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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political corruption
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.
This book considers the causes of high-level state corruption as well as the political constraints of countering corruption in Africa. It examines elite corruption in government as well as in the political and military spheres of state activity, and focuses on illegal behaviour on the part of state and non-state actors in decision-making. Situating corruption and anti-corruption within a political framework, this book analyses the motivations, opportunities and relative autonomy of state elites to manipulate state decision-making for personal and political ends. Based on detailed case studies in Uganda, the authors focus on corruption in the privatization process, military procurement, foreign business bribery, illegal political funding, and electoral malpractice. The book examines why anti-corruption institutions and international donors have been constrained in confronting this executive abuse of power, and discusses the wider relevance of Uganda's experience for understanding elite corruption and anti-corruption efforts in other African countries. The Politics of Elite Corruption in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, African political economy, development studies, corruption and government.
Corruption scandals receive significant press coverage and scrutiny from practitioners of global governance, and bilateral and multilateral donors. Across the globe, the annual publication of TI's CPI and World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators elicits spirited denials and accusations of targeting, of neo-colonialism. Poor measures on corruption indices and the ensuing negative publicity can have serious consequences both externally, through a freeze or retraction of donor funding, and internally, through reducing the availability of public funds, and harming the credibility of serving governments and institutions. Corruption Scandals and their Global Impacts tracks several major corruption scandals across the world in a comparative analysis to assess the full impact of global corruption. Over the course of the book, the contributors deliberate the exposure and reporting of corruption scandals, demonstrate how corruption inhibits development on different levels and across different countries, the impact it has on the country in question, how citizens and authorities respond to corruption, and some local, regional and global policy and legislative measures to combat corruption. The chapters examine the transnational manifestation of corruption scandals around the world, from developed countries and regions such as the United States and the European Union, to BRIC countries Brazil and Russia, to developing countries such as Belarus, Jamaica, Kenya and Nigeria. In each case, chapters highlight the scandal, its impact, the local, regional and global responses, and the subsequent global perceptions of the country. Concluding with a review of the global impacts of corruption scandals, this book provides an important comparative analysis which will be useful to students and scholars of international development and politics, as well as to development practitioners, donors, politicians and policy makers.
The Politics of Corruption in Dictatorships studies how institutional and social factors influence corruption in dictatorships. Dictatorships are often synonymous with high levels of corruption, yet Vineeta Yadav and Bumba Mukherjee argue otherwise. The authors ask why corruption has declined in some but not other authoritarian regimes. What are the main political factors that drive some autocrats to curb corruption? The book explores the role that business mobilization can play in reducing corruption under some conditions in dictatorships. It investigates how political competition for an elected legislature affects the incentives of dictators to engage in corruption. The study relies on case studies from Jordan, Malaysia, and Uganda. The book is accessible to a wide audience without requiring sophisticated statistical training.
While the 1950s in Canada were years of social conformity, it was also a time of political, economic, and technological change. Against a background of growing prosperity, federal and provincial politics became increasingly competitive, intergovernmental relations became more contentious, and Canada's presence in the world expanded. The life expectancy of Canadians increased as the social pathologies of poverty, crime, and racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination were in retreat. 1950s Canada illuminates the fault lines around which Canadian politics and public affairs have revolved. Chronicling the themes and events of Canadian politics and public affairs during the 1950s, Nelson Wiseman reviews social, economic, and cultural developments during each year of the decade, focusing on developments in federal politics, intergovernmental relations, provincial affairs, and Canada's role in the world. The book examines Canada's subordinate relationship first with Britain and then the United States, the interplay between Quebec's distinct society and the rest of Canada, and the regional tensions between the inner Canada of Ontario and Quebec and the outer Canada of the Atlantic and western provinces. Through this record of major events in the politics of the decade, 1950s Canada sheds light on the rapid altering of the fabric of Canadian life.
Countries undergoing major social and legal transitions typically experience a light, but relatively insignificant, increase in crime. However, in the past decade, many transitional countries in Eastern Europe, and Russia in particular, have experienced a surge in criminal activities that came about through the collaboration of diverse players-such as criminals, state officials, businesspersons, and law enforcement-into organized networks aimed to obtain financial and economic gains.
Watergate, Iran-Contra, Lewinsky, Enron, Bridgegate: according to the popular media, executive scandals are ubiquitous. Although individual scandals persist in the public memory and as the subject of academic study, how do we understand the impacts of executive indiscretion or malfeasance as a whole? What effect, if any, do scandals have on political polarization, governance, and, most importantly, democratic accountability? Recognizing the important and enduring role of scandals in American government, this book proposes a common intellectual framework for understanding their nature and political effects. Brandon Rottinghaus takes a systematic look the dynamics of the duration of scandals, the way they affect presidents and governors' capacity to govern, and the strategic choices executives make in confronting scandal at both the state and national levels. His findings reveal much about not only scandal, but the operation of American politics.
As a political and social disease, public corruption costs governments and businesses around the world trillions of dollars every year. Government Anti-Corruption Strategies: A Cross-Cultural Perspective provides you with a better understanding of public corruption and governments' anti-corruption practices. It outlines a general framework of anti-corruption strategies that governments undertake to effectively curb corrupt practices. Case studies of several countries illustrate how governments put anti-corruption strategies into practice. This book provides case studies of anti-corruption efforts in several countries, including China, India, South Korea, Nepal, and Central and Eastern European countries. It focuses on developing and transitional countries, where the depth and effects of corruption are especially severe. The cases highlight examples of failure as well as success so that the complexity of corruption issues and the reasons why corruption persists can be better understood. Most of the contributors to each chapter are native to the countries under discussion and provide an insider's view and analysis. They expose some of the appalling depths to which corruption can go. In governments where accountability is generally weak, legal institutions are poorly developed, civil liberties and political competition are often restricted, and laws are frequently flouted, it is the people who ultimately suffer. Government Anti-Corruption Strategies: A Cross-Cultural Perspective represents an international effort to foster a better understanding of the issues surrounding corruption. This compelling collection of studies offers insights into real-life cases of corruption that help you equip yourself to stem corruption when it appears.
The book presents the reader with an applied analysis of how the concepts of information and manipulation were illustrated in the Romanian press when the Securitate files were revealed, based on the case of Mona Musca, a controversial topic that was widely debated by most dailies at the time. One of the most important roles played by the press is agenda setting - the role of setting priorities on the individual's agenda. Journalists draw up an imaginary list of topics of primary interest for public debate and forming different currents of opinion. The analyzed press segment revealed the predilection for a speech condemning Mona Musca. The message received by the target audience was not a balanced, objective one, but one that contradicts the deontology of the journalistic profession.
Corruption is usually understood as hampering political development, economic growth and democratic participation of citizens, but comparing the effects of corruption for different political regimes presents astonishingly complex findings. The ongoing persistence of corruption underlines that it is not only dysfunctional, but can be highly functional as well. This special issue brings together contributions from comparative politics, political science and economics which precisely focus on these (dys) functionalities of corruption in political regimes across various world regions. The question of methodological pluralism is especially important for studying corruption comparatively. While on an international level a trend towards an increased use of quantitative methods in political science as well as in economics can be observed, the special issue underlines the importance of having a pluralistic approach for grasping the complex and multi-layered effects of the phenomenon. Of similar importance is the adoption of a comparative perspective that includes different world regions in order to understand the different roles of corruption in developing, transforming and developed countries alike. Dr. Tobias Debiel is Director of the Centre for Global Cooperation Research and of the Institute for Development and Peace (INEF). Since 2006, he is also Professor in International Relations and Development Policy, Institute of Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen. Dr. Andrea Gawrich is Professor for International Integration at the University of Giessen."
This book is the newest and one of the very few existing examinations of the full nature of corruption throughout Central and South America. In detailed chapters written by experts with extensive in-country experience, it reveals the political and economic roots and consequences of corruption in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru. The editor's introduction and conclusion texts synthesize their work and provides an over-arching view of corrupt practices and anti-corruption initiatives throughout Latin America. Corruption in Latin America shows the extent to which corrupt practices engulf each of the countries discussed, the involvement of political and corporate entities in the pursuit of ill-gotten gains, and the drag on development caused by corruption in each political entity. The book will be of interest for social scientists, political actors and social activists involved in the fight against corruption in Latin America by providing in-depth analyses of the topic and discussing how best to pursue anti-corruption efforts through civil society actions, judicial endeavors, legal shifts, or elections.
All the Kremlin's Men is a gripping narrative of an accidental king and a court out of control. Based on an unprecedented series of interviews with Vladimir Putin's inner circle, this book presents a radically different view of power and politics in Russia. The image of Putin as a strongman is dissolved. In its place is a weary figurehead buffeted--if not controlled--by the men who at once advise and deceive him. The regional governors and bureaucratic leaders are immovable objects, far more powerful in their fiefdoms than the president himself. So are the gatekeepers-those officials who guard the pathways to power-on whom Putin depends as much as they rely on him. The tenuous edifice is filled with all of the intrigue and plotting of a Medici court, as enemies of the state are invented and wars begun to justify personal gains, internal rivalries, or one faction's biased advantage. A bestseller in Russia, All the Kremlin's Men is a shocking revisionist portrait of the Putin era and a dazzling reconstruction of the machinations of courtiers running riot.
#1 New York Times Bestseller ?Peter Schweizer says that, in a quarter-century as an investigative journalist, this is the scariest investigation he has ever conducted. That the Chinese government seeks to infiltrate American institutions is hardly surprising. What is wholly new, however, are the number of American elites who are eager to help the Chinese dictatorship in its quest for global hegemony. Presidential families, Silicon Valley gurus, Wall Street high rollers, Ivy League universities, even professional athletes-all willing to sacrifice American strength and security on the altar of personal enrichment. In Red-Handed, six-time New York Times bestselling investigator Peter Schweizer presents his most alarming findings to date by revealing the secret deals wealthy Americans have cut to help China build its military, technological, and economic might. Equally as astonishing, many of these elites quietly believe the Chinese dictatorial regime is superior to American democracy. Schweizer and his team of forensic investigators spent over a year scouring a massive trove of global corporate records and legal filings to expose the hidden transactions China's enablers hoped would never see the light of day. And as Schweizer's past bombshells like Profiles in Corruption, Secret Empires, and Clinton Cash all made clear, there are bad actors on both ends of the political spectrum. Exhaustively researched, crisply told, and chilling, Red-Handed will expose the nexus of power between the Chinese government and the American elites who do its bidding.
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.
'First there was Fire and Fury, then there was Siege, now there is Landslide. The third is the best of the three' Guardian 'Cruel, unforgiving, muckracking, scandalous . . . Michael Wolff concludes his Trump trilogy - with the best book' Telegraph 'Wolff is the shrewdest chronicler of Trump' Sunday Times Politics has given us some shocking and confounding moments but none have come close to the careening final days of Donald Trump's presidency: the surreal stage management of his re-election campaign, his audacious election challenge, the harrowing mayhem of the storming of the Capitol and the buffoonery of the second impeachment trial. But what was really going on in the inner sanctum of the White House during these calamitous events? What did the president and his dwindling cadre of loyalists actually believe? And what were they planning? Drawing on an exclusive and wide range of sources who took part in or witnessed Trump's closing moments, Michael Wolff finds the Oval Office more chaotic and bizarre than ever before, a kind of Star Wars bar scene. At all times of the day, Trump, hunched behind the Resolute desk, is surrounded by schemers and unqualified sycophants who spoon-feed him the 'alternative facts' he hungers to hear - about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests, and, most of all, his chance of winning re-election. In this extraordinary telling of a unique moment in history, Wolff gives us front-row seats as Trump's circle of plotters is whittled down to the most enabling and the least qualified - and the president pushes the bounds of political convention, entertaining the idea of martial law and balking at calling off the insurrectionist mob that threatens the hallowed seat of democracy itself. Michael Wolff pulled back the curtain on the Trump presidency with his globally bestselling blockbuster Fire and Fury. Now, in Landslide, he closes the door with a final, astonishingly candid tale.
On September 4, 1971, the office of Lewis Fielding, a psychiatrist practicing in Los Angeles, was broken into. It looked like a run of the mill drug raid. A month later, a homeless man was charged with burglary and the case was considered closed. On June 17, 1972, five men were charged with breaking and entering at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. With these two burglaries, one seemingly innocuous while the other was more serious because of the venue, the scandal known as Watergate was born. As the tale of Richard Nixon and his Plumbers began to unfold, it was discovered that one of Lewis Fielding's patients was Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times . Ellsberg was high on Nixon's list of enemies and he vowed to destroy him at all costs. In Wild Man , Tom Wells explores the life of Daniel Ellsberg to discover what makes an individual enact the most severe breach of government security ever to occur in the United States. As Wells follows Ellsberg from his early days as a piano prodigy to his years of great promise at Harvard, we see the development of a volatile, narcissistic loner with a voracious sexual appetite, a highly developed intelligence and, most importantly, the overwhelming need to take centre stage in the pageant known as America. In Wild Man , Tom Wells creates an unforgettable picture of Daniel Ellsberg, an American Everyman for the seventies who embodied the promise and paranoia of that uncertain time. This is a thrilling piece of biography that will stand as one of the great American portraits.
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.
Recognising that corruption is a serious problem in the globalised world of the early twenty-first century, the book takes the reader on a journey - beginning with what corruption is, why its study is important and how it can be measured. From there it moves on to explore corruption's causes, its consequences and how it can be tackled - before discovering how these things are playing out in the established liberal democracies, in the former communist regimes and in the newly industrialised and 'developing' world. On the way it takes a couple of detours - first, to explore corruption's mechanisms and dynamics and second to survey the scandals to which it may give rise. The book is therefore offered as an informative 'travel guide' of potential interest to journalists and policy makers as well as to students and academics. -- .
This book is a unique guide to making the world a better place. Experts apply a critical eye to the United Nations' Sustainable Development agenda, also known as the Global Goals, which will affect the flow of $2.5 trillion of development aid up until 2030. Renowned economists, led by Bjorn Lomborg, determine what pursuing different targets will cost and achieve in social, environmental and economic benefits. There are 169 targets, covering every area of international development - from health to education, sanitation to conflict. Together, these analyses make the case for prioritizing the most effective development investments. A panel of Nobel Laureate economists identify a set of 19 phenomenal development targets, and argue that this would achieve as much as quadrupling the global aid budget.
The world is blowing up. Every day a new blaze seems to ignite: the implosion of Iraq and Syria; the East-West standoff in Ukraine and schoolgirls abducted in Nigeria. In a riveting account that weaves history with fast-moving reportage and insider accounts, Sarah Chayes identifies the unexpected link: corruption. Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes-from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes plunges readers into some of the most venal environments on earth and examines what emerges: Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government (but also redesigning Al-Qaeda), and Nigerians embracing both radical evangelical Christianity and Boko Haram. In many such places, rigid moral codes are put forth as an antidote to the collapse of public integrity. The pattern pervades history. Through archival research, Chayes reveals that canonical political thinkers such as John Locke and Machiavelli, as well as Nizam al-Mulk, all named corruption as a threat to the realm. In a argument connecting the Protestant Reformation to the Arab Spring, Thieves of State presents a powerful new way to understand global extremism. And it makes a compelling case that we must confront corruption: it is a cause-not a result-of global instability.
A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR. 'A compelling, authoritative insight into possibly the most controversial death in Britain this century' Observer. 'Masterful ... This book made me proud of my trade as a journalist' Daily Mail. 'This searing excavation of the mysterious death of Dr David Kelly is investigative journalism at its best. It is brave, relentless, dazzlingly revealing' Peter Oborne. In March 2003 British forces invaded Iraq after Tony Blair said the country could deploy weapons of mass destruction at 45 minutes' notice. A few months later, government scientist Dr David Kelly was unmasked by Blair's officials as the assumed source of a BBC news report challenging this claim. Within days, Dr Kelly was found dead in a wood near his home. Blair immediately convened the controversial Hutton Inquiry, which concluded Dr Kelly committed suicide. Yet key questions remain: could Dr Kelly really have taken his life in the manner declared? And why did Blair's government derail the coroner's inquest into Dr Kelly's death? In this meticulous account, award-winning journalist Miles Goslett shows why we should be sceptical of the official story of what happened in that desperate summer of 2003.
If it seems to you that Barack Obama and Joe Biden have weakened America and emboldened our enemies, you're not alone. But Senator Cotton explains that their failures aren't just incompetence or bad luck-it's decline by design. Only the Strong reveals the untold inside story of how progressive ideologues and Democratic politicians abandoned the American tradition of strength, pride, and honor. From the beginning, early progressives like Woodrow Wilson repudiated our Founding in favor of globalist fantasies abroad and big government at home. By Vietnam, leftists had begun to blame America first for the world's problems-just as Barack Obama did for eight years as he apologized and sought to atone for America's supposed sins. Along the way, Democrats have sold out America's sovereignty and hollowed out our military to restrain American power. Even when Democrats have acted tough, it usually ends in disaster, from John Kennedy's debacle at the Bay of Pigs to Bill Clinton's fiasco in Mogadishu to Joe Biden's humiliating retreat from Afghanistan. While offering a timely warning of the dangers ahead and new stories from Senator Cotton's service in the Senate and the Army, Only the Strong also provides a formidable and urgent roadmap to restore American strength before it's too late. Because only the strong can survive in a dangerous world and only the strong can preserve their freedom.
Corruption is a threat to democracy and economic development in many societies. It arises in the ways people pursue, use and exchange wealth and power, and in the strength or weakness of the state, political and social institutions that sustain and restrain those processes. Differences in these factors, Michael Johnston argues, give rise to four major syndromes of corruption: Influence Markets, Elite Cartels, Oligarchs and Clans, and Official Moguls. In this 2005 book, Johnston uses statistical measures to identify societies in each group, and case studies to show that the expected syndromes do arise. Countries studied include the United States, Japan and Germany (Influence Markets); Italy, Korea and Botswana (Elite Cartels); Russia, the Philippines and Mexico (Oligarchs and Clans); and China, Kenya, and Indonesia (Offical Moguls). A concluding chapter explores reform, emphasising the ways familiar measures should be applied - or withheld, lest they do harm - with an emphasis upon the value of 'deep democratisation'.
Understanding and responding to corruption is a worldwide
challenge. This book offers a general overview of the nature,
pattern, and differing perspectives on political and economic
corruption. Providing detail and depth, the book examines and
compares corruption in four countries: the United States, Israel,
Russia, and India. Each country chapter explores how corruption is
defined and understood in that country and provides case material
illustrating corrupt practice and responses to it. The country
chapters also cover whistleblowing activities, their prevalence,
importance, and impact. A comparative analysis presents the most
prominent factors contributing to a reduced level of corruption and
the factors that lead to whistleblower success.
Revised and updated with a new preface on the Crimean crisis ______________________________________ 'An impressive polemic arguing that the West still underestimates the danger that Putin's Russia poses ... A useful appeal for vigilance' - Sunday Times 'Highly informed, crisply written and alarming ... Wise up and stick together is the concluding message in Lucas's outstanding book' - Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard ______________________________________ While most of the world was lauding the stability and economic growth that Vladimir Putin's ex-KGB regime had brought to Russia, Edward Lucas was ringing alarm bells. First published in 2008 and since revised, The New Cold War remains the most insightful and informative account of Russia today. It depicts the regime's crushing of independent institutions and silencing of critics, taking Russia far away from the European mainstream. It highlights the Kremlin's use of the energy weapon in Europe, the bullying of countries in the former Soviet empire, such as Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine - and the way that Russian money weakens the West's will to resist. Now updated with an incisive analysis of Russia's seizure of Crimea and its destabilisation of Ukraine, The New Cold War unpicks the roots of the Kremlin's ideology and exposes the West's naive belief that Putin's sinister and authoritarian regime might ever be a friend or partner. |
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