Predatory States

This powerful study makes a compelling case about the key U.S. role in state terrorism in Latin America during the Cold War. Long hidden from public view, Operation Condor was a military network created in the 1970s to eliminate political opponents of Latin American regimes. Its key members were the anticommunist dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil, later joined by Peru and Ecuador, with covert support from the U.S. government. Drawing on a wealth of testimonies, declassified files, and Latin American primary sources, J. Patrice McSherry examines Operation Condor from numerous vantage points: its secret structures, intelligence networks, covert operations against dissidents, political assassinations worldwide, commanders and operatives, links to the Pentagon and the CIA, and extension to Central America in the 1980s. The author convincingly shows how, using extralegal and terrorist methods, Operation Condor hunted down, seized, and executed political opponents across borders. McSherry argues that Condor functioned within, or parallel to, the structures of the larger inter-American military system led by the United States, and that declassified U.S. documents make clear that U.S. security officers saw Condor as a legitimate and useful 'counterterror' organization. Revealing new details of Condor operations and fresh evidence of links to the U.S. security establishment, this controversial work offers an original analysis of the use of secret, parallel armies in Western counterinsurgency strategies. It will be a clarion call to all readers to consider the long-term consequences of clandestine operations in the name of 'democracy.'

A progressive economist challenges popular conservative-minded economic practices, in a scathing critique of Reagan-Bush policies that contends that the political right is misrepresenting the consequences of free-market and free-trade ideals. 50,000 first printing.

This Handbook offers a comprehensive treatment of transformations of the state, from its origins in different parts of the world and different time periods to its transformations since World War II in the advanced industrial countries, the post-Communist world, and the Global South. Leading experts in their fields, from Europe and North America, discuss conceptualizations and theories of the state and the transformations of the state in its engagement with a changing international environment as well as with changing domestic economic, social, and political challenges. The Handbook covers different types of states in the Global South (from failed to predatory, rentier and developmental), in different kinds of advanced industrial political economies (corporatist, statist, liberal, import substitution industrialization), and in various post-Communist countries (Russia, China, successor states to the USSR, and Eastern Europe). It also addresses crucial challenges in different areas of state intervention, from security to financial regulation, migration, welfare states, democratization and quality of democracy, ethno-nationalism, and human development. The volume makes a compelling case that far from losing its relevance in the face of globalization, the state remains a key actor in all areas of social and economic life, changing its areas of intervention, its modes of operation, and its structures in adaption to new international and domestic challenges.

This book analyses conflict theory through one type of conflict in particular: manhunting, or predation.

This book spotlights, analyzes and explains varying forms and patterns of state-society relations on the African continent, taking as point of departure the complexities created by the emergence, proliferation and complicated interactions of so-called ¿big men¿ across Africa's fifty-four states. The contributors interrogate the evolution of Africa¿s big men; the role of the big men in Africa¿s political and economic development; and the relationship between the state, the big men and the citizens. Throughout the chapters the contributors engage with a number of questions from¿different disciplinary and methodological orientations. How did these states evolve to exhibit various deformities in their composition, functioning and in their relations with the societies that they govern? What roles did Atlantic and other slavery and European colonialism play in creating states that are unable to display the right and good relationships with citizens in civil society? Why did these forms of predatory state-society relations continue to thrive in Africa after the end of Atlantic slave trade and subsequent colonialism? Why did the emerging African leaders at independence fail to effectively dismantle the structures of exploitation and expropriation that were the defining features of slavery and colonialism? Who are Africa¿s ¿big men¿, and what are their trajectories? This book is essential reading for all students and scholars of African politics, public policy and administration, political economy, and democratisation.

In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has too often devolved into diatribes against intervention. Peter Evans questions such simplistic views, offering a new vision of why state involvement works in some cases and produces disasters in others. To illustrate, he looks at how state agencies, local entrepreneurs, and transnational corporations shaped the emergence of computer industries in Brazil, India, and Korea during the seventies and eighties. Evans starts with the idea that states vary in the way they are organized and tied to society. In some nations, like Zaire, the state is predatory, ruthlessly extracting and providing nothing of value in return. In others, like Korea, it is developmental, promoting industrial transformation. In still others, like Brazil and India, it is in between, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering. Evans's years of comparative research on the successes and failures of state involvement in the process of industrialization have here been crafted into a persuasive and entertaining work, which demonstrates that successful state action requires an understanding of its own limits, a realistic relationship to the global economy, and the combination of coherent internal organization and close links to society that Evans called "embedded autonomy."

By the dawn of independence in 1980, Zimbabwe had one of the most structurally developed economies and state systems in Africa, and was classified as a middle-income country. In 1980, Zimbabwe's GDP per capita was almost equal to that of China. More than 30 years later, Zimbabwe had regressed to a low-income country with a GDP per capita among the lowest in the world. With these dark economic conditions, discussions concerning structural problems of a country once cited as Africa's best potential have been reignited. Shumba analyzes the ruling elite, modes of accumulation across key economic sectors, and implications for development outcomes. The book raises some pressing questions in search of answers. If Zimbabwe was the golden darling after independence, why did this happen? Was it inevitable? What were the crucial choices made that led to it? Did the ruling elite know that their choices would lead to Zimbabwe's developmental decline? *** "Zimbabwe's tragic story illustrates the anatomy of a predatory state; neither developmental nor failed, it survives its own contradictory impulses mainly through dominance and violence. Recommended." --Michael Bratton, University Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University *** "This book will be valuable, not just to scholars of southern Africa, but to scholars around the world who are trying to understand how predatory states persist and what might be done about it." --Peter B. Evans, Senior Fellow, Watson Institute, Brown University, and Professor Emeritus, Sociology Dept, University of California *** "[This book] prises open the 'black box' of Zimbabwe's politics to explain how the country ticks and how the regime tricks. A captivating read." --Eldred V. Masunungure, University of Zimbabwe, and Executive Director of the Mass Public Opinion Institute. Revised Dissertation. [Subject: Politics, Post-Colonial Studies, Human Rights, Governance, Policy Analysis, African Studies]

Examines predatory practices in mortgage markets to provide invaluable insight into the racial wealth gap between black and white Americans.