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The Chinese system is like no other known to man, now or in history. This book explains how the system works and where it may be moving. Drawing on Chinese and international sources, on extensive collaboration with Chinese scholars, and on the political science of state analysis, the author concludes that under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, the system of government has been transformed into a new regime radically harder and more ideological than the legacy of Deng Xiaoping. China is less strong economically and more dictatorial politically than the world has wanted to believe. By analysing the leadership of Xi Jinping, the meaning of ‘socialist market economy’, corruption, the party-state apparatus, the reach of the party, the mechanisms of repression, taxation and public services, and state-society relations, the book broadens the field of China studies, as well as the fields of political economy, comparative politics, development, and welfare state studies.

This book examines the prospects for advancing reform in Ukraine in the wake of the February 2014 Euromaidan revolution. It examines six crucial areas of reform: identity-memory divides, corruption, constitution, judiciary, patrimonialism and the oligarchs, and the economy. On each of these topics, the book provides one chapter that focuses on Ukraine’s experience and one chapter that examines the issue in the broader context of other international practice. Placing Ukraine in comparative perspective shows that many of the country’s problems are not unique and that other countries have been able to address many of the issues currently confronting Ukraine. The chapters provide an in-depth analysis of Ukraine’s challenges and describe the difficulties Ukrainians will have in overcoming the numerous obstacles to reform. As with the constitution, there are no easy answers, but careful analysis shows that some solutions are better than others. Ultimately, the authors offer a series of reforms that can help Ukraine make the best of a bad situation. The book stresses the need to focus on reforms that might not have immediate effect, but that comparative experience shows can solve fundamental contextual challenges. Finally, the book shows that pressures from outside Ukraine can have a strong positive influence on reform efforts inside the country.

Under the helm of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico witnessed one-party rule for almost eight decades, making it one of the most successful cases of authoritarianism in twentieth-century Latin America. Rather than an urban-centered process, the book shows that the foundations of this system were linked to the containment and repression of rural peoples, many of who went on to support the PRI. To understand this support, the book tracks three peasant brothers, Rubén, Porfirio, and Antonio Jaramillo, affiliated with large-scale sugar cooperatives in the south-central region of Morelos and Puebla. Taking stock of how the brothers, two of whom were assassinated, negotiated the incursion of authoritarianism shows that accommodation was the most common response in the countryside. More than complicity, this accommodation was a product of ambivalent acceptance and continual violence. Using sources such as oral histories and secret police files, the book argues that the state was more violent than previously assumed and honed strategies of control in rural areas that it later employed in urban centers. This view unlocks the puzzle of the PRI-led state’s popular support, explaining how it remained in power until the year 2000 and why it regained the presidency in 2012.

The aim of this book is to assess the quarter century of political competition in the Republic of Ireland from the time of the ending of recession of the 1980s up to the 2011 general election where Ireland was ruled by the Troika and austerity was a by-word for both policy making and how many people lived their lives. This book assesses in a thematic way the forces which shaped the decisions that political elites in Ireland took over the course of this crucial quarter century in modern Irish life. It examines the nature of electoral competition in modern Ireland by focusing on a number of key themes that shaped the decisions of Irish politicians. These include the nature of coalition politics in Ireland; the payments to politicians by developers and businessmen that led to a number of tribunals of inquiry; the culture wars over divorce and abortion; the process of the economic collapse to boom and back to collapse cycle that effected the lives of so many Irish people; and the collapse of Ireland's natural party of government, Fianna Fáil. It analyses why Irish citizens have been comfortable in continuing to vote for traditional political elites despite the failures of the Irish state and explains why it has been so difficult for new parties to emerge.

From Virtue to Venality examines the problem of corruption in British urban society and politics between 1930 and 1995. It is not a conventional study of the politics of local government since it seeks to place corruption in urban societies in a wider cultural context. It reclaims the study of corruption from political scientists and sociologists for historians but provides theoretical explanations of the causes of corruption testing them against real cases. The legacy of the municipal gospel, public service ideals and ethical principles are analysed to show how public virtues were eroded over time. It argues that the key counterweight against corruption is a strong civil society but that British civil society became detached from the city and urban society allowing corrupt politicians and business men licence to further their own ambitions by corrupt means. Britain’s imperial past deflected political leaders from the evidence before them contributing to their failure to develop reforms. The accounts of corruption in Glasgow – a British Chicago – as well as the major corruption scandals of John Poulson and T. Dan Smith show how Labour controlled towns and cities were especially vulnerable to corrupt dealings. The case of Dame Shirley Porter in the City of Westminster in the late 1980s reveals that Conservative controlled councils were also vulnerable since in London the stakes of the political struggle were especially intense.

Traditions of official corruption inherited from the Soviet and late Imperial eras have continued to touch Russian life since the collapse of the USSR. This study is the first archive-based, historical study of bribery and corruption in the Soviet Union for this period. A study of the solicitation and offering of bribes forms the heart of this research. Bribery (vziatochnichestvo)—typically defined in law as gifts in cash or in kind intended to influence public officials to the benefit of the giver—represents the paradigmatic variety of corruption. This study takes a novel approach to the phenomenon of the bribe, examining it as an integral part of an unofficial yet essential series of relationships upon which much of Soviet society and state administration relied in order to function, as it gradually became part of the fabric of everyday life. The book examines three major, related themes. The book’s first theme, “The Landscape of Bribery,” concerns the nature and varieties of bribery, while painting a sociological portrait of the people involved. Whom did prosecutors accuse of such crimes? The second major topic addresses the regime’s attempts to understand the causes of bribery, and then to wipe it out through centrally directed anti-corruption “campaigns.” “The view from below,” which examines popular perceptions and understandings of bribery, constitutes the third dimension of the study. Focusing on bribery among police, court, and other law enforcement employees, this phase explores the imprecise and shifting line that separated “acceptable” from “unacceptable” behavior.

Integrity issues have become an important item on the British political agenda since the 1990s when ‘sleaze’ prompted John Major to set up the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The book analyses the range of ethical problems which confront the political system and the efforts to address them. It addresses the tightening of standards in response to misconduct in Parliament, in central and local government and in the devolved systems. It also addresses perennial ethical questions such as lobbying and party funding which continue to trouble the United Kingdom as they do other major democracies. The chief purpose of the book is to understand the regulatory dilemmas which face policy-makers as they struggle to produce new machinery and codes to tackle the risk of misconduct. Thus we examine, for example, the choice between self-regulation and independent regulation, decisions about the amount of transparency required of office-holders, and how to achieve proportionality in the balance between perceived problems and regulatory burdens. We also attempt to assess the impact of more than two decades of ethical engineering on the office holders and the public.

When Vladimir Putin first took power in 1999, he was a little-known figure ruling a country that was reeling from a decade and a half of crisis. In the years since, he has reestablished Russia as a great power. How did he do it? What principles have guided Putin's economic policies? What patterns can be discerned? In this new analysis of Putin's Russia, Chris Miller examines its economic policy and the tools Russia's elite have used to achieve its goals. Miller argues that despite Russia's corruption, cronyism, and overdependence on oil as an economic driver, Putin's economic strategy has been surprisingly successful. Explaining the economic policies that underwrote Putin's two-decades-long rule, Miller shows how, at every juncture, Putinomics has served Putin's needs by guaranteeing economic stability and supporting his accumulation of power. Even in the face of Western financial sanctions and low oil prices, Putin has never been more relevant on the world stage.