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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political corruption
* Provides an easy-to-digest, apolitical, and holistic view of corruption, covering types, methods, trends, challenges, and overall impact, as well as the necessary steps to combat it. * An essential guide for investigators, compliance professionals, academics, educators, and everyday citizens seeking to better serve, support, and protect their communities. * The only comprehensive anti-corruption guide written from the perspective of a law enforcement professional experienced in dissecting corruption both on the micro and macro levels.
Gangs and militias have been a persistent feature of social and political life in Indonesia. During the authoritarian New Order regime they constituted part of a vast network of sub-contracted coercion and social control on behalf of the state. Indonesia's subsequent democratisation has seen gangs adapt to and take advantage of the changed political context. New types of populist street based organisations have emerged that combine predatory rent-seeking with claims of representing marginalised social and economic groups. Based on extensive fieldwork in Jakarta this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the changing relationship between gangs, militias and political power and authority in post-New Order Indonesia. It argues that gangs and militias have manufactured various types of legitimacy in consolidating localised territorial monopolies and protection economies. As mediators between the informal politics of the street and the world of formal politics they have become often influential brokers in Indonesia's decentralised electoral democracy. More than mere criminal extortion, it is argued that the protection racket as a social relation of coercion and domination remains a salient feature of Indonesia's post-authoritarian political landscape. This ground-breaking study will be of interest to students and scholars of Indonesian and Southeast Asian politics, political violence, gangs and urban politics.
16 to 20 December 2017 saw most South Africans and political pundits closely observing the African National Congress’s 54th National Elective Conference at Nasrec. There were plenty of international observers and local and foreign press who were closely tracking the ANC top brass and branch delegates as they jostled for political power and position. The air was thick with anticipation and high with suspicion. Former student activist, member of the then Mitchells Plain Student Congress (Mipsco), COSAS national leader and now ANC member in good standing, Oscar van Heerden once again found himself doing duty in the resolutions drafting team at the ANC’s National Conference. What he witnessed in the period leading up to the conference and then the five days of high drama at Nasrec make for an enthralling and insightful insider’s view. Van Heerden’s observations lay bare a governing party that is at war with itself. At the heart of this struggle is deception, corruption and power-hungry politicians flexing their muscles. Factional infighting, money in bags exchanging hands in the dead of night, spies on duty and a political party in the clutches of state capture are some of the political moves that Van Heerden witnesses and now shares in his book. Van Heerden’s assertion after the first two days of the conference is that the Cyril Ramaphosa camp, also known as CR17, did not stand a chance of winning. To him they seemed disorganised, at times not understanding the modalities of election politics at the conference, and had arrived at the gun fight with a knife. How then did the tide turn against the obvious pro-Jacob Zuma camp to favour CR17? What really happened behind closed doors to secure the narrow margin of victory? Walk this journey with Van Heerden and see why, with the upcoming ANC National General Council in June 2020, the fight for our country’s leadership is far from over, begging the question: Will Ramaphosa’s ANC survive?
This multidisciplinary Handbook examines the complex and often hidden relationship between organised crime and politics across the globe, highlighting the difficulties involved in researching such relationships and offering new insights into how they evolve to become pervasive and destructive. Organised into five distinct sections, key chapters focus on issues and case studies from across Europe, the Americas, Africa, Eurasia and international organisations in order to provide a new and systematic picture and analysis of what the relationship between criminal organisations and politics looks like in different national contexts. In so doing, it offers an insight into the ever-evolving nature of this relationship, and the exchanges within it, in order to identify common features and key differences. These in turn raise provoking questions regarding the possibility of improving democracy, political systems, civil society and economic systems in order to counter the possible infiltration of these organisations, their associates and representatives. Students and scholars of public policy, politics, criminology and those focussing on organised crime more specifically will find this Handbook an original and engaging guide to the current state of play, whilst policy makers, practitioners and NGOs will find the case studies set in national context eminently valuable. Contributors include: S. Adorno, F. Allum, J. Arsovska, M. Beare, M. Bedetti, G. Borrelli, S. Brady, D. Bright, J.-L. Briquet, A. Chung, N. Dalponte, A. De Vos, C.N. Dias, S. Dinnen, G. Favarel-Garrigues, J. Gilbert, S. Gilmour, C. Gunnarson, E. Gutterman, C. Hemmings, A. Idler, D. Islas, J. Janssens, S. Jeperson, M. Joutsen, A. Kupatadze, R. Le Cour Grandmaison, S. Lemiere, A. Markovska, V. Mete, S. Musau, A. Orlova, I. Roberge, A. Rostami, D. Silverstone, M. Shaw, D. Smith Jr., F. Strazzari, M. Tzvetkova, C. van Ham, G. Walton, J. Wheatley, J. Whittle, Y. Zabyelina, G. Zanoletti
Designed as a city dwelling for the modern age, Dolphin Square opened in London's Pimlico in 1936. Boasting 1,250 hi-tech flats, a swimming pool, restaurant, gardens and shopping arcade, the complex quickly attracted a long list of the affluent and influential. But behind its veneer of respectability, the Square has become one of the country's most notorious addresses; a place where the private lives of those from the highest of high society and the lowest depths of the underworld have collided and played out over the best part of a century. This is the story of the Square and its people, an ever-evolving cast of larger-than- life characters who have borne witness to, and played pivotal roles in, some of the most scandalous episodes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From Oswald Mosley and the Carry On gang to allegations of systematic sexual abuse, it is a saga replete with mysterious deaths, exploitation, espionage, illicit love affairs and glamour, shining a light on the changing nature of British politics and society in the modern age.
More often than not, the distribution of socioeconomic resources and political power in Ethiopia has been perceived in favor of the Amhara ethnic group. As a result, efforts to help the minority ethnic groups were supported by the invocation of subjective cultural attributes and sometimes, the manufacture of common historical experiences. After the collapse of the military regime, the present regime's misguided and divisive strategies sought to rectify what it believed to be a historically distorted distribution of resources and power in Ethiopia. This strategy led to the division of the country into "ethnic Bantustans" and hindered any real move towards development, democracy, and conflict resolution in Ethiopia. In this new work, author Kasahun Woldemariam argues that the Amhara were as excluded economically and politically as any other ethnic group in Ethiopia, and that the concept of Amhara domination is a myth. Working from an interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approach, this book includes over twenty figures and tables on the regional distribution of revenue and expenditure, health and education, manufacturing industries, and parliamentary elections. It is an important resource for scholars and students of African politics and ethnic conflict analysis and resolution as well as policymakers worldwide and Ethiopians in Ethiopia and the Diaspora.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2021 'The best biography yet of the media magnate Robert Maxwell - by turns engrossing, amusing and appalling' Robert Harris, Sunday Times 'Electrifying... the supreme chronicler of modern British scandals' Mail on Sunday A dramatic, gripping account of the rise and fall of the notorious business tycoon Robert Maxwell from the acclaimed author of A Very English Scandal - available for pre-order now Robert Maxwell was a very British success. Born an Orthodox Jew, he escaped the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, fought in the Second World War, and was decorated for his heroism with the Military Cross. He went on to become a Labour MP and an astonishingly successful businessman, owning a number of newspapers and publishing companies. But after his dead body was discovered floating in waters around his superyacht, his empire fell apart as long-hidden debts and unscrupulous dealings came to light. Within a few days, Maxwell was being reviled as the embodiment of greed and corruption. What went so wrong? How did a man who had once laid such store on the importance of ethics and good behaviour become reduced to a bloated, amoral wreck? In this gripping book, John Preston delivers the definitive account of Maxwell's extraordinary rise and scandalous fall. 'I have a shelf full of books about frauds, but this one is by far the most enjoyable' Craig Brown, author of Ma'am Darling
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.
Mention the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the word "scandal" comes to mind. Within recent history, the association is quite accurate; congressional panels have investigated "abuses, favoritism, and mismanagement" at HUD; at HUD's predecessor, the Federal Housing Administration, the FBI targeted the association for involvement in fraudulent home-improvement schemes; and HUD was scrutinized for lax lending standards, blatant over appraisals, and shoddy housing. In this groundbreaking volume, Irving Welfeld, a senior analyst with HUD, describes and explains these episodes as well as a series of hidden blunders that have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. In this thorough, firsthand account, Welfeld provides not only documented history, but analyses of events that arrive at different interpretations than Congress reached in its investigations. Throughout, his readings ask hard and probing questions: Where were the overseers--the media, Congress, the General Accounting Office, the Office of Management and Budget? To what extent is poor management the root cause of HUD's failures? Will tighter regulation help in keeping out corruption? After his comprehensive survey of the scene, Welfeld offers solutions: a set of programs that would minimize secrecy on the part of federal administrators and the temptation to abuse the public trust. Most importantly, the programs outlined here will enable HUD to more effectively fulfill its mission to see that there is decent affordable housing for all Americans. This book will be of interest to scholars of public administration, political scientists, and analysts of housing issues.
When corruption is exposed, unknown aspects are revealed which allow us to better understand its structures and informal norms. This book investigates the hidden order of corruption, looking at the invisible codes and mechanisms that govern and stabilize the links between corrupters and corruptees. Concentrating mainly on democratic regimes, this book uses a wide range of documentation, among which media and judicial sources from Italy and other countries, to locate the dynamics and internal equilibria of corruption in a broad and comparative perspective. It also analyses the Transparency International Annual Reports and the daily survey of international news to present evidence on specific cases of corruption within an institutional theory framework.
The global response to climate change will demand unprecedented international cooperation, deep economic transformation and resource transfers at a significant scale. Corruption threatens to jeopardise these efforts. Transparency International's Global Corruption Report: Climate Change is the first publication to comprehensively explore such corruption risks. More than fifty leading experts and practitioners contribute, covering four key areas:
The Global Corruption Report: Climate Change provides essential policy analysis to help policy-makers, practitioners and other stakeholders understand these risks and develop effective responses at a critical point in time when the main architecture for climate governance is being developed.
This book provides an introduction to state crime, with a particular focus on the UK. The use of crime by the UK to achieve its policy and political
objectives is an underdeveloped aspect of academic study of
individual and institutional criminality, the exercise of political
power, public policy-making and political development. The book
provides an overview of definitional issues before exploring
possible examples of state crime in the UK and then considering why
state crime occurs and how it is investigated and
adjudicated. Overall, this book seeks to provide an introduction to state
crime for contemporary states which will facilitate the study of
such issues as part of mainstream academic study across a number of
disciplines.
Licence To Loot is a fast-paced, hard-hitting investigation into parastatal looting, written by journalist Stephan Hofstatter. At the centre of the story is Eskom, the largest power utility in Africa, which could determine the success or failure of South Africa’s economy. Hofstatter’s story begins in 2016, with the Guptas’ controversial purchase of Optimum coal mine and Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe’s key role in the deal. From there it takes the reader on a journey from secret meetings in London hotel rooms to a clandestinely purchased bolthole on a Dubai golf estate, uncovering the corrupt acquisition of a private jet along the way. From the diary entries of a Saxonwold security guard to first-hand accounts of backroom dealmaking, it traces the origins of a shadowy network between the Guptas and Eskom that ultimately allowed the family to extract billions of rands from the parastatal. Licence To Loot reveals the complicated deals and machinations underpinning state capture and the subsequent ministerial and board appointments that ceded the control of the country’s parastatals, including Eskom, Transnet, SAA and Denel, to Gupta-linked moneymen. The book is particularly relevant in the current political climate as it focuses on the impact of state capture, not just its origins, and takes the story beyond the Zuma presidency.
From the Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times reporter who has defined Donald J. Trump’s presidency like no other journalist, the 608-page bestelling Confidence Man is a magnificent and disturbing reckoning that chronicles his life and its meaning from his rise in New York City to his tortured post-presidency. Few journalists working today have covered Donald Trump more extensively than Maggie Haberman. And few understand him and his motivations better. Now, demonstrating her majestic command of this story, Haberman reveals in full the depth of her understanding of the 45th president himself, and of what the Trump phenomenon means. Interviews with hundreds of sources and numerous interviews over the years with Trump himself portray a complicated and often contradictory historical figure. Capable of kindness but relying on casual cruelty as it suits his purposes. Pugnacious. Insecure. Lonely. Vindictive. Menacing. Smarter than his critics contend and colder and more calculating than his allies believe. A man who embedded himself in popular culture, galvanizing support for a run for high office that he began preliminary spadework for 30 years ago, to ultimately become a president who pushed American democracy to the brink. The through-line of Trump’s life and his presidency is the enduring question of what is in it for him or what he needs to say to survive short increments of time in the pursuit of his own interests. Confidence Man is also, inevitably, about the world that produced such a singular character, giving rise to his career and becoming his first stage. It is also about a series of relentlessly transactional relationships. The ones that shaped him most were with girlfriends and wives, with Roy Cohn, with George Steinbrenner, with Mike Tyson and Don King and Roger Stone, with city and state politicians like Robert Morgenthau and Rudy Giuliani, with business partners, with prosecutors, with the media, and with the employees who toiled inside what they commonly called amongst themselves the “Trump Disorganization.” That world informed the one that Trump tried to recreate while in the White House. All of Trump’s behavior as President had echoes in what came before. In this revelatory and newsmaking book, Haberman brings together the events of his life into a single mesmerizing work. It is the definitive account of one of the most norms-shattering and consequential eras in American political history.
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.
Despite intensified governmental and public efforts at corruption control in recent years, official transgression continues to surface in various ways of abusing the unique power and trust that a government holds. Preventing Corruption in Asia addresses a number of crucial questions: -What institutional arrangements are necessary to ensure a clean and honest government? - What self-regulatory capabilities must government institutions develop in order to maintain integrity? -How should a sense of ethical responsibility be instilled in the civil services? -Do special anti-corruption agencies help keep government clean? -How will a regulatory framework of official conduct work properly? -How useful are anti-corruption campaigns in containing corruption? Focusing on a number of carefully selected countries in the Asia and Pacific region, the book sets as its focal point the choice of institutional design in preventing corruption, rather than treating corruption as a practical or technical problem to be corrected by strong political will and good anti-corruption policy measures. While focusing on institutional designs and policy choices, the book also examines other aspects of clean government such as the social environment, legal and regulatory framework, role of the public, and the impact of culture.
This volume presents an anthropological perspective on the hidden continuities between corruption and law. The authors argue that the two opposites, corruption and law, are inextricably linked - with the possibility of the former already inscribed into the latter. Taking a critical stance towards the normative good governance agenda spearheaded by institutions such as Transparency International and the World Bank, this volume argues that by uncritically depicting corruption as an absolute evil, these anti-corruption programs disregard the close relationship that exists between corruption and state power. Addressing various aspects of a complex and ambivalent phenomenon, Corruption and the Secret of Law draws on studies from different parts of the world including Burundi, China, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico and the USA and provides a valuable resource for students, researchers and policy-makers working in this area.
Despite much recent interest in the area of urban governance, little work has been done on the changing ethical standards of urban leaderships, 'governing' institutions or the policing of public life. Yet the issue of ethical standards in public life has become a central concern in contemporary public discourse; with issues of public probity, moral order and personal standards re-emerging as central features of political debate. This volume places these debates into their historical perspective by examining the linkages between processes of 'modernisation', urbanisation and the ethical standards of governance and public life. It considers how ethical debates arise as a result of differential access to positions of authority and from competition for public resources. The contributions are drawn from a wide range of scholarly and disciplinary backgrounds and provide a broad analysis of the phenomenon of corruption, assessing how debates about corruption arose, the narratives used to criticise established modes of public conduct and their consequences for urban leadership.
Across the world, most people are well aware of ordinary criminal harms to person and property. Often committed by the powerless and poor, these individualized crimes are catalogued in the statistics collected annually by the FBI and by similar agencies in other developed nations. In contrast, the more harmful and systemic forms of injury to person and property committed by powerful and wealthy individuals, groups, and national states are neither calculated by governmental agencies nor annually reported by the mass media. As a result, most citizens of the world are unaware of the routinized "crimes of the powerful", even though they are more likely to experience harms and injuries from these types of organized offenses than they are from the atomized offenses of the powerless. Research on the crimes of the powerful brings together several areas of criminological focus, involving organizational and institutional networks of powerful people that commit crimes against workers, marketplaces, taxpayers and political systems, as well as acts of torture, terrorism, and genocide. This international handbook offers a comprehensive, authoritative and structural synthesis of these interrelated topics of criminological concern. It also explains why the crimes of the powerful are so difficult to control. Edited by internationally acclaimed criminologist Gregg Barak, this book reflects the state of the art of scholarly research, covering all the key areas including corporate, global, environmental, and state crimes. The handbook is a perfect resource for students and researchers engaged with explaining and controlling the crimes of the powerful, domestically and internationally.
How has corruption shaped - and undermined - the history of public life in modern Britain? This collection begins the task of piecing together this history over the past two and a half centuries, from the first assaults on Old Corruption and aristocratic privilege during the late eighteenth century through to the corruption scandals that blighted the worlds of Westminster and municipal government during the twentieth century. It offers the first account that pays equal attention to the successes and limitations of anticorruption reforms and the shifting meanings of 'corruption'. It does so across a range of different sites - electoral, political and administrative, domestic and colonial - presenting new research on neglected areas of reform, while revisiting well known scandals and corrupt practices. -- .
In this incisive and razor-sharp analysis of one of the most important issues facing us today, leading Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt draw on their combined expertise of over 40 years to examine how dictators come to power, and how they help to foster a poisonous culture of polarisation, fear and suspicion that persists even after their time in power is over. Using contemporary examples including the Capitol riots and voter suppression in the US, as well as global examples from history including post-1945 Germany and Brazil and Chile during the '60s and '70s, the authors dissect conservative resistance to pluralism and modern threats to multiracial democracy (including the unwillingness of political parties to adapt to modern times, and a growing disregard for constitutional norms and free and fair elections) while imploring readers to stand up in its defence. Focusing on the forthcoming American election as an essential case study, Saving Democracy offers us imperative tools for implementing urgent democratic reform, brilliantly illuminating how we can respond to the political battles ahead.
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