Corruption, Party, and Government in Britain, 1702-1713


Book Description

Corruption, Party, and Government in Britain, 1702-1713 offers an innovative and original reinterpretation of state formation in eighteenth-century Britain, reconceptualising it as a political and fundamentally partisan process. Focussing on the supply of funds to the army during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13), it demonstrates that public officials faced multiple incompatible demands, but that political partisanship helped to prioritise them, and to hammer out settlements that embodied a version of the national interest. These decisions were then transmitted to agents in overseas through a mixture of personal incentives and partisan loyalties which built trust and turned these informal networks into instruments of public policy. However, the process of building trust and supplying funds laid officials and agents open to accusations of embezzlement, fraud and financial misappropriation. In particular, although successive financial officials ran entrepreneurial private financial ventures that enabled the army overseas to avoid dangerous financial shortfalls, they found it necessary to cover the costs and risks by receiving illegal 'gratifications' from the regiments. Reconstructing these transactions in detail, this book demonstrates that these corrupt payments advanced the public service, and thus that 'corruption' was as much a dispute over ends as means. Ultimately, this volume demonstrates that state formation in eighteenth-century Britain was a contested process of interest aggregation, in which common partisan aims helped to negotiate compromises between various irreconcilable public priorities and private interests, within the frameworks provided by formal institutions, and then collaboratively imposed through overlapping and intersecting networks of formal and informal agents.




Corruption, Party, and Government in Britain, 1702-1713


Book Description

Corruption, Party, and Government in Britain, 1702-1713 offers an innovative and original reinterpretation of state formation in eighteenth-century Britain, reconceptualising it as a political and fundamentally partisan process. Focussing on the supply of funds to the army during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13), it demonstrates that public officials faced multiple incompatible demands, but that political partisanship helped to prioritise them, and to hammer out settlements that embodied a version of the national interest. These decisions were then transmitted to agents in overseas through a mixture of personal incentives and partisan loyalties which built trust and turned these informal networks into instruments of public policy. However, the process of building trust and supplying funds laid officials and agents open to accusations of embezzlement, fraud and financial misappropriation. In particular, although successive financial officials ran entrepreneurial private financial ventures that enabled the army overseas to avoid dangerous financial shortfalls, they found it necessary to cover the costs and risks by receiving illegal 'gratifications' from the regiments. Reconstructing these transactions in detail, Corruption, Party, and Government in Britain, 1702-1713 demonstrates that these corrupt payments advanced the public service, and thus that 'corruption' was as much a dispute over ends as means. Ultimately, this volume demonstrates that state formation in eighteenth-century Britain was a contested process of interest aggregation, in which common partisan aims helped to negotiate compromises between various irreconcilable public priorities and private interests, within the frameworks provided by formal institutions, and then collaboratively imposed through overlapping and intersecting networks of formal and informal agents.




Corruption, Social Sciences and the Law


Book Description

The problem of corruption, however described, dates back thousands of years. Professionals working in areas such as development studies, economics and political studies, were the first to most actively analyse and publish on the topic of corruption and its negative impacts on economies, societies and politics. There was, at that time, minimal literature available on corruption and the law. The literature and discussion on bribery and corruption, as well as on the negative impact of each and what is required to address them, particularly in the legal context, are now considerable. Corruption and anti-corruption are multifaceted and multi-disciplinary. The focus now on the law and compliance, and perhaps commercial incentives, is relatively easy. However, corruption, anti-corruption and the motivations for them are complex. If we continue to discuss, debate, engage, address corruption and anti-corruption in our own disciplinary silos, we are unlikely to significantly progress the fight against corruption. What do terms such as 'culture of integrity', 'demand accountability', ‘transparency and accountability’ and ‘ethical corporate culture’ dominating the anti-corruption discourse mean, if anything, in other disciplines? If they are meaningless, what approach would practitioners in those other disciplines suggest be adopted to address corruption. What has their experience been in the field? How can the work of each discipline contribute to the work of whole and, as such, improve our work in and understanding of anti-corruption? This book seeks to answer these questions and to understand the phenomenon more comprehensively. It will be of value to researchers, academics, lawyers, legislators and students in the fields of law, anthropology, sociology, international affairs, and business.




The Oxford Handbook of the Quality of Government


Book Description

Recent research demonstrates that the quality of public institutions is crucial for a number of important environmental, social, economic, and political outcomes, and thereby human well-being. The Quality of Government (QoG) approach directs attention to issues such as impartiality in the exercise of public power, professionalism in public service delivery, effective measures against corruption, and meritocracy instead of patronage and nepotism. This Handbook offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of this rapidly expanding research field and also identifies viable avenues for future research. The initial chapters focus on theoretical approaches and debates, and the central question of how QoG can be measured. A second set of chapters examines the wealth of empirical research on how QoG relates to democratization, social trust and cohesion, ethnic diversity, happiness and human wellbeing, democratic accountability, economic growth and inequality, political legitimacy, environmental sustainability, gender equality, and the outbreak of civil conflicts. The remaining chapters turn to the perennial issue of which contextual factors and policy approaches—national, local, and international—have proven successful (and not so successful) for increasing QoG. The Quality of Government approach both challenges and complements important strands of inquiry in the social sciences. For research about democratization, QoG adds the importance of taking state capacity into account. For economics, the QoG approach shows that in order to produce economic prosperity, markets need to be embedded in institutions with a certain set of qualities. For development studies, QoG emphasizes that issues relating to corruption are integral to understanding development writ large.




Reform and Its Complexities in Modern Britain


Book Description

The essays in this volume, taken together, span the era of British history from 1780 to the present that has engrossed the attention of Brian Harrison in a career of more than fifty years. In keeping with his diverse interests, they vary widely in subject matter. Yet each contributes, in some fashion, to an appreciation of the complexities of reform in modern Britain. Throughout his career Harrison has demonstrated an unwavering interest in social movements and pressure groups. He has analysed the organisation of reform movements and their bases of support; explored the aspirations and beliefs motivating individuals to start or join such movements; and examined the ideas and ideals shaping their conception of human improvement. No one has done more to show that the significance of a reform movement's triumphs and disappointments can be grasped only in relation to the forces amassed to resist its claims. The essays gathered here, on the Harrisonian theme of reform and its complexities, form an acknowledgment of the massive mark their honouree has made on the study of modern British history. They are preceded by a Foreword composed by Keith Thomas and an editorial Introduction tracing the course of Harrison's scholarship and connecting that scholarship to the substance of the essays. The volume encompasses both wide-ranging analytical investigations and telling case studies. All have new things to say on the subject of reform and its complexities in modern Britain.




The State Trials and the Politics of Justice in Later Stuart England


Book Description

The book discusses the 'state trial' as a legal process, a public spectacle, and a point of political conflict - a key part of how constitutional monarchy became constitutional.State trials provided some of the leading media events of later Stuart England. The more important of these trials attracted substantial public attention, serving as pivot points in the relationship between the state and its subjects. Later Stuart England has been known among legal historians for a series of key cases in which juries asserted their independence from judges. In political history, the government's sometimes shaky control over political trials in this period has long been taken as a sign of the waning power of the Crown. This book revisits the process by which the 'state trial' emerged as a legal proceeding, a public spectacle, a point of political conflict, and ultimately, a new literary genre. It investigates the trials as events, as texts, and as moments in the creation of historical memory. By the early nineteenth century, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world.tury, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world.tury, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world.tury, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world.




Anticorruption in History


Book Description

Anticorruption in History is a timely and urgent book: corruption is widely seen today as a major problem we face as a global society, undermining trust in government and financial institutions, economic efficiency, the principle of equality before the law and human wellbeing in general. Corruption, in short, is a major hurdle on the "path to Denmark" a feted blueprint for stable and successful statebuilding. The resonance of this view explains why efforts to promote anticorruption policies have proliferated in recent years. But while the subject of corruption and anticorruption has captured the attention of politicians, scholars, NGOs and the global media, scant attention has been paid to the link between corruption and the change of anticorruption policies over time and place, with the attendant diversity in how to define, identify and address corruption. Economists, political scientists and policy-makers in particular have been generally content with tracing the differences between low-corruption and high-corruption countries in the present and enshrining them in all manner of rankings and indices. The long-term trends & social, political, economic, cultural; potentially undergirding the position of various countries plays a very small role. Such a historical approach could help explain major moments of change in the past as well as reasons for the success and failure of specific anticorruption policies and their relation to a country's image (of itself or as construed from outside) as being more or less corrupt. It is precisely this scholarly lacuna that the present volume intends to begin to fill. The book addresses a wide range of historical contexts: Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval Eurasia, Italy, France, Great Britain and Portugal as well as studies on anticorruption in the Early Modern and Modern era in Romania, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the former German Democratic Republic.




Corruption, Anti-Corruption, Vigilance, and State Building from Early to Late Modern Times


Book Description

Corruption, Anti-Corruption, Vigilance, and State Building from Early to Late Modern Times challenges current historiographical approaches, proposing new interpretations to rethink the relation between corruption and the socio-political and economic transformations since early globalisation. By adopting both transnational and long-term approaches, the book explores the historical dimension of notions such as accountability, transparency, and vigilance in their immediate political, social, and legal contexts. The starting point is to view corruption not as a moral category that emerged in 1789 to delegitimise past, foreign or present state systems, but as a constantly contested concept that must also be historicised in past societies. The collection revisits chronologies and examines different local, regional, and national frames, highlighting that the path to modernity was contested and affected by a variety of unique circumstances, such as revolutions and external political powers. Building on the latest research and offering new methods of inquiry, this book is a compelling resource for academics interested in political history and the history of corruption.




Brokerage and Networks in London’s Global World


Book Description

The Londoner John Blackwell (1624-1701), shaped by his parents’ Puritanism and merchant interests of his iconoclast father, became one of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army captains. Working with his father in Parliament’s financial administration both supported the regicide and benefitted financially from the subsequent sales of land from those defeated in the civil wars. Surviving the Restoration, Blackwell pursued interests in Ireland and banking schemes in London and Massachusetts, before being governor of Pennsylvania. Blackwell worked with his son, Lambert Blackwell, who established himself as a merchant, financier and representative of the state in Italy during the wars of William III before being embroiled in the South Sea Bubble. The linked histories of the three Blackwells reinforce the importance of kinship and the development of the early modern state centred in an increasingly global London and illustrate the ownership of the memory of the civil wars, facilitated by their kin links to Cromwell and John Lambert, architect of Cromwell’s Protectorate, by those who fought against Charles I. Suitable for specialists in the area and students taking courses on early modern English, European and American history as well as those with a more general interest in the period.




Armies and Political Change in Britain, 1660-1750


Book Description

Armies and Political Change in Britain, 1660 -1750 argues that armies had a profound impact on the major political events of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Britain. Beginning with the controversial creation of a permanent army to protect the restored Stuart monarchy, this original and important study examines how armies defended or destroyed regimes during the Exclusion Crisis, Monmouth's Rebellion, the Revolution of 1688-1689, and the Jacobite rebellions and plots of the post-1714 period, including the '15 and '45. Hannah Smith explores the political ideas of 'common soldiers' and army officers and analyses their political engagements in a divisive, partisan world. The threat or hope of military intervention into politics preoccupied the era. Would a monarch employ the army to circumvent parliament and annihilate Protestantism? Might the army determine the succession to the throne? Could an ambitious general use armed force to achieve supreme political power? These questions troubled successive generations of men and women as the British army developed into a lasting and costly component of the state, and emerged as a highly successful fighting force during the War of the Spanish Succession. Armies and Political Change in Britain, 1660 - 1750 deploys an innovative periodization to explore significant continuities and developments across the reigns of seven monarchs spanning almost a century. Using a vivid and extensive array of archival, literary, and artistic material, the volume presents a striking new perspective on the political and military history of Britain.