This book investigates the pervasive problem of corruption across the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on the specifics of the local context, the book explores how corruption in the region is actuated through informal practices that coexist and work in parallel to formal institutions. When informal practices become vehicles for corruption, they can have negative ripple effects across many aspects of society, but on the other hand, informal practices could also have the potential to be leveraged to reinforce formal institutions to help fight corruption. Drawing on a range of cases including Morocco, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Tunisia or Israel the book first explores the mechanisms and dynamics of corruption and informal practices in the region, before looking at the successes and failures of anti-corruption initiatives. The final section focuses on gender perspectives on corruption, which are often overlooked in corruption literature, and the role of women in the Middle East. With insights drawn from a range of disciplines, this book will be of interest to researchers and students across political science, philosophy, socio-legal studies, public administration, and Middle Eastern studies, as well as to policy makers and practitioners working in the region.

This is the first book to examine the activities of UK and international 'role models' through the lens of state crime and social policy. Written by experts in the field of sociology and social policy, it defines the ideal state as a single, functioning whole that ensures uniformity in the name of legitimacy. It then details the ways that states do not constitute the ideal in terms of the dangers associated with the maintenance of legitimacy and state power. Anti-democratic measures, such as the invasions of other nation states, the idea that the media can both reinforce and influence the state and the problems of over-zealous policing of a state's own populace, are covered. Using the topical example of Rupert Murdoch and the activities of his media organisation to show how powerful individuals and corporations can and do exert political influence, the book provides a comprehensive discussion of state immorality and deviance generally and state crime in particular. It will appeal to range of academics and practitioners in broader disciplines such as criminology, sociology, politics and political science.

This book analyses the development of anti-corruption as a policy field in the European Union with a particular focus on the EU Anti-Corruption Report. It reconstructs the origins of anti-corruption policy in the 1990s when the EU started to recognise corruption as a serious crime with a cross-border dimension. It also analyses the processes surrounding the downfall of the Santer Commission on charges of corruption in 1999 and the enlargement of the EU. This incorporation of transitional new Member States was accompanied by a number of specific measures, instruments and monitoring mechanisms to combat corruption at the supranational level, finally leading to the introduction of the EU-wide Anti-Corruption Report in 2014. The book presents an in-depth analysis of its implementation, abandonment and the way forward under the European Semester as the new instrument for achieving EU anti-corruption reforms. It offers a new interpretation of the Report as a form of reflexive governance that operates at multiple levels and involves not only the European institutions and national governments, but also the role of civil society actors in the process of developing anti-corruption policy. It applies the theory of reflexive governance in analysing the impact of the Report in the UK, Romania and Albania, including the involvement of non-state actors in anti-corruption policy making in these countries. The book concludes with a discussion on how future EU Anti-Corruption policy can make use of reflexive governance and offers recommendations to enhance anti-corruption policies of the EU, the Member States and Candidate States.

Have you ever asked yourself what gives comfort to someone who demands and accepts a bribe, sells drugs or commits professional crimes for money? The majority of these people are not wealthy, and they accept small amounts of money every day from their victims. Cash, Corruption and Economic Development examines the causes of corruption and crime and highlights what brings comfort to all those who accept bribes and kickbacks, arguing that it is paper currency because it does not leave a signature of its movement from one entity to another. The author proposes that today, with the technology available, we can make the transition to a paper currency-free economy, which will help reduce corruption and crime and give a boost to economic development. The book analyses the causes of corruption and presents a replacement for the current model, to be implemented by a central bank and followed by banks operating within its jurisdiction. This book will be of interest to economists, students of economics and finance, and all those who have suffered as a result of corruption and professional crime and want these practices to end.

“How did we move from the inspiring moments of Nelson Mandela’s release after 27 years of incarceration, and the euphoria of our first democratic elections in 1994, to State Capture and the disaster of Jacob Zuma’s reign – a controversial President with over 800 charges of corruption pending? More importantly, what can we as a nation do about it? These are big issues – but Neil Wright does not pull any punches in bringing them out in the open and is not shy to give his opinions and possible solutions. His core message is that for true transformation to happen, it has to happen from the inside out, not imposed from the top down. By embracing the concept of “One Race, the Human Race, Now!” South Africans have the chance to emerge from present challenges and finally shake off the shadow of our divided past.”

Political corruption is a problem as old as society itself. As a fixture of political science and related disciplines, however, it is new and rapidly-developing, having only received very modest coverage until the late 1990s. The recent shattering of the taboo surrounding the discussion of corruption, largely attributed to its re-definition as an economic problem, has resulted in a torrent of new material on the subject. The most important of this has been brought together in this interrogative and authoritative collection. This book, including an original introduction by Professor Bo Rothstein, assembles the best papers in the field into a comprehensive examination of political corruption and will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the subject.

Renowned historical sociologist Charles Tilly wrote many years ago that "banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war-making all belong on the same continuum." This volume pursues the idea by revealing how lawbreakers and lawmakers have related to one another on the shadowy terrains of power over wide stretches of time and space. Illicit activities and forces have been more important in state building and state maintenance than conventional histories have acknowledged. Covering vast chronological and global terrain, this book traces the contested and often overlapping boundaries between these practices in such very different polities as the pre-modern city-states of Europe, the modern nation-states of France and Japan, the imperial power of Britain in India and North America, Africa's and Southeast Asia's postcolonial states, and the emerging postmodern regional entity of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the contemporary explosion of transnational crime raises the question of whether or not the relationship of illicit to licit practices may be mutating once more, leading to new political forms beyond the nation-state.

This book articulates and explores the realities of contemporary international anti-corruption law. As corruption has increasingly become a major topic in international affairs, Liu analyzes the global collaboration against transnational bribery. As China's economic reforms are increasingly articulated in a language of law, governmentality, and anti-corruption, it is essential that scholars, policymakers and legal theorists around the world understand the issues at stake. In this elegant text, Liu lays out the issues clearly, establishes methodologies for analysis, and provides policy proposals for the years to come.

Multiple crises have led many to conclude that the current economic and political system is broken. The present and future look increasingly precarious - if not outright dystopian Stephen McBride calls for radical solutions to these crises to provide a more rational and sustainable future. He critiques other potential responses which would further curtail democracy and increase the inequalities associated with neoliberal globalism. Demonstrating how mainstream ideas, powerful interests and political institutions face major challenges but block progressive alternatives, he argues that for radical transformation to succeed, institutional changes are necessary.

This book examines the phenomenon of 'grand corruption' in Kuwait and the pattern in the wider region. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the work places corruption in its sociological, political and economic context to explore the relationship between the characteristics of Kuwait as a state with an endemic corruption problem. It then focuses on laws and regulations as key problem-solving mechanisms. In doing so, it identifies, explores, and assesses the existing counter-corruption laws and regulations in Kuwait in a broad socio-political-economic context. The work goes beyond doctrinal legal research, employing empirical methodology based on semi-structured interviews with elite politicians and professional experts from criminal justice and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These valuable and original insights are reflected upon throughout the study. The grand corruption that permeates the tier of high-profile officials in Kuwait is replicated in many developing countries where accountability mechanisms regularly suffer from lack of enforcement. The appeal of this book is its application to numerous jurisdictions, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Middle East in particular. It will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and policymakers working in the areas of financial crime and corruption.

It is common to think that Latin countries, in southern Europe or Latin America, are naturally corrupt regions when, in reality, this is a modern-day cliche that merely legitimises alleged superiority. This book provides the interpretative tools to investigate political corruption in contemporary Spain and its colonies, in a comparative and interdisciplinary historical perspective, conducted and developed by specialists in economic history, political and administrative history, and political science. Addressing the historical functionality of corruption in Spain, and its weakening of the democratic ideal, provides an investigatory template and research model for combating and better understanding the evolution of corruption in Western democracies and other international arenas. Key to the investigation are the interrelations established between political power bases and different economic interest groups, against the background of elites who have become state players over time. The most frequent corrupt practices are bribery, favouritism, tax fraud, embezzlement of public funds, revolving appointment doors, influence peddling and political control of local territories through electoral corruption (caciquismo). Discussion centres on preventative measures to combat such practices. These behaviours exist historically both in continental Europe and in Great Britain, but with notable differences regarding the impunity of crimes, the lack of division of administrative and political oversight, and the absence of a culture of accountability. Chapter contributions explain the impact and circumstances of corruption in business, the economy, and national and local administrations. The work covers a wide historical range, including the imperial penetration of corruption in Restoration Bourbon Spain; hunger and bribery under the Franco regime; and the consequences of the financial crisis of 2008. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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.

This book analyses central questions in the continuing debate about success factors in corruption prevention and the efficacy and value of anti-corruption agencies (ACAs). How do ACAs become valued within a polity? What challenges must they overcome? What conditions account for their success and failure? What contributions can corruption prevention make to good governance? And in what areas might they have little or no effect on the quality of governance? With these questions in mind, the authors examine the experience of Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), widely regarded as one of the few successful examples of an ACA. The book is grounded in an analysis of ICAC documents and surveys, the authors' survey of social attitudes towards corruption in Hong Kong, and interviews with former officials.

The problem of corruption, however described, dates back thousands of years. Professionals working in areas such as development studies, economics and political studies, were the first to most actively analyse and publish on the topic of corruption and its negative impacts on economies, societies and politics. There was, at that time, minimal literature available on corruption and the law. The literature and discussion on bribery and corruption, as well as on the negative impact of each and what is required to address them, particularly in the legal context, are now considerable. Corruption and anti-corruption are multifaceted and multi-disciplinary. The focus now on the law and compliance, and perhaps commercial incentives, is relatively easy. However, corruption, anti-corruption and the motivations for them are complex. If we continue to discuss, debate, engage, address corruption and anti-corruption in our own disciplinary silos, we are unlikely to significantly progress the fight against corruption. What do terms such as 'culture of integrity', 'demand accountability', 'transparency and accountability' and 'ethical corporate culture' dominating the anti-corruption discourse mean, if anything, in other disciplines? If they are meaningless, what approach would practitioners in those other disciplines suggest be adopted to address corruption. What has their experience been in the field? How can the work of each discipline contribute to the work of whole and, as such, improve our work in and understanding of anti-corruption? This book seeks to answer these questions and to understand the phenomenon more comprehensively. It will be of value to researchers, academics, lawyers, legislators and students in the fields of law, anthropology, sociology, international affairs, and business.

Memory has taken centre stage in European-level policies after the Cold War, as the Western historical narrative based on the uniqueness of the Holocaust was being challenged by calls for an equal condemnation of Communism and Nazism. This book retraces the anti-communist mobilisations carried out by Central European representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and in the European Parliament since the early 1990s. Based on archive consultation, interviews and ethnographic observation, it analyses the memory entrepreneurs' requests for collective remembrance and legal accountability of Communist crimes in European institutions, Pan-European political parties and transnational advocacy networks. The book argues that these newcomers managed to strengthen their positions and impose a totalitarian interpretation of Communism in the European assemblies, which directly shaped the EU's remembrance policy. However, the rules of the European political game and recurring ideological conflicts with left-wing opponents reduced the legal and judicial implications of this anti-communist grammar at the European level. This text will be of key interest to scholars and graduate students in memory studies, post-Communist politics and European studies, and more broadly in history, political science and sociology.

Demonstrating how political culture facilitates or distorts political preferences and political outcomes, this book explores how the historical development of social conditions and the current social structures shape understandings and constrain individual and collective actions within the Nigerian political system. Political Culture, Change, and Security Policy examines the extent to which specific norms and socialization processes within the political and civic culture abet corruption or the proclivity to engage in corrupt practices and how they help reinforce political attitudes and civic norms that have the potential to undermine the effectiveness of government. It also delineates specific doctrinal models and strategic framework essential to the development and implementation of Nigeria's national security policy, as well as innovative approaches to national development planning. Professor Kalu N. Kalu offers an exhaustive study that integrates several quantitative models in addressing a series of theoretical and empirical questions that inform historical and contemporary issues of the Nigerian project. The general premise is that it is not enough to simply highlight the problems of the state and address the what question, we must also address the why and how questions that drive political change, policy preferences, and competing political outcomes.

This book tackles the challenging topic of corruption. It explores the evolution of a global prohibition regime against corrupt activity (the global anti-corruption regime). It analyses the structure of the transnational legal framework against corruption, evaluating the impact of global anti-corruption efforts at a national level. The book focuses on the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) as the primary tool of the global anti-corruption regime. It provides new and engaging material gathered in the field, including first-hand accounts from actors at international, regional, and domestic levels. By documenting the experiences of diverse actors, the book makes a substantial contribution to literature on corruption and anti-corruption efforts. Synthesising empirical research with an exploration of theoretical literature on corruption and regime evolution results in novel suggestions for improvement of the global anti-corruption regime and its legal tools. The Global Anti-Corruption Regime is a well-rounded text with a wealth of new information that will be valuable to both academic and policy audiences. It clarifies the factors that prevent current anti-corruption efforts from successfully eliminating corrupt activity and applies the five-stage model of global prohibition regime evolution to the global anti-corruption regime. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students interested in anti-corruption law, comparative law, transnational criminal law, international law, international relations, politics, economics, and trade.

Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award Wealth and power on the trail of the super-rich In 2012, Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista was the eighth richest man in the world, his $30bn fortune built on Brazil's incredible natural resources. By the middle of 2013 he had lost it all, engulfed in scandal. Brazillionaires is a fast-paced account of Batista's rise and fall: a story of helicopter flights, beach-front penthouses and high-speed car crashes. Along the way, it tells the parallel story of Brazil itself, a country caught in the cycle of boom and bust, renewed hope and dashed promise; a country where the hyper-rich are at the heart of the economy - and where their wealth can buy immense political power. Stefan Zweig said in 1941 that Brazil was the country of the future; Brazilians joke that it always will be. Today, rampant corruption and endemic inequality threaten to derail the new Brazilian Dream. The brazillionaires are the key to understanding that dream; through them Brazillionaires tells the story of their country's past, present and future.

Why are some countries less corrupt and better governed than others? Challenging conventional explanations on the remarkable differences in quality of government worldwide, this book argues that the organization of bureaucracy is an often overlooked but critical factor. Countries where merit-recruited employees occupy public bureaucracies perform better than those where public employees owe their post to political connections. The book provides a coherent theory of why, and ample evidence showing that meritocratic bureaucracies are conducive to lower levels of corruption, higher government effectiveness, and more flexibility to adopt modernizing reforms. Data comes from both a novel dataset on the bureaucratic structures of over 100 countries as well as from narratives of particular countries, with a special focus on the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats in Spain and Sweden. A notable contribution to the literature in comparative politics and public policy on good governance, and to corruption studies more widely.

Money, Corruption, and Competition in Established and Emerging Democracies, edited by Jonathan Mendilow, investigates the effectiveness of public subsidization of political competition as an anti-corruption mechanism. The exponential growth of advertising and polling techniques, the need to reach wider publics, and the inability to raise commensurate funds from ordinary members confront parties with ever-increasing difficulty to budget their apparatus. The use of contribution solicitation from corporations and wealthy individuals, drawing on the unpaid use of public services as sources or the imposition of "contributions" from government employees and contractors, and the "sale" of policies, concessions, or access to policy makers are commonly perceived as solutions corrosive to democratic governance. Such solutions shade into one another. Even where provider-consumer connections are only implied, donations by corporations and rich donors involve the desire to surmount the democratic constraints of "one man one vote" in order to gain disproportionate influence on the policy making process. An alternative resolution of the budgetary conundrum adopted by most democracies is the subsidization of political competition. This collection clarifies outcomes that are critical to an assessment of the ramifications for modern democracy. What do Western countries' experiences with public funding tell us about unforeseen changes in the role of parties and their behavior that are seen as additional costs of the public subsidization of political competition? What can we learn from experiments with subsidization in different contexts about possible pitfalls that should be taken into account, especially when public subsidies are adopted by new and emerging democracies? Answers to such questions are critical if democratic principles and institutions that were formed in an earlier age are to be adjusted to modern needs. In a politically divisive climate, the contributors to this essential collection provide thoughtful insight to some of the most important public and economic policy questions facing our world today.

What happens when the President of the United States engages in criminal activity? He runs for re-election. Donald Trump's campaign chairman went to jail. So did his personal lawyer. His long-time political consigliere was convicted of serious federal crimes, and his National Security Advisor pleaded guilty to several more. Multiple Russian spies were indicted in absentia. Career intelligence agents and military officers were alarmed enough by his actions as President that they alerted senior government officials and ignited the impeachment process. Yet despite all this, a years-long inquiry led by Robert Mueller, and the third Presidential impeachment trial in American history, Donald Trump survived to run for presidency again. Why? Jeffrey Toobin's highly entertaining, definitive account of the Mueller investigation and the impeachment of the President takes readers behind the scenes of the epic legal and political struggle to call Trump to account for his misdeeds. Toobin recounts the mind-boggling twists and turns in the case - Trump's son met with a Russian operative promising Kremlin support; Trump paid a porn star $130,000 to hush up an affair; Rudy Giuliani and a pair of shady Ukrainian-American businessmen got the Justice Department to look at Russian-created conspiracy theories. Toobin shows how Trump's canny lawyers used Mueller's famous integrity against him, and how Trump's bullying and bluster cowed Republican legislators into ignoring the clear evidence of the impeachment hearings. Based on dozens of interviews with prosecutors in Mueller's office, Trump's legal team, Congressional investigators, White House staffers, and several of the key players, including some who are now in prison, True Crimes and Misdemeanours is a revelatory narrative that makes sense of the seemingly endless chaos of the Trump years. Filled with never-before-reported details of the high-stakes legal battles and political machinations, the book weaves a tale of a rogue President guilty of historic misconduct, and how he got away with it.

In An introduction to political crime, Jeffrey Ian Ross provides the most comprehensive and contemporary analysis of political crime addressing both violent and nonviolent crimes committed by and against the state (e.g. political corruption, illegal domestic surveillance, and human rights violations) in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and other advanced industrialized democracies since the 1960s. Written by a respected social scientist, this book reviews appropriate theories of political crime and explains numerous definitional and conceptual issues, causes of political crimes, ways to control it, and effects of different types of political crime. Ross integrates new scholarship on state crime, and post 9/11 developments in both scholarship and current affairs and uses numerous examples to help readers understand the issues. The book is supported by a companion website, containing additional materials for both students and lecturers, which is available from the link above.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Washington insiders operate by a proven credo: when a Peter Schweizer book drops, duck and brace for impact. For over a decade, the work of five-time New York Times bestselling investigative reporter Peter Schweizer has sent shockwaves through the political universe. Clinton Cash revealed the Clintons' international money flow, exposed global corruption, and sparked an FBI investigation. Secret Empires exposed bipartisan corruption and launched congressional investigations. And Throw Them All Out and Extortion prompted passage of the STOCK Act. Indeed, Schweizer's "follow the money" bombshell revelations have been featured on the front pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and regularly appear on national news programs, including 60 Minutes. Now Schweizer and his team of seasoned investigators turn their focus to the nation's top progressives--politicians who strive to acquire more government power to achieve their political ends. Can they be trusted with more power? In Profiles in Corruption, Schweizer offers a deep-dive investigation into the private finances, and secrets deals of some of America's top political leaders. And, as usual, he doesn't disappoint, with never-before-reported revelations that uncover corruption and abuse of power--all backed up by a mountain of corporate documents and legal filings from around the globe. Learn about how they are making sweetheart deals, generating side income, bending the law to their own benefits, using legislation to advance their own interests, and much more. Profiles in Corruption contains tomorrow's headlines.

This book investigates the ideological conditions inducing political actors to highlight corruption issues through valence campaigns. Using case studies and comparative analyses of party programmes, legislatives speeches and social media data, the author demonstrates that the more parties and/or candidates present a similar policy programme, the more they rely on valence campaigns. In other words, as the ideologies of parties have become increasingly similar over recent decades, the content of political competition has substantially shifted from policy to non-policy factors, such as corruption issues. These dynamics, and the ideological considerations underpinning them, also provide a novel perspective on recent phenomena in contemporary democracies, such as the growth of negative campaigning, as well as populist strategies based on anti-elite rhetoric. The book will appeal to students and scholars interested in political corruption, valence politics, populism and electoral campaigning.