Choose a concept from your major or from a course you are currently taking . . .

GEOG 040
World Regional Geography

Concept: Crony capitalism

In addition to using your textbook as a source of information, search Gale Virtual Reference Library for a topic overview.

I found an article from the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences that provides a definition and some good background information. 1

An MLA citation is provided at the end of the article. Make sure to check the citation for correctness.

Take a look at additional sources recommended in the Bibliography at the end of the article.

Check The CAT to see if Penn State University Libraries have any of the books shown in the article’s Bibliography.

I requested 2 books from the Bibliography from other campuses using I Want It. 2, 3

I then searched the catalog for the phrase ‘crony capitalism’ – The CAT uses single quotation marks to designate a phrase.

I found an additional book, First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring America’s Prosperity, that has a chapter about ending crony capitalism, so I requested this from another campus using I Want It. 4

If any articles are shown in the Bibliography, search for them by title, using LionSearch.

Full text of the article shown in the Bibliography is not available through any of our databases. I would have to request the article using ILLiad, Penn State’s interlibrary loan.

I’d like to find some magazine or journal articles on my concept, so I’ll check the following Penn State University Libraries’ databases.

• Academic Search Complete

Notice that this database uses double quotation marks to search for a phrase:

I didn’t find many articles on my concept, but there is an article from the magazine New Republic that provides a good example of crony capitalism in India and China. 5

I also found recent articles in the Libertarian magazine Reason and in The Wall Street Journal. 6, 7

• ProQuest (multiple databases)

Make sure to check the Research Guide for the subject area related to your topic for suggestions for other databases.

Since my concept is from my geography course, I looked at the Geography Research Guide, which suggested the Web of Science database. I found another good article, published this year, from the Harvard Business Review. I had to follow the Get It! link to access the full text. 8

However, I also checked the Political Science, the Business, and the Economics Research Guides, since my concept also deals with those areas. Using one of the recommended databases from the Political Science Research Guide, I found a great article, “The Problem of ‘Crony Capitalism’: Modernity and the Encounter with the Perverse” from the scholarly, peer-reviewed journal Thesis Eleven. 9

Now, to find an image . . .