Author: Sarah Chayes
ISBN No: 978-0-393-23946-1
Review date: 28/04/2024
No of pages: 272
Publisher: Norton
Publisher URL:
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Thieves-of-State/
Year of publication: 16/02/2015
Brief:
Thieves of State
price
£20
Iraq and Syria; the East-West stand-off in Ukraine; abducted schoolgirls in northern Nigeria. Is there some thread to tie these international crises together? In Thieves of State: Why Corruption threatens global stability, Sarah Chayes identifies one: corruption.
Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment, she argues. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes—ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes writes of Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government (but also redesigning Al-Qaeda), and Nigerians embracing radical evangelical Christianity and the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. In many such places, rigid moral codes are put forth as an antidote to the collapse of public integrity.
As for history, Chayes points out that political thinkers such as John Locke and Machiavelli, as well as the medieval Islamic statesman Nizam al-Mulk, all named corruption as a threat to the realm. Corruption is a cause—not a result—of global instability, the book argues.
