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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political corruption
The problem of corruption, however described, dates back thousands of years. Professionals working in areas such as development studies, economics and political studies, were the first to most actively analyse and publish on the topic of corruption and its negative impacts on economies, societies and politics. There was, at that time, minimal literature available on corruption and the law. The literature and discussion on bribery and corruption, as well as on the negative impact of each and what is required to address them, particularly in the legal context, are now considerable. Corruption and anti-corruption are multifaceted and multi-disciplinary. The focus now on the law and compliance, and perhaps commercial incentives, is relatively easy. However, corruption, anti-corruption and the motivations for them are complex. If we continue to discuss, debate, engage, address corruption and anti-corruption in our own disciplinary silos, we are unlikely to significantly progress the fight against corruption. What do terms such as 'culture of integrity', 'demand accountability', 'transparency and accountability' and 'ethical corporate culture' dominating the anti-corruption discourse mean, if anything, in other disciplines? If they are meaningless, what approach would practitioners in those other disciplines suggest be adopted to address corruption. What has their experience been in the field? How can the work of each discipline contribute to the work of whole and, as such, improve our work in and understanding of anti-corruption? This book seeks to answer these questions and to understand the phenomenon more comprehensively. It will be of value to researchers, academics, lawyers, legislators and students in the fields of law, anthropology, sociology, international affairs, and business.
"For a couple of months in the near perfect summer of 1990/1991, Jacob Zuma came to stay in my house in Norwood, Johannesburg… Twenty five years later, my former house guest has all but morally bankrupted Nelson Mandela's ruling African National Congress. President Zuma's vision-free leadership, corrupt personal behaviour and attempts to use his political power to distort the judicial system render him no better than Italy's corrupt bunga-bunga partying ex-prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi." So begins God, Spies And Lies, the most explosive insider’s account since Mandela came to power, a never-before-seen insider’s account of how South Africa got here -- and how things went wrong. It takes you into the room with Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, into the Oval Office of the US President and the British Prime Minister’s Chequers country estate, as the fate of southern Africa was being set before and after 1994. Among its revelations are:
John Matisonn has had a bird’s eye view of South Africa’s progress through apartheid and democracy. As a political correspondent, foreign correspondent and one of the pioneers of democratic South Africa’s free broadcasting environment, he interacted with every ANC leader since Oliver Tambo and every government leader from John Vorster to Jacob Zuma. Now for the first time this seasoned and erudite insider reveals the secrets of a 40 year career observing the politicians, their spies and the journalists who wrote about them. As a patriot, he argues that the way to a better future can be found through an unvarnished examination of the past.
This book is about one of the most remarkable European politicians of recent decades, Silvio Berlusconi, and about his contribution to the dramatic changes that have overtaken Italian politics since the early 1990s. From the vantage point of 2017, would Italian political history of the past twenty-five years look substantially different had Berlusconi not had the high-profile role in it that he did? Asking the question makes it possible to contribute to a broader debate of recent years concerning the significance of leaders in post-Cold War democratic politics. Having considered Berlusconi's legacy in the areas of political culture, voting and party politics, public policy and the quality of Italian democracy, the book concludes by considering the international significance of the Berlusconi phenomenon in relation to the recent election of Donald Trump, with whom Berlusconi is often compared. -- .
When Deng Xiaoping launched China on the path to economic reform in the late 1970s, he vowed to build "socialism with Chinese characteristics." More than three decades later, China's efforts to modernize have yielded something very different from the working people's paradise Deng envisioned: an incipient kleptocracy, characterized by endemic corruption, soaring income inequality, and growing social tensions. China's Crony Capitalism traces the origins of China's present-day troubles to the series of incomplete reforms from the post-Tiananmen era that decentralized the control of public property without clarifying its ownership. Beginning in the 1990s, changes in the control and ownership rights of state-owned assets allowed well-connected government officials and businessmen to amass huge fortunes through the systematic looting of state-owned property-in particular land, natural resources, and assets in state-run enterprises. Mustering compelling evidence from over two hundred corruption cases involving government and law enforcement officials, private businessmen, and organized crime members, Minxin Pei shows how collusion among elites has spawned an illicit market for power inside the party-state, in which bribes and official appointments are surreptitiously but routinely traded. This system of crony capitalism has created a legacy of criminality and entrenched privilege that will make any movement toward democracy difficult and disorderly. Rejecting conventional platitudes about the resilience of Chinese Communist Party rule, Pei gathers unambiguous evidence that beneath China's facade of ever-expanding prosperity and power lies a Leninist state in an advanced stage of decay.
In many recent democracies, candidates compete for office using illegal strategies to influence voters. In Hungary and Romania, local actors including mayors and bureaucrats offer access to social policy benefits to voters who offer to support their preferred candidates, and they threaten others with the loss of a range of policy and private benefits for voting the "wrong" way. These quid pro quo exchanges are often called clientelism. How can politicians and their accomplices get away with such illegal campaigning in otherwise democratic, competitive elections? When do they rely on the worst forms of clientelism that involve threatening voters and manipulating public benefits? Conditionality and Coercion: Electoral Clientelism in Eastern Europe uses a mixed method approach to understand how illegal forms of campaigning including vote buying and electoral coercion persist in two democratic countries in the European Union. It argues that we must disaggregate clientelistic strategies based on whether they use public or private resources, and whether they involve positive promises or negative threats and coercion. We document that the type of clientelistic strategies that candidates and brokers use varies systematically across localities based on their underlying social coalitions. We also show that voters assess and sanction different forms of clientelism in different ways. Voters glean information about politicians' personal characteristics and their policy preferences from the clientelistic strategies these candidates deploy. Most voters judge candidates who use clientelism harshly. So how does clientelism, including its most odious coercive forms, persist in democratic systems? This book suggests that politicians can get away with clientelism by using forms of it that are in line with the policy preferences of constituencies whose votes they need. Clientelistic and programmatic strategies are not as distinct as previous have argued. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
This is the book that Alex Boraine never wanted to write. As a native South African and a witness to the worst years of apartheid, he has known many of the leaders of the African National Congress in exile. He shared the jubilation of millions of South Africans when the ANC won the first democratic elections in 1994 and took up the reins of government under the presidency of Nelson Mandela. Now, two decades later, he is forced to wonder what exactly has gone wrong in South Africa. Intolerance and corruption are the hallmarks of the governing party, while the worsening state of education, health, safety and security and employment strengthen the claim that South Africa is a failing state. Boraine explores this urgent and critical issue from the vantage point of wide experience as a minister, parliamentarian, co-founder of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) and Vice Chairperson of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee. He digs deep into the history of the ANC and concludes that both in exile and today, the ANC is slavishly committed to one party as the dominant ruling factor. All else - the Executive, Parliament, the Judiciary, civil society and the media - take second and third place. The ANC, Boraine claims, seeks to control every institution. What's Gone Wrong? pulls no punches, but it also goes beyond strong criticism and offers a number of constructive proposals, including the re-alignment of politics as a way of preventing South Africa becoming a failed state. As South Africa mourns the loss of Mandela and embarks on another national election, with the ANC likely to begin a third decade of rule, this incisive, detailed critique is required reading for all who are interested in the fate of this young nation.
Demonstrating how political culture facilitates or distorts political preferences and political outcomes, this book explores how the historical development of social conditions and the current social structures shape understandings and constrain individual and collective actions within the Nigerian political system. Political Culture, Change, and Security Policy examines the extent to which specific norms and socialization processes within the political and civic culture abet corruption or the proclivity to engage in corrupt practices and how they help reinforce political attitudes and civic norms that have the potential to undermine the effectiveness of government. It also delineates specific doctrinal models and strategic framework essential to the development and implementation of Nigeria's national security policy, as well as innovative approaches to national development planning. Professor Kalu N. Kalu offers an exhaustive study that integrates several quantitative models in addressing a series of theoretical and empirical questions that inform historical and contemporary issues of the Nigerian project. The general premise is that it is not enough to simply highlight the problems of the state and address the what question, we must also address the why and how questions that drive political change, policy preferences, and competing political outcomes.
Lies and Falsehoods: The Morrison Government and The New Culture of Deceit by well-known political journalist Bernard Keane combines Crikey's eye-opening dossier of Scott Morrison's documented lies with Keane's insightful take on why deceivers dominate in the new era of politics. This book is the first in The Crikey Read series by Crikey and Hardie Grant Books. All politicians lie. They twist the truth, exaggerate and spin. But blatant lying has now become a standard part of political discourse, led by Donald Trump and carried on by Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison. Combine this with an all-out assault on the truth in public debate along with the biggest communications revolution since the printing press, and you have a disaster in real time: a sea of fake news, hyper-partisanship and polarisation. No society or democracy can function without trust, and the consequences of this profound shift are clear. The first step to a remedy is in understanding both the liars and the environments in which they lie. Lies and Falsehoods does exactly that, in this highly readable and incisive account of how we found ourselves in this fractured post-truth world, and how we might get out. From Crikey and Hardie Grant Books, The Crikey Read is a series that brings an unflinching and truly independent eye to the issues of the day in Australia and the world.
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.
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.
Everybody relishes a juicy scandal, and the scandals in this book cover the field.
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.
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.
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. -- . |
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