It is widely recognized that inadequate government policy performance undermines public trust in government. However, there has been a lack of comprehensive studies regarding how citizens attribute responsibility across different levels of government within an authoritarian unitary context. This chapter utilizes the case of China to examine how government performance across various policy domains influences central-local political trust. The findings reveal that local governments are particularly susceptible to losing public trust due to issues of corruption. Conversely, the central government experiences a decline in public trust primarily as a result of unsatisfactory economic conditions. Additionally, both local and central governments face diminished trust stemming from poor performance in key areas such as environmental protection, food safety, public health, and primary and middle school education. The central government is not always able to evade accountability, as its perceived responsibility varies depending on specific policy issues.

This concluding chapter outlines the contours of the Party-state and develops a conceptual framework to explain its distinctive mode of governance. At its core is a dual normative system: a legal system grounded in popular sovereignty is overseen and constrained by a power-based normative system designed to uphold the absolute authority of the Party Center—an organizing principle essential to maintaining the structural integrity of the Party-state. The chapter argues that the governance logic of the Party-state is best captured by the theory of Normalized Political Prerogative (NPP). According to this theory, governance unfolds through a three-step process: operationalization, normalization, and regulation. Together, these constitute the formal institutional foundation of Party-state rule. The NPP framework elucidates the systemic proliferation of corruption as an inherent byproduct of this mode of governance, the role of the Party’s disciplinary apparatus as a self-correcting mechanism to mitigate its adverse effects, and the evolving dynamics between institutions and leadership that shape politicking and power struggles within the Politburo.

The fourth chapter discusses the officers and personnel of the Court, particularly how they obtained and benefited from their positions. In so doing, the chapter reveals another additional cost wardship imposed – as much as the Crown and its favourites profited from wardship, many of the proceeds were also secreted away by its officers. This originated at the very top – Masters of the Court certainly took bribes from those seeking to obtain wardships, to the bottom, with the Court’s county officer, the feodary. The chapter includes the case study of one such feodary, John Goodhand, whose activities can be traced through the surviving documentary record. Goodhand, as well as making the usual extortions, was accused of kidnapping children he claimed were in wardship – ‘sheep committed to the wolf’ in one court document. Found guilty, he was briefly imprisoned and fined £1,000. But from the Crown’s perspective, he had been an indefatigable servant who had raised Court revenues in his county. After the fine was paid, he re-entered royal service with a letter from Charles I protecting him from future prosecutions.

In that the Crown was only able to appropriate a very small proportion of the potential revenues that might have accrued from wardship, the fourth chapter explains how this was typical of the other fiscal instruments adopted by the Tudors and, more especially, the early Stuarts to raise funds. In particular, the inability of the Crown to prevent massive embezzlement by its officers and agents is emphasised. In the longer term, the atrophying fiscal capacity of the English state and its inability to provide security from even modest external threats helped precipitate the English Civil War.

This chapter discusses the background and characteristics of the Desolate Boedelskamer’s staff, in order to analyze how they contributed to the professionalization of insolvency procedures in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Through a closer examination of the ways in which the institution dealt with fraud or mistakes, it will become clear how it helped to create a more professional and trustworthy insolvency procedure. Ultimately, it was the daily labor of commissioners and subordinate officials that constituted the foundation of the systemic trust generated by the Desolate Boedelskamer as a crucial means to repair broken relations between insolvents and their creditors.

The American and allied military presence in Afghanistan peaked between late 2010 and mid 2011. For the next ten years, the major debate in Washington was how many troops to withdraw, how quickly. The announced unilateral American withdrawal was the defining fact of the war for its final decade. Policymakers treated the debate over troop numbers as a proxy for a debate over larger goals. But there are other aspects of strategy, like reconstruction and diplomacy, that simply cannot be subsumed within a debate about troop numbers, aspects that went unaddressed during the US’s gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan. Withdrawing troops without achieving the other objectives is how the United States gradually abandoned the rest of its war aims as slowly and expensively as possible.

The previous chapters reveal that purchasers have markedly lower social status and fewer connections to the Crown. For critics of office-selling, this lack of social status constituted prima facie evidence of their “undeserving” nature and the “ambitious” behavior they will exhibit in office. Yet, this is not necessarily the case: Low-status purchasers may not act differently or may be simply seeking for an opportunity to advance socially. This chapter tests the validity of these claims by combining data on the individual characteristics of buyers with the timing and profitability of the position they sought. Statistical exercises reveal that, in line with its detractors, office buyers with “worse” traits flocked to positions that offered higher profit potential and at times in which the Crown was more desperate and less likely to vet them. From the point of view of the colonial populations, this was negative selection: Sales abetting those with the most to gain financially and the least ability to rein in to enter the colonial administration. Namely, venal officials. These findings set the stage for future chapters exploring the consequences of this change for the colonial administration.

Aside from elite collusion and administrative capture, the arrival of venal officials spelled the end of the Pax Hispannica – primarily in the key Viceroyalties of Peru and Mexico but also in its other territories. Through the collection of eighteenth-century local-level uprising data, the chapter shows that provinces in high demand during sales exhibited a disproportionate number of uprisings per capita vis-à-vis those less demanded. Administrative venality also exacerbated subsistence crises created by eighteenth-century weather events such as drought in Mexico or El Niño(a) in Peru and Bolivia. In addition to more uprisings, provinces ruled by more venal officials also saw greater geographic segregation of the indigenous population. By the 1770s, provinces more exposed to venality show stronger signs of displacement of indigenous populations away from their original sixteenth-century locations. Together, these findings show that as the colonial era approached its end, different areas of the empire already had different “governance baggage” depending on their earlier exposure to venality: with those more exposed experiencing more uprisings and more displacement than those less so.

This chapter examines how exchange participants resolve uncertainties in corrupt transactions by focusing on the buying and selling of government positions, a typical form of corruption in China. Drawing on sixty-two in-depth interviews, this chapter suggests that corrupt transactions are highly embedded in strong-tie relationships, the power structure of which is often imbalanced. Exchange participants who are connected through strong ties have a strong incentive to cooperate and exchange favors because the cost of losing “hostages” (e.g., ganqing – deep feelings of emotional attachment – and human capital investment in maintaining exchange relations) and mianzi (“face,” which is used to describe reputation and social esteem) is high and difficult to recover. We also find that favor-seekers, who are often low-power actors, develop power-balancing strategies, such as bribe payments and disclosing compromising information, to win exchange opportunities and lower the risk of exploitation by high-power actors (power-holders who are favor-givers). Given that corrupt intermediaries are commonly brought in when a strong tie between favor-seeker and favor-giver does not exist, this chapter also empirically examines how corrupt exchanges involving intermediaries are governed. We find that face functions as a primary assurance and enforcement mechanism regulating corrupt transactions facilitated by intermediaries.

This chapter employs a case study approach to explore two high-profile mega-projects, chosen for their global visibility and substantial negative impacts on Brazil’s economy and society. Initially heralded as catalysts for economic prosperity and national pride, these projects were later uncovered by police investigations to be deeply rooted in corruption. Analysis of public documents reveals that corruption was embedded from the inception of these mega-projects, with decisions driven by collusive, deliberate, and criminal intentions rather than mere ignorance. Empirical research on corruption and collusion in project management is scarce due to the clandestine nature of these activities and the challenges in data collection. Existing studies frequently rely on conceptual analyses rather than empirical evidence. The chapter introduces the concept of ‘mega-projects for mega-corruption’ to illustrate the extensive immorality involved and the role of the Malevolent Hand in facilitating corruption through strategic misrepresentation. By examining two cases involving oil refineries and soccer stadiums, the chapter underscores the necessity of robust mechanisms to combat corruption in project management. It aims to enhance practitioners’ awareness and emphasizes the need for empirical research and effective policies, such as establishing independent advisory bodies and implementing whistleblowing policies, to ensure accountability and protect public interests.

This chapter explores three particular circumstances where integrity has been found to be breached in tennis, namely doping, match-fixing and other less serious offenses, such as failure to report or failure to cooperate. The chapter goes on to explain anti-doping jurisprudence in tennis, the nature of proceedings, the relevant burden of proof and the intricacies of “intent” and “fault,” as well as the standard of “no fault or negligence” and “no significant fault or negligence.” The section on anti-corruption examines match-fixing by athletes and third parties, and also by umpires and other officials, as well as the sanctions imposed under relevant rules. These offenses are typically associated with legitimate betting and may involve money laundering and other non-predicate offenses.