Argues that new democracies face consolidation challenges due to campaign finance corruption and the unwillingness of politicians to reform rule of law enforcement. Mainstream theories assert that democracy cures corruption. In market economies, however, elections are expensive and parties, with ever-thinning memberships, cannot legally acquire the necessary campaign funds. In order to secure electoral funds, a large number of politicians misappropriate public funds. Due to the illicit character of these transactions, high officials with conflicts of interest prefer to leave anticorruption enforcement mechanisms unreformed and reserve the right to intervene in the judicial process, with dire consequences for the rule of law. In No Rule of Law, No Democracy, Cristina Nicolescu-Waggonner demonstrates that when corrupt politicians are in power—true of nearly all new democracies—they will protect their office and fail to implement rule of law reforms. Consequently, these polities never reach a point where democracy could and would cure corruption. This dysfunction is tested in one hundred cases over sixteen years with significant results. In the case of the Czech Republic, for example, which is regarded as a consolidated democracy, there is systematic corruption, misappropriation of state funds, an unreformed judiciary, and arbitrary application of law. The only solution is a powerful, independent, well-funded anticorruption agency. Romania, one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, established, at the European Union’s request, powerful anticorruption bodies and punished corrupt leaders, which created the predictability of enforcement. It is the certainty of punishment that curtails corruption and establishes true rule of law.

This volume compares the different conceptions of the rule of law that have developed in different legal cultures. It describes the social purposes and practical applications of the rule of law and how it might be improved in the varied circumstances.

Authors Costa and Zolo share the conviction that a proper understanding of the rule of law today requires reference to a global problematic horizon. This book offers some relevant guides for orienting the reader through a political and legal debate where the rule of law (and the doctrine of human rights) is a concept both controversial and significant at the national and international levels.

The discussion of the norm of the rule of law has broken out of the confines of jurisprudence and is of growing interest to many non-legal researchers. A range of issues are explored in this volume that will help non-specialists with an interest in the rule of law develop a nuanced understanding of its character and political implications. It is explicitly aimed at those who know the rule of law is important and while having little legal background, would like to know more about the norm.

Writing at the time of political and social crisis in Athens, Aristophanes was an eloquent yet bawdy challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. The Achanians is a plea for peace set against the background of the long war with Sparta.

Rule of law and constitutionalist ideals are understood by many, if not most, as necessary to create a just political order. Defying the traditional division between normative and positive theoretical approaches, this book explores how political reality on the one hand, and constitutional ideals on the other, mutually inform and influence each other. Seventeen chapters from leading international scholars cover a diverse range of topics and case studies to test the hypothesis that the best normative theories, including those regarding the role of constitutions, constitutionalism and the rule of law, conceive of the ideal and the real as mutually regulating.