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.

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.

As corruption is a serious problem in many Asian countries their governments have introduced many anti-corruption measures since the 1950s. This book analyzes and evaluates the anti-corruption strategies employed in Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. These countries are selected because they represent the three major patterns of corruption control with Japan adopting Pattern 1 (anti-corruption laws without any anti-corruption agency [ACA]); India, the Philippines and Taiwan employing Pattern 2 (anti-corruption laws with multiple ACAs); and, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, and Mongolia belonging to Pattern 3 (anti-corruption laws with a single ACA). Among the ten countries only Singapore and Hong Kong SAR have succeeded in minimizing corruption because of the commitment of their political leaders in curbing corruption, their favorable policy contexts, and the impartial implementation of effective anti-corruption measures. On the other hand, the other eight Asian countries have failed to curb corruption because of the lack of political will, their unfavorable policy contexts, and their reliance on ineffective anti-corruption measures.

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.

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.

The book provides an institutional, historical, and sectorial analysis of Argentina's structural corruption. Looking back over the last 200 years, the book demonstrates that Argentina has historically addressed corruption through ineffective debates between public-private biases or a cultural-criminal approach reinforced by modernization theory, neither of which have helped tackle the problem. Instead, Volosin proposes meaningful institutional reforms to reduce opportunities for corruption and to increase monitoring incentives and capabilities. The book argues that political economy hindrances for reform are as significant as reform itself and shows that in times of crisis or scandal, the need to move quickly to satisfy citizen demands forces politicians to promote unplanned changes that lack real teeth. Moreover, the machine's reach over most public and private actors precludes regime-undermining reform, which is precisely what is needed to meaningfully attack entrenched structural corruption. In order to combat serious deficits in the public procurement regime, Volosin recommends a micro-sectorial analysis of government procurement, supported by an innovative human rights strategy to help measure and disclose corruption's hidden social cost, raise awareness, integrate vulnerability criteria into the fight against corruption, and employ local, regional, and international litigation and monitoring tools to compel the political branches to perform structural change. This innovative exploration into corruption in Argentina will be of interest to researchers working on public policy, administrative law, anticorruption studies, law and development, and governance both in Argentina, and beyond.

Corruption in politics and public administration is pervasive and difficult to eliminate. It has a strong effect on public attitudes toward government and is at the same time badly understood. A clear, comprehensive understanding of corruption is critical to the goal of ethical government that is trusted by the public. In this short and accessible text, Staffan Andersson and Frank Anechiarico demonstrate how the dynamics of life in organizations both generate corruption and make it difficult to prevent without undermining the effectiveness of government. They argue that how we define corruption, how we measure it, and how we try to combat it are strongly interrelated and should not be seen as separate issues. The authors demonstrate how this integrated approach, together with a focus on the damage caused by corruption to civic inclusivity and participation, can serve as an entry point for understanding the quality of democracy and the challenge of good governance. Using examples from mainly the United States and Sweden, Andersson and Anechiarico establish that recent anti-corruption reforms in public administration have often been narrowly focused on bribery (exchange corruption) and law enforcement approaches, while doing too little to other problems and forms of corruption, such as interest conflict. Corruption and Corruption Control: Democracy in the Balance will be of great interest to all students of politics, public administration and management, and ethics.

Bob Woodward’s second global bestseller on the Trump presidency, Rage, is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of original reporting. Rage goes behind the scenes like never before, with stunning new details about early national security decisions and operations and Trump’s moves as he faces a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest.

Woodward, the #1 internationally bestselling author of 13 #1 bestsellers, including Fear: Trump in the White House, shows Trump up close in his entirety before the 2020 presidential election. President Trump has said publicly that Woodward has interviewed him. What is not known is that Trump provided Woodward a window into his mind through a series of exclusive interviews.

At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president. Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses, as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents. Woodward obtained 25 personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that have not been public before. Kim describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a “fantasy film,” as the two leaders engage in an extraordinary diplomatic minuet.

Rage will be the foundational account of the Trump presidency, its turmoil, contradictions and risks. It is an essential document for any voter seeking an accurate inside view of the Trump years — volatile and vivid.

Governance and ethics are intertwined. A government functions within certain broad moral and ethical parameters, integrally linked with the sociological foundation of the polity in which it is articulated. The importance of ethics in governance has acquired a significant place in contemporary theoretical discussion. This book situates ethics in governance in India in the national frame and incorporates the context of globalization, allowing for the increasing importance of non-state global actors in national decision making. The author argues that a lack of ethics quickly turns into corruption and leads to governmental efforts to deal with it. He proposes that ethics are a set of standards that a society places on itself to articulate its responses to societal needs, and discusses the efforts of the Indian government at eradicating corruption and its failure. A theoretical approach to the issues of ethics in governance and corruption, this book is of interest to academics in the fields of Asian Politics, in particular Indian politics, and political philosophy.

After the ousting of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, much debate surrounded the reasons for the former regime's longevity and its collapse. Here, Safinaz El Tarouty provides an original contribution to the study of authoritarianism in Egypt by focusing on the role of businessmen in authoritarian survival. As the regime intensified neoliberal economic reforms that led to social deprivation and frustration among increasing numbers of Egyptian citizens, they co-opted businessmen in order to defuse challenges and buttress the regime, constructing a new political economy of authoritarianism. Extending the existing literature on clientelism, El Tarouty creates a typology of regime-businessmen relations to describe the multiple mechanisms of co-option in the context of economic liberalization. Ultimately, though, these businessmen proved too narrow a constituency to provide legitimacy to the regime and, in fact, formed one of the reasons for its collapse.

The link between gender and corruption has been studied since the late 1990s. Debates have been heated and scholars accused of bringing forward stereotypical beliefs about women as the "fair" sex. Policy proposals for bringing more women to office have been criticized for promoting unrealistic quick-fix solutions to deeply rooted problems. This edited volume advances the knowledge surrounding the link between gender and corruption by including studies where the historical roots of corruption are linked to gender and by contextualizing the exploration of relationships, for example by distinguishing between democracies versus authoritarian states and between the electoral arena versus the administrative branch of government-the bureaucracy. Taken together, the chapters display nuances and fine-grained understandings. The book highlights that gender equality processes, rather than the exclusionary categories of "women" and "men", should be at the forefront of analysis, and that developments strengthening the position of women vis-a-vis men affect the quality of government.

In Cooking Data Crystal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink the production of quantitative health data. While research practices are often understood within a clean/dirty binary, Biruk shows that data are never clean; rather, they are always "cooked" during their production and inevitably entangled with the lives of those who produce them. Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk examines the ways in which units of information-such as survey questions and numbers written onto questionnaires by fieldworkers-acquire value as statistics that go on to shape national AIDS policy. Her approach illustrates how on-the-ground dynamics and research cultures mediate the production of global health statistics in ways that impact local economies and formulations of power and expertise.

Winner of the McKitterick Prize 2018. "Never cover an assignment without collecting a brown envelope," Boniface had said. "It is a real life saver for all journalists in this country." Ifiok, a young journalist working for the government radio station in Lagos, Nigeria, always aspires to do the right thing, but the odds seem to be stacked against him. Government pressures cause the funding to his radio drama to get cut off, his girlfriend leaves him when she discovers he is having an affair with an intern, and kidnappings and militancy are on the rise in the country. When Ifiok travels to his hometown to do a documentary on some ex-militants' apparent redemption, a tragi-comic series of events will make him realise he is unable to swim against the tide of corruption. Building on the legacy of the great African satirist tradition of Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Ayi Kwei Armah, Radio Sunrise paints a sharp-tongued portrait of (post) post-colonial Nigeria.

This book empirically maps the decline in standards since the inauguration of Irish independence in 1922, to the loss of Irish economic sovereignty in 2010. It argues that the definition of corruption is an evolving one. As the nature of the state changes, so too does the type of corruption. New evidence is presented on the early institutional development of the state. Irish public life was motivated by an ethos which rejected patronage. Original research provides fresh insights into how the policies of economic protectionalism and discretionary decision making led to eight Tribunal inquires. The emergence of state capture within political decision making is examined by analysing political favouritism towards the beef industry. The degree to which unorthodox links between political donations impacted on policy choices which exacerbated the depth of Ireland's economic collapse is considered. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Irish politics, corruption theory, governance, public policy and political financing. -- .

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, WALL STREET JOURNAL, USA TODAY, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER. There has never been a more important political investigation than Robert S. Mueller III's into President Donald Trump's possible collusion with Russia. His momentous findings can be found here, complete with: The 300+ pages of the historic report, as released by the Justice Department An introduction by constitutional scholar, eminent civil libertarian, and New York Times bestselling author Alan Dershowitz. The relevant portions of Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, the 1999 provisions written by former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, which establish and regulate the powers of the special counsel. Rod Rosenstein's 2016 order appointing Robert Mueller III as special counsel and outlining the scope of his investigation. Attorney General William Barr's four-page summary of the report, as sent to Congress. Barr's explanation of the four reasons for redacting the report, and a key for identifying them in the color-coded report The wait is over. Robert Mueller, a lifelong Republican, has concluded his investigation and submitted its findings to Attorney General William Barr. Barr has told Congress that Mueller found no proof of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and did not come to a conclusion on obstruction of justice-neither concluding the president committed a crime nor exonerating him. But Mueller's report was over 300 pages and Barr's summary was only four pages, raising questions about the conclusions of a historic investigation. Special Counsel Robert Mueller III's probe into Russian influence on the 2016 election of Donald Trump-including links between the campaign and Russian interests, obstruction of justice by President Trump, and any other matters that may have arisen in the course of the investigation-has been the focal point of American politics since its inception in May 2017. Democrats in the US House of Representatives hoped to use the report to begin impeachment proceedings, with the support of those critical of the president. Media tracked Mueller's every move, and the investigation was subject to constant speculation by political pundits everywhere. It resulted in the indictments of Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and many others. President Trump and his supporters affirmed that the investigation was a "witch hunt" and the product of a plot by the political establishment-the "deep state"-to delegitimize his presidency. Mueller's findings-at least according to Barr-allowed the latter to claim victory. But now, thanks to a subpoena from House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler for the full report, a resolution from the House of Representatives to release the full report to the public (though blocked in the Senate by Mitch McConnell), and popular demand, it's time for public to judge if that is true. The Mueller investigation will join Watergate, and the Mueller Report will join the 9/11 Commission Report, the Warren Report, and the Starr Report, as one of the most important in history. The Mueller Report is required reading for everyone with interest in American politics, for every 2016 and 2020 voter, and every American. It's now available here as an affordable paperback, featuring an introduction from eminent civil libertarian, Harvard Law Professor Emeritus, and New York Times bestselling author Alan Dershowitz, who provides a constitutional, civil law-based commentary sorely needed in today's media landscape.

This book investigates parliaments' role in curbing corruption. In addition to discussing the definition, causes, and costs of corruption and the role that parliaments have in reducing corruption, the authors consider contemporary issues that parliamentarians - and others - need to be aware of. These include the importance of broad-based coalitions to fight corruption and networking at the country, regional and global level, the importance - and difficulties - of establishing parliamentary codes of ethics/conduct, legislative oversight tools and mechanisms, and regional/international conventions against corruption. Attention will also be given to parliaments and anti-money laundering. Corruption and Legislatures presents a non-technical review of contemporary issues and recent developments in curbing corruption, and concludes with practical advice as to what can be done to ensure more effective parliamentary involvement in curbing corruption.

In China, the central government has the political will to control organized crime, which is seen as a national security threat. The crux of the problem is how to control local governments that have demonstrated lax enforcement without sufficient regulation from the provincial governments. The development of prostitution, underground gambling and narcotics production has become so serious that the central government has to rely on anti-crime campaigns to combat these "three evils". This book explores the specific role of government institutions and agencies, notably the police, in controlling organised and cross-border crime in Greater China. Drawing heavily on original empirical data, it compares the both the states of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, as well as city-states Hong Kong and Macao. This region has become increasingly economically integrated, and human interactions have been enhanced through improved trade relations, tourism, and increased individual freedom. The book argues that the regime capacity of crime control across Greater China has been expanded through regional and international police cooperation as well as anti-crime campaigns. It suggests that a strong central state in China is necessary to rein in the local states and to prevent the risk of deteriorating into a political-criminal nexus. Focusing on regime capacity in crime control, regime autonomy from crime groups, and regime legitimacy in the fight against organized crime, this thought-provoking book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics and criminology more broadly.

Since the early 1990s, a series of major scandals in both the financial and most especially the political world has resulted in close attention being paid to the issue of corruption and its links to political legitimacy and stability. Indeed, in many countries - in both the developed as well as the developing world - corruption seems to have become almost an obsession. Concern about corruption has become a powerful policy narrative: the explanation of last resort for a whole range of failures and disappointments in the fields of politics, economics and culture. In the more established democracies, worries about corruption have become enmeshed in a wider debate about trust in the political class. Corruption remains as widespread today, possibly even more so, as it was when concerted international attention started being devoted to the issue following the end of the Cold War. This Handbook provides a showcase of the most innovative and exciting research being conducted in Europe and North America in the field of political corruption, as well as providing a new point of reference for all who are interested in the topic. The Handbook is structured around four core themes in the study of corruption in the contemporary world: understanding and defining the nature of corruption; identifying its causes; measuring its extent; and analysing its consequences. Each of these themes is addressed from various perspectives in the first four sections of the Handbook, whilst the fifth section explores new directions that are emerging in corruption research. The contributors are experts in their field, working across a range of different social-science perspectives.

Prominent media scholars have argued that the dissemination of propaganda is an important function of the news media. Yet, despite public controversies about 'fake news' and 'misinformation', there has been very little discussion on techniques of propaganda. Building on critical theory, most notably Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model, Florian Zollmann's pioneering study brings propaganda back to the forefront of the debate. On the basis of a forensic examination of 1,911 newspaper articles, Zollmann investigates US, UK and German media reporting of the military operations in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Egypt. The book demonstrates how 'humanitarian intervention' and 'R2P' are only evoked in the news media if so called 'enemy' countries of Western states are the perpetrators of human rights violations. Zollmann's work evidences that the news media plays a crucial propaganda role in facilitating a selective process of shaming during the build-up towards military interventions. This process has led to an erosion of internationally agreed norms of non-intervention, as enshrined in the UN Charter.

For years the rumours persisted: the apartheid state was responsible for the continual disappearance and assassination of anti-apartheid activists. Then, in November 1989, former security policeman Captain Dirk Coetzee made the announcement: ‘I was the commander of the South African police death squad. I was in the heart of the whore.’

Despite official denials and cover-ups, the rumours of apartheid’s death squads have now been proved to be all too real. Hundreds of anti-apartheid activists were killed and thousands tortured by a group of bizarre assassins, the foot soldiers of apartheid’s secret war. Jacques Pauw has been more closely involved with apartheid’s killers than any other journalist. For more than seven years, he has hunted them down and become a witness to their secret and forbidden world.

Into The Heart of Darkness is Jacques Pauw's follow-up to In The Heart Of The Whore will take you on a journey into the minds and lives of the men who went out to kill and kill again. What caused these souls to become so dark and guided them to so much evil?

Jacques Pauw is the author of the bestselling book The President’s Keepers. He is an award-winning journalist, television documentary producer and author. This is NOT an updated edition, just a re-release of the original 1997 book.

Uncovering more than 200 events, organisations, people, symbols, pop-cultural references, and other examples underlying suspicions of the looming New World Order, this book uncovers the truth behind the disconcerting reasons for the rapidly expanding militarisation of the police; the increase in doctors prescribing mood-changing drugs to children; the manipulative actions of the Illuminati and the surveillance of social media and calls, to name just a few. Tracing the power and destructive effects of the global elite, The New World Order Book exposes their unpleasant reach into today's world.

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.

This book considers how emerging economies around the world face the challenge of building good institutions and effective governance, since so much of economic development depends on having these in place. The promotion of shared prosperity and the battle against poverty require interventions to reach out to the poor and the disadvantaged. Yet time and again we have seen such effort foild or diminished by corruption and leakage. The creation of good governance and institutions and structures to combat corruption require determination and passion but also intricate design rooted in data, analysis, and research. In this book, leading researchers from around the world bring to the table some of the best available ideas to help create better governance structures, design laws for corruption control, and nurture good institutions.

The Sunday Times bestseller. 'A compulsively readable, carefully researched account of how a malignant combination of rightwing ideology, secretive money (much of it from the US) and weaponisation of social media have shaped contemporary British (and to a limited extent, European) politics... Remarkable' Observer, Book of the Week Democracy is in crisis, and unaccountable and untraceable flows of money are helping to destroy it. This is the story of how money, vested interests and digital skulduggery are eroding trust in democracy. Antiquated electoral laws are broken with impunity, secretive lobbying is bending our politics out of shape and Silicon Valley tech giants collude in selling out democracy. Politicians lie gleefully, making wild claims that can be shared instantly with millions on social media. Peter Geoghegan is a diligent, brilliant guide through the shadowy world of dark money and digital disinformation stretching from Westminster to Washington, and far beyond. Praise for Democracy for Sale: 'Thorough, gripping and vitally important' Oliver Bullough 'A brilliant description of the dark underbelly of modern democracy. Everyone should read it' Anne Applebaum 'A compelling and very readable story of the ongoing corruption of our government and therefore ourselves' Anthony Barnett 'As urgent as it is illuminating' Fintan O'Toole 'This urgent, vital book is essential reading for anyone who wants to make sense of our politics' Carole Cadwalladr 'This forensic and highly readable book shows how so many of our democratic processes have moved into the murky, unregulated spaces of globalisation and digital innovation' Peter Pomerantsev 'A call to arms for all those who value democracy' The Herald 'Geoghegan's words are those of someone who is prepared to keep fighting to defend and revitalise what shadows of democracy still remain'Scotsman

Despite being least affected by the virus itself, children and young people bore the brunt of Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. When schools were closed, playgrounds taped up and play outlawed, children's lives were closed down. The catastrophic impact on children and young people's education, mental health, wellbeing, and life chances is becoming ever clearer, with the most disadvantaged suffering disproportionately. In May 2020 Liz Cole and Molly Kingsley founded UsForThem to advocate - in an often hostile climate - for children to be prioritised during the pandemic response. Having heard from thousands of families, and having often clashed with policymakers, they have a unique perspective on how the state's response to the pandemic has affected our children. Here they document their shocking findings: how completely children's health and welfare were sacrificed for that of adults; how policymakers appeared to disregard the harms they were causing; and how adults charged with protecting the young stood by and watched as children visibly struggled or slipped out of sight altogether. This dereliction of duty should haunt us for decades to come. With exclusive testimony from academics, politicians, scientists, educators, and parents, as well as former Children's Commissioners, the book exposes the problems at the heart of policymaking which led to the systemic and ongoing betrayal of children. From public health to politics, and from media discourse to safeguarding, the authors show how children were too often used as the means to further adult interests. Ahead of the public inquiry, the authors call for an honest appraisal of what went wrong, and commitment from stakeholders to reimagine - not just recover - childhood.