Every international system or society has a set of rules or norms that define appropriate behaviors. These norms are, however, never obeyed in an automatic fashion. Perhaps more than any other setting the international environment is characterized by organized hypocrisy. Actors violate rules in practice without at the same time challenging their legitimacy. In nineteenth-century East Asia this was true for countries embracing the European sovereign state system of formal equality and autonomy, and the Sinocentric Confucian system of hierarchy and dependency. The West imposed the treaty port system which violated the sovereign principle of non-intervention. China accommodated the West, tacitly jettisoning demands for ritual obeisance. Japan chose those principles that were most suitable for its material interests. Korea, however, dominated by a literati class whose position was associated with Confucian principles, failed to pursue policies that might have maintained Korean independence.

The post-Cold War world is divided into two worlds - a liberal core and a realist periphery. The core and the periphery, however, are not permanently divided, and their interaction in Europe is particularly dynamic. In general, the core powers - led by the United States - have moved to expand their zone of peace and prosperity eastward. And while Russia should (and often says it does) feel threatened by this eastern expansion, Moscow has generally pursued a policy of integration with the West for the last decade.

For almost two centuries, Americans expected that their public schools would cultivate the personal, moral, and social development of individual students, create citizens, and bind diverse groups into one nation. Since the 1980s, however, a new generation of school reformers has been intent on using schools to solve the nations economic problems. An economic justification for public schoolsequipping students with marketable skills to help the nation compete in a global, information-based workplaceoverwhelmed other historically accepted purposes for tax-supported public schools.

Private sector management has become the model for public school systems as schools and districts are downsized, restructured, and outsourced. Recent reform proposals have called for government-funded vouchers to send children to private schools, the creation of self-governing charter schools, the contracting of schools to private entrepreneurs, and the partnerships with the business community in promoting new information technologies. But if there is a shared national purpose for education, should it be oriented only toward enhancing the countrys economic success? Is everything public for sale? Are the interests of individuals or selected groups overwhelming the common good that the founders of tax-supported public schools so fervently sought?

This volume explores the ongoing debates about what constitutes the common good in American public education, assessing the long-standing tensions between shared purposes and individual interests in schooling. It shows how recent school reform efforts, driven by economic concerns, have worsened the conflict between the legitimate interests of individuals and society as a whole, and demonstrates that reconstructing the common good envisioned by the founders of public education in the United States remains essential and unfinished work.

New theories and theory-based methodological approaches have found their way into Comparative Education - just as into Comparative Social Science more generally - in increasing number in the recent past. The essays of this volume express and critically discuss quite a range of these positions such as, inter alia, the theory of self-organizing social systems and the morphogenetic approach; the theory of long waves in economic development and world-systems analysis; historical sociology and the sociology of knowledge; as well as critical hermeneutics and post-modernist theorizing. With reference to such theories and approaches, the chapters - written by scholars from Europe, the U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand - outline alternative research agendas for the comparative study of the social and educational fabric of the modern world. In so doing, they also expound frames of reference for re-considering the intellectual shaping, or Discourse Formation, of Comparative Education as a field of study.

Having undergone a transition from military authoritarian rule in 1987, Korea quickly became the most powerful democracy in East Asia other than Japan. But the onset of a major economic crisis revealed the dark side of the Korean model of democracy. With that crisis, and the subsequent election of the country's most determined opposition figure as president, serious questions have arisen about the new democracy's vitality.

Institutional Reform and Democratic Consolidation in Korea examines the problems and prospects of democracy in Korea a decade after the transition from military authoritarian rule, including the key factors shaping the quality and viability of Korean democracy. The authors evaluate the reform agenda of recent years and explain

-Why the current electoral system is deficient in producing an effective government

-How the current system of local government autonomy is in fact just a variation of past authoritarian central control under the guise of democracy

-Why Korea will remain vulnerable to renewed economic crisis unless it can better address the fundamental structural flaws that hamper its economic competitiveness and the integrity of its financial system

-What steps have been taken to curtail the power of the deeply entrenched military, bureaucratic, and big business domination

-Why the National Assembly is neither autonomous nor capable of managing internal conflicts according to the rules of the democratic game

-How the Korean media moved out from under authoritarian government influence only to become diminished by a new commercialism and sensationalism

-How a new civic mobilization among the people has deepened democracy and contributed to democratic consolidation in Korea

-Why the previous government administration failed to prevent the economic crisis despite signs of troubled economic foundations

-What measures the new government should pursue to resolve the economic crisis and revive this once-prosperous democratic model

Institutional Reform and Democratic Consolidation in Korea presents a wide-ranging and balanced account of the political, economic, and cultural factors shaping Korean democracy and of the institutional reforms that are needed to deepen and consolidate this crucial experiment with democracy in East Asia.

This timely collection brings together many well-known scholars to systematically explore China's current government and assess that transition toward democracy. The contributors seek to bridge the gap between normative theories of democracy and empirical studies of China's political development by providing a comprehensive overview of China's domestic history, economy, and public political ideologies.

Expanded scientific activity is thought to benefit national economic development through improved labor force capacities adn the creation of new knolwedge and technology. However, scientific research activity expands as a global process and reflects the penetration of societies by a general rationalistic world culture. The authors point out that scientific expansion and the accompanying cultural penetration legitimate a board progressive agenda of social amelioration (e.g., by identifying environmental and health problems, and social welfare and human rights issues) that can result in regulation and direct constrainsts on productive economic activity in teh short term. Thus, science can be seen as encouraging a trade-off between short-term economic growth and boarder (and longer-term) social development. The effects of dimensions of scientific infrastrucutre on national economic growth are examined over the 1970-1990 period. Cross-national analyses show that the size of a nation's scientific labor force and training system has a positive effect on economic development, supporting conventional theories. However, indicators of national involvement in scientific research activity show negative effects on economic growth. Corollary analyses show that this negative effect is partially explained by the expansion of scientific activity into more socially relevant domains (e.g., medicine, environmental sciences, etc.) thus supporting the main arguments.

The progress of democracy in the world over the last quarter-century has been nothing less than remarkable. . . . But if the reach of democracy is greater than ever, it is also thinner and more vulnerable.

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"During the Yeltsin years, it became fashionable in the West to cite Russia's weak state as the source of Russia's ills. Putin has demonstrated after only a few months in office that the Russian federal state still has tremendous power-perhaps too much power-if the man in control of that state is vigorous, ambitious, and popular."

The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which began in August 1998, is unprecedented-at times involving armies from eight African states. Soldiers from Chad are fighting alongside regiments from Namibia, Angola, and Zimbabwe in defense of President Laurent Kabila. And on offense, the two main rebel groups, the Congolese Assembly for Democracy (which is known by the acronym RCD) and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), are backed by troops from Uganda and Rwanda. As Susan E. Rice, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, warned the House International Relations Committee in September 1998, "The fighting threatens regional stability, hampers economic progress, endangers the lives of millions of people, perpetuates human rights abuses, and impedes the democratic transformation of Africa's third-largest country." This war, Rice said, is potentially "among the most dangerous conflicts on the globe."

Yet, the war in Congo goes on almost unnoticed outside of Africa. While African heads of state spent much of the last year shuttling across the continent, wrestling with the crisis and searching for a peaceful solution, Congo has been largely missing from the agendas of the Western powers and multilateral organizations. Only in January, when the U.S. representative to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, taking advantage of his tenure as Security Council president to draw attention to Africa, did the war enter Western consciousness.

The conflict in the DRC is the first interstate war in sub-Saharan Africa since Uganda invaded Tanzania in 1978, and only the third since 1960. Although Africa is seen as a hotbed of violence and warfare, most conflicts have been intrastate in nature. Norms of sovereignty reinforced by clauses in the charter of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the constitutions of the various subregional organizations have effectively prevented cross-border conflict from the time of independence until now. The Ugandan and Rwandan-led invasion of Congo, as well as the presence there of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) intervention force, therefore represents a watershed in the recent history of African conflict. It appears that the forces preventing cross-border conflict since 1960 have become seriously weakened.

What are the implications of the rise of interstate war in Africa for peace and security on the continent? Why have Western powers been so reluctant to take an active role in resolving Africa's first "world war"? And what impact will the changing nature of warfare in Africa have on U.S. policy and the role of the United Nations there?