According to conventional wisdom, rising corruption reduces economic growth. And yet, between 1978 and 2010, even as officials were looting state coffers, extorting bribes, raking in kickbacks, and scraping off rents at unprecedented rates, the Chinese economy grew at an average annual rate of 9 percent. In Double Paradox, Andrew Wedeman seeks to explain why the Chinese economy performed so well despite widespread corruption at almost kleptocratic levels.Wedeman finds that the Chinese economy was able to survive predatory corruption because corruption did not explode until after economic reforms had unleashed dynamic growth. To a considerable extent corruption was also a by-product of the transfer of undervalued assets from the state to the emerging private and corporate sectors and a scramble to capture the windfall profits created by their transfer. Perhaps most critically, an anticorruption campaign, however flawed, has proved sufficient to prevent corruption from spiraling out of control. Drawing on more than three decades of data from China―as well as examples of the interplay between corruption and growth in South Korea, Taiwan, Equatorial Guinea, and other nations in Africa and the Caribbean―Wedeman cautions that rapid growth requires not only ongoing and improved anticorruption efforts but also consolidated and strengthened property rights.

In this volume, several leading foreign policy and international relations experts consider the long term prospects and implications of US foreign policy as it has been shaped and practiced during the presidency of George W. Bush. The essays in this collection - based on the research of well-respected scholars such as Ole Holsti, Loch Johnson, John Ruggie, Jack Donnelly, Robert Leiber, Karen Mingst, and Edward Luck - offer a clear assessment: while US resources are substantial, Washington's ability to shape outcomes in the world is challenged by its expansive foreign policy goals, its exceptionalist approach to international relations, serious questions about the limits of its hard power resources as well as fundamental changes in the global system. Illustrating one of the central ironies of the contemporary situation in foreign affairs and international relations: that at the very time of the ‘unipolar moment,’ the world has become globalized to such an extent that the unilateralism of the Bush Administration leads as much to resistance as it does to coercion, compliance, and cooperation. American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World will be of interest to students and scholars of politics and international relations.