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"Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they just bad people? Are tyrants made or born? If you were suddenly thrust into a position of power, would you be able to resist the temptation to line your pockets or seek revenge against your enemies? To answer these questions, Corruptible draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world's top leaders-from the noblest to the dirtiest-including presidents and philanthropists as well as rebels, cultists, and dictators. Some of the fascinating insights include: how facial appearance determines who we pick as leaders, why narcissists make ...
In the perspective-altering tradition of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan comes a provocative challenge to how we think our world works—and why small, chance events can divert our lives and change everything, by social scientist and Atlantic writer Brian Klaas. If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself? And would you remain blind to the radically different possible world you unknowingly left behind? In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas ...
An engrossing analysis of the pseudo-democratic methods employed by despots around the world to retain control Contrary to what is commonly believed, authoritarian leaders who agree to hold elections are generally able to remain in power longer than autocrats who refuse to allow the populace to vote. In this engaging and provocative book, Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas expose the limitations of national elections as a means of promoting democratization, and reveal the six essential strategies that dictators use to undermine the electoral process in order to guarantee victory for themselves. Based on their firsthand experiences as election watchers and their hundreds of interviews with presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, election officials, and conspirators, Cheeseman and Klaas document instances of election rigging from Argentina to Zimbabwe, including notable examples from Brazil, India, Nigeria, Russia, and the United States—touching on the 2016 election. This eye-opening study offers a sobering overview of corrupted professional politics, while providing fertile intellectual ground for the development of new solutions for protecting democracy from authoritarian subversion.
Brian Klaas of the London School of Economics believes in the transformative power of democracy. In this comprehensive book, he offers prescriptions for Western powers seeking to spread political freedom and critiques many of the halfhearted pro-democracy efforts of recent decades. The United States' recent misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan chastened many who once espoused nation-building. But Klaas argues ceasing to promote democracy is a mistake. In addition to offering insights and examples gleaned from his global travels to investigate pseudo-democracies, Klaas also explores America itself, taking the US tradition of gerrymandering to task. At times, Klaas's crusade seems a bit too idealistic, but, ultimately, he makes a passionate and persuasive case for trying to expand democracy's shrinking reach.
In this book, Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas expose the limitations of national elections as a means of promoting democratization, and reveal the six essential strategies that dictators use to undermine the electoral process in order to guarantee victory for themselves.
”[A] primer on the threat to democracy posed by—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—the current president of the United States.” —David Litt, New York Times bestselling author Donald Trump isn’t a despot. But he is increasingly acting like The Despot’s Apprentice, an understudy in authoritarian tactics that threaten to erode American democracy, including: Attacking the press Threatening rule of law by firing those who investigate his alleged wrongdoings Using nepotism to staff the White House and countless other techniques Donald Trump is borrowing tactics from the world’s dictators and despots. Trump’s fascination with the military, his obsession with his own cult of p...
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the world is steadily becoming less democratic. The true culprits are dictators and counterfeit democrats. But, argues Klaas, the West is also an accomplice, inadvertently assaulting pro-democracy forces abroad as governments in Washington, London and Brussels chase pyrrhic short-term economic and security victories. Friendly fire from Western democracies against democracy abroad is too high a price to pay for a myopic foreign policy that is ultimately making the world less prosperous, stable and democratic. The Despot's Accomplice draws on years of extensive interviews on the frontlines of the global struggle for democracy, from a poetry-reading, politician-kidnapping general in Madagascar to Islamist torture victims in Tunisia, Belarusian opposition activists tailed by the KGB, West African rebels, and tea-sipping members of the Thai junta. Cumulatively, their stories weave together a tale of a broken system at the root of democracy's global retreat.
Donald Trump isn't a despot. But he is increasingly acting like a despot's apprentice. Whether it's attacking the press, threatening the rule of law, or staffing the White House with family members and cronies, Trump is borrowing moves from the world's dictators. The president's bizarre adoration of global strongmen has also transformed US foreign policy into a powerful force cheerleading some of the world's worst regimes. An expert on authoritarianism, Brian Klaas is well placed to recognise the warning signs of tyranny. He argues forcefully that with every autocratic tactic or tweet, Trump further erodes democratic norms in the world's most powerful democracy. The Despot's Apprentice is an urgent exploration of the unique threat that Trump poses to global democracy--and how to save it from him before it's too late.
Applied Latent Class Analysis introduces several innovations in latent class analysis to a wider audience of researchers. Many of the world's leading innovators in the field of latent class analysis contributed essays to this volume, each presenting a key innovation to the basic latent class model and illustrating how it can prove useful in situations typically encountered in actual research.
How does your personality shape your life and what, if anything, can you do about it? Are you hardwired for happiness, or born to brood? Do you think you're in charge of your future, or do you surf the waves of unknowable fate? Would you be happier, or just less socially adept, if you were less concerned about what other people thought of you? And what about your "Type A" spouse: is he or she destined to have a heart attack, or just drive you to drink? In the past few decades, new scientific research has transformed old ideas about the nature of human personality. Neuroscientists, biologists, and psychological scientists have reexamined the theories of Freud and Jung as well as the humanisti...