Suchergebnisse

Corruption dynamics in the European Union -- Does competition in the European Union corrupt? -- "Corruption is our friend" : exporting graft in infrastructure, arms, and oil -- The myth of the market : privatization -- Decentralization, democracy, and graft -- The corruption of campaign and party financing -- The pathologies of an international organization -- The European Union, the international political economy, and corruption

Following World War II, the Catholic Church in Europe faced the challenge of establishing political influence with newly emerging democratic governments. The Church became, as Carolyn Warner pointedly argues, an interest group like any other, seeking to attain and solidify its influence by forming alliances with political parties. The author analyzes the Church's differing strategies in Italy, France, and Germany using microeconomic theories of the firm and historical institutionalism. She demonstrates how only a strategic perspective can explain the choice and longevity of the alliances in each case. In so doing, the author challenges earlier work that ignores the costs to interest groups and parties of sustaining or breaking their reciprocal links. Confessions of an Interest Group challenges the view of the Catholic Church as solely a moral force whose interests are seamlessly represented by the Christian Democratic parties. Blending theory, cultural narrative, and archival research, Warner demonstrates that the French Church's superficial and brief connection with a political party was directly related to its loss of political influence during the War. The Italian Church's power, on the other hand, remained stable through the War, so the Church and the Christian Democrats more easily found multiple grounds for long-term cooperation. The German Church chose yet another path, reluctantly aligning itself with a new Catholic-Protestant party. This book is an important work that expands the growing literature on the economics of religion, interest group behavior, and the politics of the Catholic Church.

Considers the phenomenon of fraud & corruption in the European Union (EU) where member states seem to have manifested a benign neglect toward it. EU & European Economic Community institutions are overviewed before looking at the EU annual budget & programs. It is contended that the EU's peculiar institutional arrangements contribute to fraud against the budget & shed light on why more & better action has not been taken against it. The Common Agricultural Policy, taker of the EU's largest budget share, is examined to demonstrate some kinds of fraud & the poor means of monitoring for it. With no commonly applied definition of fraud, which is transnational by nature, among EU members, enforcement mechanisms remain weak; national administrative & justice systems inconsistently respond to fraud. Member state reluctance to cede further sovereignty to the EU hampers efforts to provide an institutional solution (eg, an EU office of public prosecutor). Coupled with a desire to protect national economic interests, the member states have effectively created a market for fraud. 14 References. J. Zendejas

Africa's relation to the concept and practice of 'state' and 'states system' has been problematic since its first encounters with those who were armed with the concept. In observing the collapse of authority and governance in a number of African states, some scholars have suggested that Africa presented the states system with alternative political organizations. Others argue that so long as there is a kernel of armed authority in territorially demarcated areas, a state exists. Africa's polities have often responded unconventionally, yet strategically, to interaction with the sovereign state system first elaborated by the Europeans. To comprehend the novelty, or lack of it, in the 'state system' of contemporary Africa, we need to know something about its pre-colonial political structures and organizations and about the imprint of empires (the construct which effectively limited the 'international' system of sovereign states to the West) on Africa. Did colonialism and the Western system of sovereign states rule out alternative structures for the newly independent African states? What might alternative structures have looked like? What impact did colonial rule have on the development of states in Africa? Does contemporary Africa have a 'state system'? This article addresses these questions in the context of the Special Issue's concern with both the structure of the international system and developments among and between the units.