Dr. Mark Zupan’s book, “Inside Job: How Government Insiders Subvert the Public Interest,” is a powerful new work of value to political scientists as well as PR and marketing professionals doing business in the U.S. and abroad.

Inside Job by Mark A. Zupan

The book shows that while public sector integrity has been improving more rapidly in democracies than autocracies, governments by the people don’t always come up with government policies for the people.

Distrust of government in America explains the success, at least for now, of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. 

Monopolization of power on the supply side of policymaking threatens both the world’s largest democratic economy (the United States) as well as the largest autocratic economy (China).

Dr. Zupan relies extensively on data from Transparency International, a non-governmental organization established in 1993 to expose corruption in both the public and private sector.

He points out what might be obvious to some here in the U.S. — that once power is acquired, it is hard to dislodge.

Obviously, there’s much more to this effort that’s been some time in the development.

The seemingly uncontrollable political chaos around the world, the lesser known but just as powerful influences of non-political professionals in most governments, and the influences brought to bear by the lobbying industry, which is said to represent fee operations totaling around $5 billion just in Washington, D.C., alone, are all elements.

Dr. Zupan’s carefully developed and reasoned book is at the very least a critically important refresher course for those of us operating in the increasingly “delicate” international arena where power, politics and perhaps corruption as well will either demonstrate professional expertise or expensive naiveté.