Democratization in Africa examines the state of progress of democracy in Africa at the end of the 1990s. The past decade's "third wave" of democratization, the contributors argue, has been characterized by retreats as well as advances. In some cases, newly established democratic orders have devolved into pseudo-democracies while, in other cases, superficial changes have been used as a cosmetic screen for continuation of often brutal regimes. The volume makes clear, however, that political liberalization is making significant headway.

The first section of the book ("Assessing Africa's Third Wave") offers several broad analytical surveys of democratic change and electoral processes in the 48 sub-Saharan African states. Frequent abuses are noted, but several contributors find room for guarded optimism. The second section ("South Africa: An African Success?") focuses on the dramatic developments in South Africa, the most advanced democracy on the continent but one faced with enormous challenges in the aftermath of apartheid. Essays in this section examine such issues as the role of nongovernmental organizations in the new political order, the ongoing and linked problems of racial and economic division, the demographics of public opinion on democracy, and the viability of the country's new constitution. The third section of the book ("African Ambiguities") considers more closely several other African states-Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, the Gambia, and Nigeria-all at different crossroads in their progress toward democracy.

From the Introduction:

"For the past three decades, there has been no lack of reasons to be pessimistic about Africa's future. But a more balanced reading is called for . . . There is significantly greater political freedom and more space for civil society in Africa today than a decade ago. Even as some states have disintegrated, others are moving forward to reconstruction. There is also a new ideological and intellectual climate. Unlike during the false start of the first liberation that came with decolonization, Africa today evinces a new political sobriety that is hardened (and even jaundiced) by experience, but not without hope."

The full effects of decisions made today about many environmental policies -including climate change and nuclear waste- will not be felt for many years. For issues with long-term ramifications, analysts often employ discount rates to compare present and future costs and benefits. This is reasonable, and discounting has become a procedure that raises few objections. But are the methods appropriate for measuring costs and benefits for decisions that will have impacts 20 to 30 years from now the right ones to employ for a future that lies 200 to 300 years in the future?

Rather than simply disassemble current methodologies, the contributors examine innovations that will make discounting a more compelling tool for policy choices that influence the distant future. They discuss the combination of a high shout-term with a low long-term diescount rate, explore discounting according to more than one set of anticipated preferences for the future, and outline alternatives involving simultaneous consideration of valuation, discounting and political acceptability.

Since 1992, the Japanese economy has been utterly stagnant, with signs of weak performance at every turn. Since 1997, Japan’s economy has experienced negative growth, a situation unprecedented in the postwar era. Most large Japanese corporations have engaged in extensive restructuring during this period, which has in turn contributed to 4.8 percent unemployment—higher than rates in the United States. Further, in 1998, the closure rate of small companies (3.8 percent) exceeded the start-up rate of new business ventures (3.7 percent).

This grim scenario has not always existed. Japan once fostered phenomenal growth, from the smallest of ventures to the largest of multinational companies. As is evident in organizations such as Sony and Honda, Japanese entrepreneurship once led the world in innovation. In the 1990s, however, this torch has passed to the U.S. economy, which has enjoyed an extraordinary boom, due in large part to Silicon Valley venture businesses. Why have Japanese entrepreneurial activities, formerly so robust, lagged behind?

In asking this question, other questions arise. Despite the present business climate, how can Japan revive its economy? How can it absorb its unemployed workers? Most important, how can Japanese entrepreneurship again take the lead, and restore the country’s economic health? This paper seeks to address these issues.

Published as part of the "Silicon Valley Networks" Research Project.

This report outlines the changes in energy supply that will be required over the next fifty years. I describe the ultimate objective of controls on greenhouse-gas emissions and set a stabilization target for greenhouse-gas concentrations that is designed to achieve this objective. I translate this target into limits on the emission of carbon dioxide and the burning of fossil fuels over the next century, and estimate requirements for carbon-free energy supply over this period. Finally, I describe options for achieving this transformation in world energy supply and outline near-term research and development priorities.

Life itself as well as the entire human economy depends on goods and services provided by earth's natural systems. The processes of cleansing, recycling, and renewal, along with goods such as seafood, forage, and timber, are worth many trillions of dollars annually, and nothing could live without them. Yet growing human impacts on the environment are profoundly disrupting the functioning of natural systems and imperiling the delivery of these services.

Nature's Services brings together world-renowned scientists from a variety of disciplines to examine the character and value of ecosystem services, the damage that has been done to them, and the consequent implications for human society. Contributors including Paul R. Ehrlich, Donald Kennedy, Pamela A. Matson, Robert Costanza, Gary Paul Nabhan, Jane Lubchenco, Sandra Postel, and Norman Myers present a detailed synthesis of our current understanding of a suite of ecosystem services and a preliminary assessment of their economic value. Chapters consider:

• major services including climate regulation, soil fertility, pollination, and pest control
• philosophical and economic issues of valuation
• case studies of specific ecosystems and services
• implication of recent findings and steps that must be taken to address the most pressing concerns

Nature's Services represents one of the first efforts by scientists to provide an overview of the many benefits and services that nature offers to people and the extent to which we are all vitally dependent on those services. The book enhances our understanding of the value of the natural systems that surround us and can play an essential role in encouraging greater efforts to protect the earth's basic life-support systems before it is too late.

All too often, researchers in the academic world find themselves cut off from their colleagues in other disciplines by the level of specialization required in their own fields. The gap between the social and physical sciences, in particular, seems unbridgeable to many scholars. Yet many of the problems confronting the world today demand an integrated approach.

The vast issue of global change -- encompassing changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the possibility of global warming, or the dramatic increases in world population and consequent increased pressures on land use and on political systems -- demands a problem-solving approach that integrates our knowledge about the nature of human interaction and activity with the scientific knowledge we have gained on atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial patterns of interaction.

Ecological and Social Dimensions of Global Change, published by the Institute of International Studies as part of its "Insights in International Affairs" series, is a collection of lectures by leading physical and social scientists and international legal experts on the implications of global changes in climate and in population, migration, and land use. (See the Table of Contents.) These lectures also examine the responses of the international legal and political communities to these complex changes.

The volume is composed of thirteen talks from an interdisciplinary graduate seminar conducted at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1992. The evolution of this seminar provides a cogent example of how research from a specific field, brought into an interdisciplinary teaching arena, becomes enriched by the input from researchers in other fields. The seminar as originally conceived focused primarily on the ecological dimensions of global change, but the numerous and fundamental links of any given ecological issue to its surrounding social circumstances persuaded the organizers to expand the focus to include the social dimensions of these problems as well. Both the physical and social scientists involved in the seminar subsequently incorporated knowledge gained from their colleagues into their own fields of study. In addition, seminar participants in the fields of legal and political policy-making were able to integrate each discipline's contributions into the prescriptions that they offered for the problem of global change. During the course of the development of this book from the lecture series, commentaries by scholars from a different academic field were added to a few of the original lectures, further broadening the focus.

Following each of the lectures is a transcription of the discussion from the classes which deepen and elaborate some of the key theoretical, methodological, and policy questions raised by the lecturer. In addition, a short bibliography and further questions for class discussion are suggested, making this an ideal text for coursework on the subject of global change. Each section of the book -- the ecological dimensions, the social dimensions, and policy and legal responses -- is preceded by a short introduction to the central ideas encompassed by the contributors to that section.

The demise of communism in the Soviet Union could not have occurred without the activism of dissident, anticommunist leaders who created a climate that gave ordinary Russians the courage to stand up to and defeat communist control. But with communism ousted, what new form of government and what new leaders will emerge in Russia, a society that has never known democracy? Michael McFaul, a Western scholar studying at Moscow State University, and Sergei Markov, an assistant professor at Moscow State University, interviewed anticommunist parties in the months preceding and immediately following the August 1991 attempted coup d'etat. To examine the range of the political spectrum in Russia, they also talked to procommunist leaders who emerged to oppose Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, nationalist and anti-Semitic leaders of movements such as Pamyat', labor unions, Christian movements, and organizations opposed to the division of the Soviet Union.