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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political corruption
Fifty years after Watergate, researcher Shane O'Sullivan reveals the true story of the break-in in this chilling tale of political espionage and deception. The victory of Richard Nixon in the US presidential election of 1968 swung on an "October Sur prise"--a treasonous plot engineered by Anna Chennault and key figures in the Republican Party to keep the South Vietnamese government away from peace talks in Paris, costing thousands of American lives. The Nixon campaign got away with election "dirty tricks" in 1968, but four years later, they were caught. Drawing on the CIA's recently declassified history of Watergate and thousands of previously un published documents, The Watergate Burglars (previously published as Dirty Tricks) is the definitive account of the men behind the break-in. O'Sullivan documents their ties to the CIA in unprecedent ed detail, and how they implicated the Agency and the White House in three break-ins targeting Daniel Ellsberg and the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee, ultimately leading to Nixon's downfall. How did tapping the wrong phone with a bug that didn't work lead to the burglars' capture? Why was the bug on DNC official Spencer Oliver's phone only found three months after the break-in? And why was the CIA agent inside the plot sent to Cuba on a double agent mission by American intelligence after he got out of prison? Now available for the first time in paperback just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of Watergate, this updated edition answers these questions and includes a wealth of new material: burglar James McCord's final testament to his family about his role in the break-in, new revelations from whistleblower Alfred Baldwin, FBI case agent Angelo Lano, and the police officer who first identified McCord after his arrest and debriefed him in jail.
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.
In recent years hundreds of high-profile 'free speech' incidents have rocked US college campuses. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and other right-wing speakers have faced considerable protest, with many being disinvited from speaking. These incidents are widely circulated as examples of the academy's intolerance towards conservative views. But this response is not the spontaneous outrage of the liberal colleges. There is a darker element manufacturing the crisis, funded by political operatives, and designed to achieve specific political outcomes. If you follow the money, at the heart of the issue lies the infamous and ultra-libertarian Koch donor network. Grooming extremist celebrities, funding media platforms that promote these controversies, developing legal organizations to sue universities and corrupting legislators, the influence of the Koch network runs deep. We need to abandon the 'campus free speech' narrative and instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous network from our universities.
A new and updated edition of Malcolm Beith's thrilling inside-account of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman's notorious Sinaloa drug cartel. Until 2016, the dense hills of Sinaloa, Mexico, were home to the most powerful drug lord since Pablo Escobar: Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. Guzman was among the word's ten most wanted men and appeared on Forbes magazine's billionaire list. With his massive wealth, his army of professional killers, and a network of informants that reached into the highest levels of government, catching Guzman was considered impossible - until it wasn't. Newsweek correspondent Malcolm Beith has spent years reporting on the drug wars and followed the chase with full access to senior officials and exclusive interviews with soldiers and drug traffickers in the region, including members of Guzman's cartel. Newly updated with Beith's gripping account of the trial that put Guzman away for life, The Last Narco is essential reading about one of the most dramatic news stories of our day - a true-crime thriller happening in real-time.
In The Struggles of Post-Independence Nigeria, Ucheoma Nwagbara argues that despite Nigeria's oil wealth and arable agricultural land, Nigerians are not any better today than they were before independence. Nwagbara examines Nigeria's struggles with corruption, poverty, inequality, crime, and insurgency to show how poor leadership has failed to use the country's enormous natural and human resources to improve citizens' lives, eradicate poverty, and deliver broadly shared prosperity. Through his analysis, Nwagbara demonstrates that the nationalist ideals of dedicated and accountable leadership behind the struggle for independence in Nigeria have been betrayed as the emergent post-colonial leadership cared more for personal survival and gain. Despite these failures, Nwagbara reveals that Nigeria may still have a chance to improve and recover if Nigerians unite and demand real change through political and social activism.
This book examines corruption in public procurement in three Member States of the EU, reviewing their different approaches to combating corruption, and the extent to which the transparency principle is applied in their procurement systems. The focus of the work is on the contrast between the unsuccessful procurement legislation of a relatively young Member State (Bulgaria) and its attempt to curb corruption by expanding the scope of application of the transparency principle, and two examples of procurement systems where corruption is limited adequately, without an excess of information procedural requirements (Germany and Austria). The book scrutinizes the transparency rules, procurement participants, and responsible institutions in the award of procurements in these countries. It discusses in detail the types of infringements involving corruption as well as their link to infringements of the transparency principle. It compares and examines the systems of control and appeal against a contracting authority's actions within the various legislative schemes, and highlights the legislative weaknesses which fail to reduce corruption. The comparative analysis between the Bulgarian public procurement system and the German and Austrian systems is carried out through detailed research not only with regard to adherence to the transparency principle, but also to the use of other mechanisms to limit corruption, insofar as these solutions are appropriate and could be adapted in other countries currently lacking sufficient anti-corruption measures.
Corruption is an almost universal and persistent feature of the modern state. Commentators primarily view corruption as a major obstacle to development, whereas dissenting voices claim that corruption has the power to facilitate trade that would otherwise not have taken place. This comprehensive collection presents the most significant works contributing to our understanding of this debate, focusing on the key conceptual and theoretical issues and discussing anti-corruption policies. Alongside an original introduction by the editors, this collection is a highly valuable asset to scholars and academics alike.
It has been called the political crime of the century: This book from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Greg Miller uncovers for the first time the truth behind the Kremlin's attempt to put Trump in the White House, how they did it, when and why. This exclusive book uncovers the truth behind the Kremlin's interference in Donald Trump's win and Trump's steadfast allegiance to Vladimir Putin. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of people in Trump's inner circle, the intelligence communities, foreign officials, and confidential documents. The Apprentice offers exclusive information about: the hacking of the Democrats by Russian intelligence; Russian hijacking of Facebook and Twitter; National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's hidden communications with the Russians; the attempt by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, to create a secret backchannel to Moscow using Russian diplomatic facilities; the firing of FBI Director James Comey; the appointment of Mueller and the investigation that has followed; and Trump's jaw-dropping behaviour in Helsinki. Deeply reported and masterfully told, The Apprentice is essential reading for anyone trying to understand Vladimir Putin's secret operation, its catastrophic impact, and the nature of betrayal.
Nigeria's democratisation efforts since attaining political independence from Britain have been tumultuous and have spanned over three successive republics. A persistent bug decimating Nigeria's democracy and repeatedly leading to military coups has been brazen electoral violence perpetrated by the nation's political elite. Nigeria's 2019 Democratic Experience analyses and explains what went wrong in Nigeria's experiment with democracy. Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and the world's seventh most populous nation, also contributes 70% of West Africa's population. She is sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producer and has remained Africa's largest economy by GDP since 2014. The country has hundreds of diverse ethnic nationalities and languages grouped into 36 states (or federating units) and an independent federal capital territory. Though recognized as Africa's largest democracy, her democratisation process since the 1960s has remained tumultuous with massive electoral violence and political intolerance. This repeatedly compelled the military to intervene in the nation's political history in the years 1966, 1983 and 1985. It is these developments that provided the motivation for this volume to capture for posterity the conduct of the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria.
How to restore ethics, the rule of law, and democracy as the centerpieces of U.S. government U.S. government has been repeatedly renewed-sometimes simply repaired and other times reinvented-during its over 230 years. Major aspects of the federal system were broken again during the four years of the Trump administration, so it's time for even more fixes. This book sets out the damage that was done and important ideas on how the repairs should be made, focusing on ethics, the rule of law, and democracy. Distinguished scholars and practitioners have come together not only to address what went awry over the past four years, but also the deeper weaknesses that have become more evident, and how those weaknesses can be repaired. The problem areas range from ethics and conflicts of interest to the Hatch Act and big money in politics, and from independence at the Department of Justice and government transparency to reestablishing Congressional oversight, and the government's role in the broader areas of how Americans vote and of international ethics and rule of law. Overcoming Trumpery provides a framework to understand the significant developments that are already happening in Washington with respect to ethics, the rule of law, and democracy. These include the "For the People Act," the "Protecting Our Democracy Act," and President Biden's Executive Order on Ethics. The ideas outlined in this book for fixing flaws in federal governance come from the more than century of collective experience of its expert authors. The book represents a burst of sunshine after a very dark period in the nation's history.
This book presents an analysis of five anticorruption agencies (ACAs) from Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia, exploring the impact of organisational factors and leadership on their enforcement patterns during the first decade of the transitional reforms (2001-2012). Contrary to the conventional theory of agency insulation, the analysis reveals that the ACAs' de facto autonomy was not crucially shaped by their statutory independence, but rather by the reputational management of their leaders. The book draws on a mixture of qualitative and quantitative analysis to document these reputational strategies and how they shaped the ACAs' de facto autonomy. The findings also suggest that that the ACAs' organisational model - defined by the delegated mandate and powers (preventative vs suppressive) - represented a key variable that mediated under which conditions high de facto autonomy can be achieved. The book offers contributions to the study of anticorruption policy and ethics regulation, as well as the wider inquiry into drivers of agency independence, particularly in transitional contexts.
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.
Gabriel Ferreyra presents a comprehensive analysis of drug trafficking in Mexico and the United States by examining the roots, development, consolidation, and cultural ramifications of this phenomenon in the past century as well as its negative consequences in contemporary Mexico. Ferreyra discusses the most devastating effects correlated to drug trafficking such as high murder rates, gruesome violence, disappearances, and mass graves to emphasize how Mexican society bears the brunt of this phenomenon while the United States insists on the futility of drug prohibition. Unlike other publications, this book provides an interdisciplinary social science approach where drug trafficking is conceptualized as a multifaceted social, political, economic, and cultural problem, rather than just a criminal justice issue. Drug Trafficking in Mexico and the United States also revisits the war on drugs and provides an argument how drug control is the primary force behind drug trafficking. In that respect, there is an analysis on how the DEA has reinforced the war on drugs model and why it became a reactionary agency that opposes any comprehensive alternative to the American drug problem besides drug control. The author concludes with recommendations to implement forward-thinking measures such as decriminalization, reclassification, and legalization of drugs to effectively address the illicit drug trade.
When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post 9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations are vested with human rights, and government agencies and corporations use computers to monitor our private lives. David H. Price pulls back the curtain to reveal how the FBI and other government agencies have always functioned as the secret police of American capitalism up to today, where they luxuriate in a near-limitless NSA surveillance of all. Price looks through a roster of campaigns by law enforcement, intelligence agencies and corporations to understand how we got here. Starting with J. Edgar Hoover and the early FBI's alignment with business, his access to 15,000 pages of never-before-seen FBI files shines a light on the surveillance of Edward Said, Andre Gunder Frank and Alexander Cockburn, Native American communists and progressive factory owners. Price uncovers patterns of FBI monitoring and harassing of activists and public figures, providing the vital means for us to understanding how these new frightening surveillance operations are weaponised by powerful governmental agencies that remain largely shrouded in secrecy.
This edited collection examines corruption in the public sector, assessing case studies from across the globe in order to provide an international perspective on this worldwide issue. Case studies include an examination of how corruption has been minimized in Singapore and Hong Kong; an assessment of corruption in India under Modi, who was elected on a promise to reduce corruption; a study of corruption in Bangladesh, and an evaluation of attempts to curb corruption in South Africa. This collection also includes a comparative study of corruption in Brazil and Chile, and a global perspective on the development of ethical privacy policies in e-government. The original case studies included in this book are brought together in an effort to identify common themes that impinge upon the fight against corruption, despite the particular nuances of individual nations. The contributions included in this edited collection also cover themes that are not often studied, including corruption in government procurement, the nascent issue of the 'right to privacy' stemming from e-governance, and the proclivity of governments to hide behind Official Secrets Acts to withhold information - ostensibly guaranteed under the 'right to information' which is vital in the fight against corruption. Providing a broad overview on public sector corruption, including local and national perspectives, this edited collection is essential reading for scholars of both public policy and corruption worldwide.
This book provokes fresh ways of thinking about small developing States within the transnational legal order for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism and proliferation (TAMLO). From the global wars on drugs and terror to journalistic exposes such as the 'Paradise', 'Panama' and 'Pandora' Papers, the Commonwealth Caribbean has been discursively stigmatised as a mythical island paradise of 'rogue' States. Not infrequently, their exercise of regulatory self-determination has been presented as the selling of their economic sovereignty to facilitate shady business deals and illicit finance from high-net-worth individuals, kleptocrats, tax-dodgers, organised crime networks and terrorist financiers. This book challenges conventional wisdom that Commonwealth Caribbean States are among the 'weakest links' within the global ecosystem to counter illicit finance. It achieves this by unmasking latent interests, and problematising coercive extraterritorial regulatory and surveillance practices, along the onshore/offshore and Global North/South axes. Interdisciplinary in its outlook, the book will appeal to policymakers, regulatory and supervisory authorities, academics and students concerned with better understanding legal and development policy issues related to risk-based regulatory governance of illicit finance. The book also provides an interesting exposition of substantive legal and policy issues arising from money laundering related to corruption and politically exposed persons, offshore finance, and offshore Internet gambling services.
The author tests the hypothesis that hubris and the Bathsheba syndrome tend to affect all top leaders, by zooming in on the best known and very highest executives of our own day and age, and examines the psychological forces tugging at the top level of political leadership.
Corruption regularly makes front page headlines: public officials embezzling government monies, selling public offices, and trading bribes for favors to private companies generate public indignation and calls for reform. In Corruption: What Everyone Needs to Know (R), renowned scholars Ray Fisman and Miriam A. Golden provide a deeper understanding of why corruption is so damaging politically, socially, and economically. Among the key questions examined are: is corruption the result of perverse economic incentives? Does it stem from differences in culture and tolerance for illicit acts of government officials? Why don't voters throw corrupt politicians out of office? Vivid examples from a wide range of countries and situations shed light on the causes of corruption, and how it can be combated.
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.
In this unprecedented and chilling monologue, a repentant Mexican hitman tells the unvarnished truth about the war on drugs on the American. El Sicario is the hidden face of America's war on drugs. He is a contract killer who functioned as a commandante in the Chihuahuan State police, who was trained in the US by the FBI, and who for twenty years kidnapped, tortured and murdered people for the drug industry at the behest of Mexican drug cartels. He is a hit man who came off the killing fields alive. He left the business and turned to Christ. And then he decided to tell the story of his life and work. Charles Bowden first encountered El Sicario while reporting for the book "Murder City." As trust between the two men developed, Bowden bore witness to the Sicario's unfolding confession, and decided to tell his story. The well-spoken man that emerges from the pages of "El Sicario" is one who has been groomed by poverty and driven by a refusal to be one more statistic in the failure of Mexico. He is not boastful, he claims no major standing in organized crime. But he can explain in detail not only torture and murder, but how power is distributed and used in the arrangement between the public Mexican state and law enforcement on the ground - where terror and slaughter are simply tools in implementing policy for both the police and the cartels. And he is not an outlaw or a rebel. He is the state. When he headed the state police anti-kidnapping squad in Juarez, he was also running a kidnapping ring in Juarez. When he was killing people for money in Juarez, he was sharpening his marksmanship at the Federal Police range. Now he lives in the United States as a fugitive. One cartel has a quarter million dollar contract on his head. Another cartel is trying to recruit him. He speaks as a free man and of his own free will - there are no charges against him. He is a lonely voice - no one with his background has ever come forward and talked. He is the future - there are thousands of men like him in Mexico and there will be more in other places. He is the truth no one wants to hear. |
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