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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political corruption
Political Corruption and Democratic Governance explores the effects
of political corruption on important aspects of democratic
governing. Jongseok Woo and Eunjung Choi use a cross-national lens
to analyze how political corruption influences different areas of
politics and economics, including electoral outcomes, citizens'
evaluations of democratic norms and values, economic development,
distributional justice, and social and political trust in both
developed and developing nations. While most works on political
corruption focus on the causes of corruption, this book delves into
various consequences of it. The discussion in each chapter engages
both theoretical and empirical components of political corruption,
introducing competing theoretical arguments on a given topic and
puts them under rigorous empirical scrutiny. Each chapter involves
large-N statistical analysis to make it truly global in scope and
to overcome the limits of single (or small-N) case studies on
political corruption. This book concludes with critical evaluations
about anti-corruption efforts by various IGOs and NGOs and specific
policy recommendations to deter corruption.
Angola is poised between a past marked by civil war and corruption,
and a future of potential economic development. This book examines
the post-Civil War period which began in 2002 and saw the rise of a
corrupt ruling elite, as well as recent developments in the
country. These include the efforts of the current President, Joao
Lourenco, to reform the regime through political openness, economic
growth and a crackdown on corruption. Rui Santos Verde analyses the
country's recent history of corruption and the current attempts at
reform in order to determine whether economic and political
development is on the horizon for Angola, or whether these reforms
are simply a move towards consolidating President Lourenco's
personal power.
Perhaps no other function of a free press is as important as the
watchdog role-its ability to monitor the work of the government. It
is easier for politicians to get away with abusing power-wasting
public funds and making poor decisions-if the press is not shining
its light with what is termed "accountability reporting." This need
has become especially clear in recent months, as the American press
has come under virulent direct attack for carrying out its watchdog
duties. Upending the traditional media narrative that watchdog
accountability journalism is in a long, dismaying decline, The
Watchdog Still Barks presents a study of how this most important
form of journalism came of age in the digital era at American
newspapers. Although the American newspaper industry contracted
significantly during the 1990s and 2000s, Fordham professor and
former CBS News producer Beth Knobel illustrates through empirical
data how the amount of deep watchdog reporting on the newspapers'
studied front pages generally increased over time despite shrinking
circulations, low advertising revenue, and pressure to produce the
kind of soft news that plays well on social media. Based on the
first content analysis to focus specifically on accountability
journalism nationally, The Watchdog Still Barks examines the front
pages of nine newspapers located across the United States to paint
a broad portrait of how public service journalism has changed since
1991 as the advent of the Internet transformed journalism. This
portrait of the modern newspaper industry shows how papers of
varying sizes and ownership structures around the country marshaled
resources for accountability reporting despite significant
financial and technological challenges. The Watchdog Still Barks
includes original interviews with editors who explain why they are
staking their papers' futures on the one thing that American
newspapers still do better than any other segment of the media:
watchdog and investigative reporting.
Offering a single, coherent framework of the political, economic,
and social phenomena that characterize post-communist regimes, this
is the most comprehensive work on the subject to date. Focusing on
Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries and China, the study
provides a systematic mapping of possible post-communist
trajectories. At exploring the structural foundations of
post-communist regime development, the work discusses the types of
state, with an emphasis on informality and patronalism; the variety
of actors in the political, economic, and communal spheres; the
ways autocrats neutralize media, elections, etc. The analysis
embraces the color revolutions of civil resistance (as in Georgia
and in Ukraine) and the defensive mechanisms of democracy and
autocracy; the evolution of corruption and the workings of
"relational economy"; an analysis of China as "market-exploiting
dictatorship"; the sociology of "clientage society"; and the
instrumental use of ideology, with an emphasis on populism. Beyond
a cataloguing of phenomena-actors, institutions, and dynamics of
post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships-Magyar
and Madlovics also conceptualize everything as building blocks to a
larger, coherent structure: a new language for post-communist
regimes. While being the most definitive book on the topic, the
book is nevertheless written in an accessible style suitable for
both beginners who wish to understand the logic of post-communism
and scholars who are interested in original contributions to
comparative regime theory. The book is equipped with QR codes that
link to www.postcommunistregimes.com, which contains interactive,
3D supplementary material for teaching.
Accountability is a crucial feature of every successful democratic
system, and the failure to develop functioning mechanisms of
accountability has undermined democratic consolidation efforts
worldwide. This book advances the idea that reliable tools to hold
officials accountable are essential for democratic governance and
that one of the key threats to accountability comes from corrupt
practices, especially when they are integrated – or normalized
– in the day-to-day activities of institutions. It evaluates the
successes and failures of institutions, politicians, political
parties, bureaucracies, and civil society by focusing on the
experiences of contemporary Ukraine. While the book details the
case of Ukraine, the topic is directly relevant for countries that
have experienced democratic backsliding and those that are at risk.
Normalizing Corruption addresses several interconnected questions
about the development of accountability in its chapters: Under what
circumstances do incumbents lose elections? How well do party
organizations encourage cohesive behavior? Is executive authority
responsive to inquiries from public organizations and other
government institutions? How can citizens influence government
actions? Do civil servants conduct their duties as impartial
professionals, or are they beholden to other interests? The
research builds upon extensive fieldwork, data collection, and data
analysis conducted since 1999.
Conventional wisdom suggests that partisanship has little impact on
voter behavior in Brazil; what matters most is pork-barreling,
incumbent performance, and candidates' charisma. This book shows
that soon after redemocratization in the 1980s, over half of
Brazilian voters expressed either a strong affinity or antipathy
for or against a particular political party. In particular, that
the contours of positive and negative partisanship in Brazil have
mainly been shaped by how people feel about one party - the
Workers' Party (PT). Voter behavior in Brazil has largely been
structured around sentiment for or against this one party, and not
any of Brazil's many others. The authors show how the PT managed to
successfully cultivate widespread partisanship in a difficult
environment, and also explain the emergence of anti-PT attitudes.
They then reveal how positive and negative partisanship shape
voters' attitudes about politics and policy, and how they shape
their choices in the ballot booth.
The Corruption of Ethos in Fortress America: Billionaires,
Bureaucrats, and Body Slams argues that authoritarian strains of
U.S. governance violate the idea of ethos in its ancient,
collectivist sense. Christopher Carter posits that this corrupts
the cultural "dwelling place" through public relations strategies,
policies on race and immigration, and a general disregard for
environmental concerns. Donald Trump's presidency provides a signal
instance of the problem, refashioning the dwelling place as a
fortress while promoting sweeping forms of exclusion and appealing
to power for power's sake. Carter's analysis shows that, emboldened
by the purported flexibility of truth, Trump's authoritarian
rhetoric underwrites unrestrained policing, militarized borders,
populist nationalism, and relentless assaults on investigative
journalism. These trends bode ill for human rights and critical
education as well as progressive social movements and the forms of
life they entail. Worse yet, the corruption of ethos threatens life
in general by privileging corporate prerogatives over ecological
attunement. In response to those tendencies, Carter highlights
modes of activism that merge antiracist and labor rhetoric to offer
a more fluid, unpredictably emergent vision of social space,
allying with ecofeminism in ways that make that vision durable.
Scholars of rhetoric, political science, history, ecology, race
studies, and American studies will find this book particularly
useful.
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Corruption in the Americas
(Hardcover)
Jonathan D. Rosen, Hanna S Kassab; Contributions by Adriana Beltran, Marten Brienen, Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, …
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R3,286
Discovery Miles 32 860
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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For some states in Latin America, corruption is not simply an
industry, but rather it is part of the political system. This
collection studies the nature of corruption and its recent trends
through expert contributions from scholars from the region who have
diverse scholarly backgrounds, theoretical orientations, and
methodologies. Through case studies of countries throughout the
Americas, the contributors analyze the links between corruption and
organized crime, the main actors involved in corruption,
governmental responses to corruption, and the impact that
corruption has on governmental institutions and people's faith in
them.
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