An introduction to political crime provides a comprehensive and contemporary analysis of political crime including both violent and nonviolent crimes committed by and against the state in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and other advanced industrialized democracies since the 1960s.

In the Dynamics of Political Crime, Jerrfrey Ian Ross provides the most comprehensive and contemporary discussion of the phenomenon of political crime- crimes committed both by and against the state- in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom during the past three decades. Written by a recognized critical criminologist, this volume develops a new theory of political crime and thoroughly reviews definitional and conceptual issues, and effects of different types of political crime. Ross discusses both violent and nonviolent oppositional crimes, as well as state crimes such as political corruption, illegal domestic surveillance, and human rights violations.

The first thorough study of the co-existence of crime and democratic processes in Indian politics In India, the world's largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic processes exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why are one-third of state and national legislators elected--and often re-elected--in spite of criminal charges pending against them? In this eye-opening study, political scientist Milan Vaishnav mines a rich array of sources, including fieldwork on political campaigns and interviews with candidates, party workers, and voters, large surveys, and an original database on politicians' backgrounds to offer the first comprehensive study of an issue that has implications for the study of democracy both within and beyond India's borders.

Treason and magic were first linked together during the reign of Edward II. Theories of occult conspiracy then regularly led to major political scandals, such as the trial of Eleanor Cobham Duchess of Gloucester in 1441. While accusations of magical treason against high-ranking figures were indeed a staple of late medieval English power politics, they acquired new significance at the Reformation when the 'superstition' embodied by magic came to be associated with proscribed Catholic belief. Francis Young here offers the first concerted historical analysis of allegations of the use of magic either to harm or kill the monarch, or else manipulate the course of political events in England, between the fourteenth century and the dawn of the Enlightenment. His book addresses a subject usually either passed over or elided with witchcraft: a quite different historical phenomenon. He argues that while charges of treasonable magic certainly were used to destroy reputations or to ensure the convictions of undesirables, magic was also perceived as a genuine threat by English governments into the Civil War era and beyond.

Level of compliance - one of the most important prerequisites of good governance - varies widely across countries of the Global North and the less developed, Global South. Acts of non-compliance, such as electoral irregularities, dubious deals between private and public sectors, questionable role of the justice systems and financial scandals, though they vary greatly across countries, are an omnipresent reality of contemporary life. This volume has brought together a number of case studies of such deviant behavior in political, juridical and corporate fields, from several countries of Asia, Europe and South America, within a common framework. Instead of a moral approach based exclusively on the legality and illegality of the act, the authors of these essays dissect non-compliance analytically, taking culture and context into account. They argue that, while criminal and corrupt dealings deserve to be exposed by all means from an ethical point of view, seen from an interdisciplinary angle, one needs to probe deeper into the dynamic that leads to such non-compliance with the law in the first place.