How Putin's autocracy undercut Russia's economy and chances for democracy During his nearly twenty years at the center of Russian political power, Vladimir Putin has transformed the vast country in many ways, not all of them for the better. The near-chaos of the early post-Soviet years has been replaced by an increasingly rigid authoritarianism, resembling a hard-fisted monarchy more than the previous communist dictatorship. Putin's early years in power saw rapid economic growth, averaging nearly 7 percent annually, and the rise of Moscow as a vibrant European-style city. But a slowdown during the second half of Putin's administration, since 2009, has resulted in the stagnation of the economy, especially in the hinterlands, with few signs of a possible turnaround. What accounted for these changes in Russia? Sergey Aleksashenko, a former top Russian finance official and then private businessman, lays the blame squarely on Putin himself, even more than external factors such as the sharp fall in oil prices or Western sanctions after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. In his relentless drive to consolidate power in his own hands, Aleksashenko writes, Putin has destroyed the very idea of competition for political power. He has done so by systematically undercutting basic political institutions of the post-Soviet Russian state, including independent power centers such as the parliament, the judiciary, and a free media. In the economic realm, Putin effectively undermined Russia's still-emerging and very fragile system for protecting property rights-the basis of all economic activity. This in turn caused a sharp decline in private investment and thus contributed to the long-term economic slowdown. One result of Putin's rule was the destruction of the emerging checks and balances system in Russia, and that would be a major problem for Russia if and when it decides to become a "normal" democratic country based on Western values. In describing how all this happened, Aleksashenko's book offers universal lessons in the necessity of checks and balances in any political system-as well as in the importance of vibrant political institutions for economic growth.

In 1987, the city of Chicago hired a former radical college chaplain to clean up rampant corruption on the waterfront. R. J. Nelson thought he was used to the darker side of the law he had been followed by federal agents and wiretapped due to his antiwar stances in the sixties but nothing could prepare him for the wretched bog that constituted the world of a Harbor Boss. Director of Harbors and Marine Services was a position so mired in corruption that its previous four directors ended up in federal prison. Nelson inherited angry constituents, prying journalists, shell-shocked employees, and a tobacco-stained office still bearing a busted door that had been smashed in by the FBI. Undeterred, Nelson made it his personal mission to become a "pneumacrat," a public servant who, for the common good, always follows the spirit if not always the letter of the law.Dirty Waters is a wry, no-holds-barred memoir of Nelson's time controlling some of the city's most beautiful spots while facing some of its ugliest traditions. A guide like no other, Nelson takes us through Chicago's beloved "blue spaces" and deep into the city's political morass. He reveals the different moralities underlining three mayoral administrations, from Harold Washington to Richard M. Daley, and navigates us through the gritty mechanisms of the Chicago machine. He also deciphers the sometimes insular world of boaters and their fraught relationship with their land-based neighbors. Ultimately, Dirty Waters is a tale of morality, of what it takes to be a force for good in the world and what struggles come from trying to stay ethically afloat in a sea of corruption.

In 2009, news broke that MPs had been claiming taxpayers' money to pay for such excesses as a floating duck-house, moat-cleaning services and 550 sacks of manure. The revelations shook Westminster and compromised the voters' trust. Urgent action had to be taken. Cue the establishment of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), a regulator designed to scrutinise every claim and hold MPs to account. Created from scratch and operating in a world of rattled politicians accustomed to old habits, IPSA came up against a series of obstacles, ranging from MPs who had never used a computer to vicious online abuse. Ian Kennedy was the chairman of IPSA for its first seven years, and was responsible for developing it into an effective and transparent organisation. Ten years on, he discusses his struggle to ensure the public's money was put to good use, all the while being hounded by the press for not doing what they wanted, and by MPs themselves for doing what they'd voted for but didn't really intend. Cleaning Up the Mess describes the bullying, bitterness and occasional kindness Kennedy encountered, and how a thick skin and conviction in IPSA's purpose helped to restore trust in politics and politicians.

Two award-winning journalists offer the most comprehensive inside story behind our most significant modern political drama: the House impeachment of Donald Trump. Having spent a year essentially embedded inside several House committees, Michael D'Antonio and Peter Eisner draw on many sources, including key House leaders, to expose the politicking, playcalling, and strategies debated backstage and to explain the Democrats' successes and apparent public failures during the show itself. High Crimes opens with Nancy Pelosi deciding the House should take up impeachment, then, in part one, leaps back to explain what Ukraine was really all about: not just Joe Biden and election interference, but a money grab and oil. In the second part, the authors recount key meetings throughout the run up to the impeachment hearings, including many of the heated confrontations between the Trump administration and House Democrats. And the third part takes readers behind the scenes of those hearings, showing why certain things happened the way they did for reasons that never came up in public. In the end, having illuminated every step of impeachment, from the schemes that led Giuliani to the Ukraine in 2016 to Fiona Hill's rebuking the Republicans' conspiracy theories, High Crimes promises to be Trump's Final Days.

Why do some governments improve public services more effectively than others? Through the investigation of a new era of administrative reform, in which digital technologies may be used to facilitate citizens' access to the state, Jennifer Bussell's analysis provides unanticipated insights into this fundamental question. In contrast to factors such as economic development or electoral competition, this study highlights the importance of access to rents, which can dramatically shape the opportunities and threats of reform to political elites. Drawing on a sub-national analysis of twenty Indian states, a field experiment, statistical modeling, case studies, interviews of citizens, bureaucrats and politicians, and comparative data from South Africa and Brazil, Bussell shows that the extent to which politicians rely on income from petty and grand corruption is closely linked to variation in the timing, management and comprehensiveness of reforms.

'A shocking, enraging, sometimes hilarious exposé of a tax system that lives down to all our worst fears of further enriching the wealthy at the expense of the little guys.' - Piers Morgan 'Very funny (and furious)... By the end of the book you may be spluttering with rage at the injustice of it all. Page after page shows how the rich are exploiting loopholes to reduce their tax bill.... But this is not some crazed figure on the extreme left hoping to bring down the establishment. The book is written by an accountant who has spent his career coming up with the very tax avoidance schemes the super-wealthy use to evade the clutches of HMRC.' - The Telegraph 'Funny, clever and really quite brilliant. Taxtopia will make you furiously angry and possibly even filthy rich.' - Tom Peck, The Independent 'If you want to know how skewed the system is and how the rich always get richer and stay that way, while you don't, then read this book. Then get angry.' - Patrick Alley, Co-founder of Global Witness and author of Very Bad People 'Taxtopia's anonymous author has done the impossible - created a hilarious and deeply troubling expose about how the world's shady tax system is exploited and proves what we always suspected - that our tax system is rigged against us. Read it and weep.' - Geraint Anderson author of City Boy 'Would I recommend the book? For readers of Spear's, my answer is 'yes, and it may also be worth going back over some of the more interesting ideas with your accountant' -Spear's In TAXTOPIA a rogue accountant breaks ranks to share his journey from clueless naïf to skilled tax consultant -and in doing so blows the lid on the murky world of making the tax burdens of the ultra-wealthy disappear. In the topsy-turvy world of tax avoidance, you can get richer by buying a yacht, the world's biggest exporter of coffee is Switzerland, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump and the Duke of Westminster often pay less tax than you do. Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous author shows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind. If you suspect that tax is a rigged game, a con, designed to fleece the little guy, you are about to find out just how shockingly true that really is. Welcome to TAXTOPIA.

Level of compliance - one of the most important prerequisites of good governance - varies widely across countries of the Global North and the less developed, Global South. Acts of non-compliance, such as electoral irregularities, dubious deals between private and public sectors, questionable role of the justice systems and financial scandals, though they vary greatly across countries, are an omnipresent reality of contemporary life. This volume has brought together a number of case studies of such deviant behavior in political, juridical and corporate fields, from several countries of Asia, Europe and South America, within a common framework. Instead of a moral approach based exclusively on the legality and illegality of the act, the authors of these essays dissect non-compliance analytically, taking culture and context into account. They argue that, while criminal and corrupt dealings deserve to be exposed by all means from an ethical point of view, seen from an interdisciplinary angle, one needs to probe deeper into the dynamic that leads to such non-compliance with the law in the first place.

Corruption flouts rules of fairness and gives some people advantages that others don't have. Corruption is persistent; there is little evidence that countries can escape the curse of corruption easily - or at all. Instead of focusing on institutional reform, in this book Eric M. Uslaner suggests that the roots of corruption lie in economic and legal inequality, low levels of generalized trust (which are not readily changed), and poor policy choices (which may be more likely to change). Economic inequality provides a fertile breeding ground for corruption, which, in turn, leads to further inequalities. Just as corruption is persistent, inequality and trust do not change much over time, according to Uslaner's cross-national aggregate analyses. He argues that high inequality leads to low trust and high corruption, and then to more inequality - an inequality trap - and identifies direct linkages between inequality and trust in surveys of the mass public and elites in transition countries.

"A gripping ground-level narrative...a marvel of reporting: tightly wound... but also panoramic."--Washington Post "A lean, fast-paced and important account of the chaotic final weeks."--New York Times In The Steal, veteran journalists Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague offer a week-by-week, state-by-state account of the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In the sixty-four days between November 3 and January 6, President Donald Trump and his allies fought to reverse the outcome of the vote. Focusing on six states--Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin--Trump's supporters claimed widespread voter fraud.Caught up in this effort were scores of activists, lawyers, judges, and state and local officials. Working with a team of researchers and reporters, Bowden and Teague uncover never-before-told accounts from the election officials fighting to do their jobs amid outlandish claims and threats to themselves, their colleagues, and their families. The Steal is an engaging, in-depth report on what happened during those crucial nine weeks and a portrait of the dedicated individuals who did their duty and stood firm against the unprecedented, sustained attack on our election system and ensured that every legal vote was counted and that the will of the people prevailed.

The true story behind the 2023 ITV series, STONEHOUSE, starring Matthew Macfayden and Keeley Hawes. 'An extraordinary life . . . a vivid account' Telegraph 'Completely absorbing' CAROL ANN LEE, author of The Murders at White House Farm and A Passion For Poison 'I literally consumed the book in just a few hungry sittings . . . most definitely a must read' DR SALEYHA AHSAN, filmmaker and journalist, Cambridge In November 1974, British MP and former cabinet minister John Stonehouse walked into the sea off a beach in Miami and disappeared, seemingly drowned. Then he was found - on the other side of the world, in Australia - and his extraordinary story began to come to light: a Labour cabinet minister and a devoted family man; also in a long-term affair with his secretary, and a spy for the Czech State Security agency, who had committed fraud and attempted to fake his own death to escape catastrophic business failures. Was it a mental breakdown as he later claimed? Or were there more sinister reasons for his dramatic disappearance? This is the definitive biography of Stonehouse, written by Julian Hayes, who, as the son of Stonehouse's nephew and lawyer, Michael Hayes, is uniquely placed to tell the story of this charismatic but deeply flawed politician.

A comprehensive look at how violence has been used to manipulate competitive electoral processes around the world since World War II Throughout their history, political elections have been threatened by conflict, and the use of force has in the past several decades been an integral part of electoral processes in a significant number of contemporary states. However, the study of elections has yet to produce a comprehensive account of electoral violence. Drawing on cross-national data sets together with fourteen detailed case studies from around the world, Electoral Violence, Corruption, and Political Order offers a global comparative analysis of violent electoral practices since the Second World War. Sarah Birch shows that the way power is structured in society largely explains why elections are at risk of violence in some contexts but not in others. Countries with high levels of corruption and weak democratic institutions are especially vulnerable to disruptions of electoral peace. She examines how corrupt actors use violence to back up other forms of electoral manipulation, including vote buying and ballot stuffing. In addition to investigating why electoral violence takes place, Birch considers what can be done to prevent it in the future, arguing that electoral authority and the quality of electoral governance are more important than the formal design of electoral institutions. Delving into a deeply influential aspect of political malpractice, Electoral Violence, Corruption, and Political Order explores the circumstances in which individuals choose to employ violence as an electoral strategy.

From the winner of the 2021 Chinua Achebe Prize for Literature... Determined to overrule the Nigerian President, members of the powerful secret society, The Sacred Order of the Universal Forces, led by Chief Donald Amechi and Christian Evangelist Chris Chuba, employ a terrorist cell to carry out attacks in Northern Nigeria under the guise of forming an Islamic state. Adeline, Chuba's daughter, and young Donaldo Amechi, the only son of the Chief, are desperate to hide their love affair from their parents. When the Chief discovers the relationship, Evangelist Chuba is ordered to sacrifice his daughter. Adeline goes missing, but when it is revealed that the men sent to kill her never reached their target, Chuba and Amechi are haunted by what really happened to the young girl. Set against the backdrop of Nigeria's ongoing terrorism tensions and upcoming elections, Satans and Shaitans is a powerful story about love, politics, power, religion, terrorism, and corruption.

Corruption flouts rules of fairness and gives some people advantages that others don't have. Corruption is persistent; there is little evidence that countries can escape the curse of corruption easily - or at all. Instead of focusing on institutional reform, in this book Eric M. Uslaner suggests that the roots of corruption lie in economic and legal inequality, low levels of generalized trust (which are not readily changed), and poor policy choices (which may be more likely to change). Economic inequality provides a fertile breeding ground for corruption, which, in turn, leads to further inequalities. Just as corruption is persistent, inequality and trust do not change much over time, according to Uslaner's cross-national aggregate analyses. He argues that high inequality leads to low trust and high corruption, and then to more inequality - an inequality trap - and identifies direct linkages between inequality and trust in surveys of the mass public and elites in transition countries.

Unlike other accounts of the historic attacks on 9/11, this discussion surveys the role of the world's most advanced military command and control plane, the E-4B, in the day's events and proposes that the horrific incidents were the work of a covert operation staged within elements of the U.S. military and the intelligence community. Presenting hard evidence in the form of proprietary photos taken from raw footage filmed by CNN, the account places the world's most advanced electronics platform circling over the White House at approximately the time of the Pentagon attack. The argument offers an analysis of the new evidence within the context of the events and shows that it is irreconcilable with the official 9/11 narrative.

Author Neal Q. Herrick considers government corruption to be the predominant problem facing the world today. Although bribery and influence peddling are the most visible aspect of this corruption, they are not, in Herrick's opinion, the most serious. For Herrick, the more serious aspect of government corruption is the laws that bribery and influence peddling produce--laws that favor the corporations--resulting in, what he calls, a kind of delusional corruption that leads to unjust and unnecessary wars. "After Patrick Henry" is a book about both kinds of corruption, as they are inseparable and arise from the same structural failing: the failure to make the interests of government coincident with the interests of the people.

Tracing both forms of corruption back through history, Herrick gives a brief account of governmental descent into lawlessness, identifies the constitutional flaw that led to this lawlessness, and discusses some of the issues that must be considered in devising remedies. After discussing the four principles on which the US Constitution rests and pointing out the causal connections between the failure of the impeachment provisions and presidential wars, eroded political culture, and civil society complaisance, Herrick proposes a constitutional amendment and a strategy for accomplishing it.

Neal Q. Herrick taught at the University of Michigan. He headed the HEW-Labor Task Force that drafted the Occupational Safety and Health Act submitted to Congress in 1968. He is the co-author, with the late Harold Sheppard, of "Where Have All the Robots Gone "and a contributor to "Work in America."

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Bestselling author, former White House speechwriter, and Atlantic columnist and media commentator David Frum explains why President Trump has undermined our most important institutions in ways even the most critical media has missed, in this thoughtful and hard-hitting book that is a warning for democracy and America's future. "From Russia to South Africa, from Turkey to the Philippines, from Venezuela to Hungary, authoritarian leaders have smashed restraints on their power. Media freedom and judicial independence have eroded. The right to vote remains, but the right to have one's vote counted fairly may not. Until the US presidential election of 2016, the global decline of democracy seemed a concern for other peoples in other lands. . . . That complacent optimism has been upended by the political rise of Donald Trump. The crisis is upon Americans, here and now." Quietly, steadily, Trump and his administration are damaging the tenets and accepted practices of American democracy, perhaps irrevocably. As he and his family enrich themselves, the presidency itself falls into the hands of the generals and financiers who surround him. While much of the country has been focused on Russia, David Frum has been collecting the lies, obfuscations, and flagrant disregard for the traditional limits placed on the office of the presidency. In Trumpocracy, he documents how Trump and his administration are steadily damaging the tenets and accepted practices of American democracy. During his own White House tenure as George W. Bush's speechwriter, Frum witnessed the ways the presidency is limited not by law but by tradition, propriety, and public outcry, all now weakened. Whether the Trump presidency lasts two, four, or eight more years, he has changed the nature of the office for the worse, and likely for decades. In this powerful and eye-opening book, Frum makes clear that the hard work of recovery starts at home. Trumpocracy outlines how Trump could push America toward illiberalism, what the consequences could be for our nation and our everyday lives, and what we can do to prevent it.

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'.

An in-depth look at the historic and strategic deployment of rights in political conflicts throughout the world Rights are usually viewed as defensive concepts representing mankind's highest aspirations to protect the vulnerable and uplift the downtrodden. But since the Enlightenment, political combatants have also used rights belligerently, to batter despised communities, demolish existing institutions, and smash opposing ideas. Delving into a range of historical and contemporary conflicts from all areas of the globe, Rights as Weapons focuses on the underexamined ways in which the powerful wield rights as aggressive weapons against the weak. Clifford Bob looks at how political forces use rights as rallying cries: naturalizing novel claims as rights inherent in humanity, absolutizing them as trumps over rival interests or community concerns, universalizing them as transcultural and transhistorical, and depoliticizing them as concepts beyond debate. He shows how powerful proponents employ rights as camouflage to cover ulterior motives, as crowbars to break rival coalitions, as blockades to suppress subordinate groups, as spears to puncture discrete policies, and as dynamite to explode whole societies. And he demonstrates how the targets of rights campaigns repulse such assaults, using their own rights-like weapons: denying the abuses they are accused of, constructing rival rights to protect themselves, portraying themselves as victims rather than violators, and repudiating authoritative decisions against them. This sophisticated framework is applied to a diverse range of examples, including nineteenth-century voting rights movements; the American civil rights movement; nationalist, populist, and religious movements in today's Europe; and internationalized conflicts related to Palestinian self-determination, animal rights, gay rights, and transgender rights. Comparing key episodes in the deployment of rights, Rights as Weapons opens new perspectives on an idea that is central to legal and political conflicts.