Proponents of oil-led development believe that countries lucky enough to have "black gold" can base their development on this resource. They point to the potential benefits from enhanced economic growth and the creation of jobs, increased government revenues to finance poverty alleviation, the transfer of technology, the improvement of infrastructure and the encouragement of related industries. But the experience of almost all oil-exporting countries to date illustrates few of these benefits. To the contrary, the consequences of oil-led development tend to be negative, including slower than expected growth, barriers to economic diversification, poor social welfare performance, and high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Furthermore, countries dependent on oil as their major resource for development are characterized by exceptionally poor governance and high corruption, a culture of rent-seeking, often devastating economic, health and environmental consequences at the local level, and high incidences of conflict

and war. In sum, countries that depend on oil for their livelihood eventually become among the most economically troubled, the most authoritarian, and the most conflict-ridden in the world.

This volume of International Perspectives on Education and Society explores how educational research from a comparative perspective has been instrumental in broadening and testing hypotheses from institutional theory. Institutional theory has also played an increasingly influential role in developing an understanding of education in society. This symbiotic relationship has proven intellectually productive.

In light of the impact that comparative education research has had on institutional theory, the chapters in this volume ask where the comparative and international study of education as an institution is heading in the 21st century.

Chapters range from theoretical discussions of the impact that comparative research has had on institutional theory to highly empirical comparative scholarship that tests basic institutional assumptions and trends.

All over the world new ideas and models emerge on how to organize the higher education sector and its institutions. The contributions in this volume identify the most influential transnational models and investigate their origins and mechanisms of dissemination as well as the resulting consequences for national systems. Will global trends in higher education lead to homogeneity or will they result in an increased differentiation? This question is addressed by higher education researchers with very different disciplinary and national backgrounds. Contributors are, among others, Jürgen Enders, John W. Meyer, Christine Musselin and Kerstin Sahlin-Andersson.

The third volume of The Cambridge History of Russia provides an authoritative political, intellectual, social and cultural history of the trials and triumphs of Russia and the Soviet Union during the twentieth century. It encompasses not only the ethnically Russian part of the country but also the non-Russian peoples of the tsarist and Soviet multinational states and of the post-Soviet republics. Beginning with the revolutions of the early twentieth century, chapters move through the 1920s to the Stalinist 1930s, World War II, the post-Stalin years and the decline and collapse of the USSR. The contributors attempt to go beyond the divisions that marred the historiography of the USSR during the Cold War to look for new syntheses and understandings. The volume is also the first major undertaking by historians and political scientists to use the new primary and archival sources that have become available since the break-up of the USSR.

• Major new history of Russia in the twentieth century, using for the first time the new primary and archival sources that have become available since the breakup of the USSR
• The approach is both chronological and thematical, dealing with large trends such as the transformation of the peasantry, urbanization, and the non-Russian peoples
• Third volume in the new three-volume Cambridge History of Russia