Angola is poised between a past marked by civil war and corruption, and a future of potential economic development. This book examines the post-Civil War period which began in 2002 and saw the rise of a corrupt ruling elite, as well as recent developments in the country. These include the efforts of the current President, João Lourenço, to reform the regime through political openness, economic growth and a crackdown on corruption. Rui Santos Verde analyses the country's recent history of corruption and the current attempts at reform in order to determine whether economic and political development is on the horizon for Angola, or whether these reforms are simply a move towards consolidating President Lourenço's personal power.

When towing the party line meant lying to the American people, brave government employees took to social media to share the inside scoop. Experiencing firsthand President Donald Trump's disregard for truth, rogue government employees took to social media as an outlet for anonymized outrage, fact-checking, and a call to action. The #ALTGOV Twitter movement subverted official statements to remind the American public that all was not well in the White House but that there was something they could do about it. This is the story of how the same social media technologies that fractured America have helped rogue government workers and concerned citizens work to keep it together. Government employees who were first disappointed in the 2016 election outcome and then horrified by things like a ban on Muslim immigrants, the repeal of Net Neutrality, the deletion of climate change information from EPA websites found themselves searching for a way to take a stand. Beginning with tweets from the parks about the Inauguration Day crowd, the #AltGov Twitter accounts offered followers context, truth, and opportunities to take real-world action to support human rights, privacy rights, and science. Followers say they offer hope. They've also faced challenges from their bosses in the government, from trolls and bots, and from each other. Amanda Sturgill offers the first real look behind the curtain as AltGov members struggled to work effectively with others across a spectrum of goals and motivations, while facing their own fears of being discovered or even inadvertently causing the harm they are trying to forestall. The AltGov movement shows us that social media is more than a megaphone-it's a way for everyday people to live out democratic ideals and make a difference.

'This elegantly written, erudite book is essential reading for all of us, whatever our identifications' - Lynne Segal Antisemitism is one of the most controversial topics of our time. The public, academics, journalists, activists and Jewish people themselves are divided over its meaning. Antony Lerman shows that this is a result of a 30-year process of redefinition of the phenomenon, casting Israel, problematically defined as the 'persecuted collective Jew', as one of its main targets. This political project has taken the notion of the 'new antisemitism' and codified it in the flawed International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's 'working definition' of antisemitism. This text is the glue holding together an international network comprising the Israeli government, pro-Israel advocacy groups, Zionist organisations, Jewish communal defence bodies and sympathetic governments fighting a war against those who would criticise Israel. The consequences of this redefinition have been alarming, supressing free speech on Palestine/Israel, legitimising Islamophobic right-wing forces, and politicising principled opposition to antisemitism.

Brazil's democracy has repeatedly suffered major corruption scandals, despite numerous reforms designed to overcome entrenched patterns of illicit behavior. Why? What has caused corruption scandals to recur across some four decades of presidential administrations? And what are the implications of Brazil's experience for efforts to enhance accountability elsewhere? Addressing these questions, Matthew Taylor and Luciano Da Ros provide a framework for evaluating the bottlenecks to effective accountability in Brazil and analyse the successes and failures of anticorruption efforts from the early days of the democratic transition through the demise of the massive Lava Jato investigations.

This book offers a rare insight into the transnational expansion and various corners of the illicit economy in Turkey including the smuggling of pharmaceuticals, oil, antiquities, drugs, nuclear materials and cigarettes. Mahmut Cengiz and Mitchel P. Roth provide an in depth analysis of the criminals, terrorists, money launderers, and corrupt politicians at the highest levels of the Turkish government. They analyze the unintended consequences of corruption scandals which have resulted in the purging of important law enforcement and intelligence entities formerly responsible for countering terrorism and organized crime threats as well as growing political tensions with the United States.

How to restore ethics, the rule of law, and democracy as the centerpieces of U.S. government U.S. government has been repeatedly renewed-sometimes simply repaired and other times reinvented-during its over 230 years. Major aspects of the federal system were broken again during the four years of the Trump administration, so it's time for even more fixes. This book sets out the damage that was done and important ideas on how the repairs should be made, focusing on ethics, the rule of law, and democracy. Distinguished scholars and practitioners have come together not only to address what went awry over the past four years, but also the deeper weaknesses that have become more evident, and how those weaknesses can be repaired. The problem areas range from ethics and conflicts of interest to the Hatch Act and big money in politics, and from independence at the Department of Justice and government transparency to reestablishing Congressional oversight, and the government's role in the broader areas of how Americans vote and of international ethics and rule of law. Overcoming Trumpery provides a framework to understand the significant developments that are already happening in Washington with respect to ethics, the rule of law, and democracy. These include the "For the People Act," the "Protecting Our Democracy Act," and President Biden's Executive Order on Ethics. The ideas outlined in this book for fixing flaws in federal governance come from the more than century of collective experience of its expert authors. The book represents a burst of sunshine after a very dark period in the nation's history.

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.

In The Struggles of Post-Independence Nigeria, Ucheoma Nwagbara argues that despite Nigeria's oil wealth and arable agricultural land, Nigerians are not any better today than they were before independence. Nwagbara examines Nigeria's struggles with corruption, poverty, inequality, crime, and insurgency to show how poor leadership has failed to use the country's enormous natural and human resources to improve citizens' lives, eradicate poverty, and deliver broadly shared prosperity. Through his analysis, Nwagbara demonstrates that the nationalist ideals of dedicated and accountable leadership behind the struggle for independence in Nigeria have been betrayed as the emergent post-colonial leadership cared more for personal survival and gain. Despite these failures, Nwagbara reveals that Nigeria may still have a chance to improve and recover if Nigerians unite and demand real change through political and social activism.

The End of Corruption and Impunity advances a novel idea: it is feasible to limit the corruption that plagues the efforts of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and activists working to end poverty and advance human rights in developing regions of the world. Using a mixed methods approach, this book analyzes the problem of corruption and specific factors contributing to corruption, offering a direct, effective solution, that could be adopted by the international community. Yeh suggests a system designed to restore accountability in dysfunctional domestic criminal justice systems, by implementing a powerful Anticorruption Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (APUNCAC). This treaty would establish a body of United Nations (UN) inspectors to conduct investigations into allegations of corruption, create dedicated anti-corruption courts, implement aggressive measures to fight money laundering, and provide incentives for private parties to pursue civil actions when they have knowledge of corruption. Using the International Criminal Court (ICC) as precedent, Yeh argues that an international treaty is a promising approach for addressing the governmental impunity that prevails in developing nations-impunity that undermines efforts to reduce poverty, promote development, and restore human rights. This book would be of interest to students and scholars interested in international law, international criminal justice, and political science.

This is the story of how a small island on the edge of Europe became one of the world's major tax havens. From global corporations such as Apple and Google, to investment bankers and mainstream politicians, those taking advantage of Ireland's pro-business tax laws and shadow banking system have amassed untold riches at enormous social cost to ordinary people at home and abroad. Tax Haven Ireland uncovers the central players in this process and exposes the coverups employed by the Irish state, with the help of accountants, lawyers and financial services companies. From the lucrative internet porn industry to corruption in the property market, this issue distorts the economy across the state and in the wider international system, and its history runs deep, going back the country's origins as a British colonial outpost. Today, in the wake of Brexit and in the shadow of yet another economic crash, what can be done to prevent such dangerous behaviour and reorganise our economies to invest in the people? Can Ireland - and all of us - build an alternative economy based on fairness and democratic values?

In recent years hundreds of high-profile 'free speech' incidents have rocked US college campuses. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and other right-wing speakers have faced considerable protest, with many being disinvited from speaking. These incidents are widely circulated as examples of the academy's intolerance towards conservative views. But this response is not the spontaneous outrage of the liberal colleges. There is a darker element manufacturing the crisis, funded by political operatives, and designed to achieve specific political outcomes. If you follow the money, at the heart of the issue lies the infamous and ultra-libertarian Koch donor network. Grooming extremist celebrities, funding media platforms that promote these controversies, developing legal organizations to sue universities and corrupting legislators, the influence of the Koch network runs deep. We need to abandon the 'campus free speech' narrative and instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous network from our universities.

Gabriel Ferreyra presents a comprehensive analysis of drug trafficking in Mexico and the United States by examining the roots, development, consolidation, and cultural ramifications of this phenomenon in the past century as well as its negative consequences in contemporary Mexico. Ferreyra discusses the most devastating effects correlated to drug trafficking such as high murder rates, gruesome violence, disappearances, and mass graves to emphasize how Mexican society bears the brunt of this phenomenon while the United States insists on the futility of drug prohibition. Unlike other publications, this book provides an interdisciplinary social science approach where drug trafficking is conceptualized as a multifaceted social, political, economic, and cultural problem, rather than just a criminal justice issue. Drug Trafficking in Mexico and the United States also revisits the war on drugs and provides an argument how drug control is the primary force behind drug trafficking. In that respect, there is an analysis on how the DEA has reinforced the war on drugs model and why it became a reactionary agency that opposes any comprehensive alternative to the American drug problem besides drug control. The author concludes with recommendations to implement forward-thinking measures such as decriminalization, reclassification, and legalization of drugs to effectively address the illicit drug trade.

In November 2018, Baptist preacher Mark Harris beat the odds, narrowly fending off a blue wave in the sprawling Ninth District of North Carolina. But word soon got around that something fishy was going on in rural Bladen County. At the center of the mess was a local political operative named McCrae Dowless. Dowless had learned the ins and outs of the absentee ballot system from Democrats before switching over to the Republican Party. Bladen County's vote-collecting cottage industry made national headlines, led to multiple election fraud indictments, toppled North Carolina GOP leadership, and left hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians without congressional representation for nearly a year. In The Vote Collectors, Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner tell the story of the political shenanigans in Bladen County, exposing the shocking vulnerability of local elections and explaining why our present systems are powerless to monitor and prevent fraud. In their hands, this tale of rural corruption becomes a fascinating narrative of the long clash of racism and electioneering-and a larger story about the challenges to democracy in the rural South. At a time rife with accusations of election fraud, The Vote Collectors shows the reality of election stealing in one southern county, where democracy was undermined the old-fashioned way: one absentee ballot at a time.

In the 1980s, real estate developer and banker Charles H. Keating executed one of the largest savings and loans frauds in United States history. Keating had long used the courts to muzzle critical reporting of his business dealings, but aggressive reporting by a small trade paper called the National Thrift News helped bring down Keating and offered an inspiring example of business journalism that speaks truth to power. Rob Wells tells the story through the work of Stan Strachan, a veteran financial journalist who uncovered Keating's misdeeds and links to a group of US senators-the Keating Five-who bullied regulators on his behalf. Editorial decisions at the National Thrift News angered advertisers and readers, but the newsroom sold ownership on the idea of investigative reporting as a commercial opportunity. Examining the National Thrift News's approach, Wells calls for a new era of business reporting that can-and must-embrace its potential as a watchdog safeguarding the interests of the public.

While there is arguably universal agreement that corruption plagues countries worldwide, do we agree as well on what corruption is and how to fight it? Do the left and right of the political spectrum hold conflicting views on the issue? Is there a difference in how successful left vs. right governments are in curbing corruption? These are the questions that inspired The Corruption Debates. Stephen Morris explores left and right anticorruption ideologies broadly, then turns to promises, policies, and outcomes in the Americas. He also reaches beyond differences rooted in left/right dichotomies to develop an alternative hypothesis, one reflecting an in-power vs. out-of-power dynamic. His book captures the inherently political nature of not only corruption, but, equally, our understanding of it.

Liberal democracy is at risk. Its hallmark institutions - political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law-are coming under pressure, as authoritarian sentiment is growing around the globe. While liberal-democratic backsliding features prominently in social science scholarship, especially the branches concerned with political parties and political behavior, public administration research lags behind. However, without considering illiberal approaches towards the executive, efforts of actual and aspiring authoritarians remain only partly understood. State bureaucracies are, after all, important instruments of power. This timely and important volume addresses the administrative implications of liberal-democratic backsliding. It studies public administrations as objects and subjects in the context of illiberal dynamics. For this purpose, the volume brings together an international group of scholars to analyze authoritarian tendencies in several countries. The contributions combine theoretical with empirical work, providing the first comparative perspective on an overlooked aspect of one of the most important contemporary political trends.