during the twentieth century three principal routes emerged towards such legal accountability: that towards the State as a criminal, that towards individuals as criminals, and that towards the State as a human rights violator. After 1945, the third of these routes tended to supplant the first, apparently putting the ‘criminal State’ in the back seat. It may be asked therefore whether the idea of the criminal State (as another kind of organisational agent) remains relevant or useful.
