This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

First published in 1974, this classic work focuses on the relationships between landowners and the landless. It is now reissued with an extensive new section, 'Dynamics of Poverty' which grew out of the author's return to his field-area after a period of thirty years. It is rare to have a longitudinal study of the same society for such a long period of time; as such this is a unique and important contribution to the field of historical sociology. It will also be instrumental for formulating policy in developing countries for years to come.

Patronage in Ancient Society (1989) examines a subject central to the society of the ancient Mediterranean, bringing together the interests of ancient historians and sociologists, using ancient societies, and particularly Roman society, as the focus for their studies. In its comparative approach and its historical range this volume constitutes an important contribution to the study of patronage.

Populist rule is bad for democracy, yet in country after country, populists are being voted into office. Populism and Patronage shows that the populists such as Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi win elections when the institutionalized ties between non-populist parties and voters decay. Yet, the explanations for this decay differ across different types of party system. Populism and Patronage focuses on the particular vulnerability of patronage-based party systems to populism. Patronage-based systems are ones in which parties depend on the distribution of patronage through a network of brokers to mobilize voters. Drawing on principal agent theory and social network theory, this book argues that an increase in broker autonomy weakens the ties between patronage parties and voters, making latter available for direct mobilization by populists. Decentralization is thus a major factor behind populist success in patronage democracies. The volume argues that populists exploit the breakdown in national patronage networks by connecting directly with the people through the media and mass rallies, avoiding or minimizing the use of deeply-institutionalized party structures.This book not only reinterprets the recurrent appeal of populism in India, but also offers a more general theory of populist electoral support that is tested using qualitative and quantitative data on cases from across Asia and around the world, including Indonesia, Japan, Venezuela, and Peru.

This book provides a systematic analysis of how the understanding of corruption has evolved and pinpoints what constitutes corruption.