Since the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush has rhetorically pledged to make the promotion of democracy abroad a primary objective of U.S. foreign policy, emphasizing the moral and strategic imperatives for advancing freedom around the world. At the same time, the United States has become both less liked and less admired by governments and societies around the world. Although its roots are deep, this latest spike in anti-Americanism comes largely as the result of Bushs most significant foreign policy initiative, the invasion of Iraq, which has been extremely unpopular both in democratic and nondemocratic states. In its history, the United States has probably never before suffered such a low international standing.

Although interest among sociologists in the consolidation and expansion of an international human rights regime has grown in recent years, little attention is accorded the formal procedures that allow individuals aggrieved by states to appeal directly to an international audience. Using data for 82 countries between 1976 and 1999, this article examines the political and cultural factors that affect the number and rate of individual human rights abuse claims filed with Human Rights Committee. Negative binomial and event history analyses indicate that a country's favorable human rights practices, political democracy, and membership in most non-Western civilizations significantly reduce the number and rate of claims emanating from a country. Conversely, extensive participation in international non-governmental organizations, membership in Western civilization, and intra-state diffusion processes increase the number and rate of claims filed against a country. Other factors, including post-communist regime changes, state participation in international governmental organizations, the World Human Rights Conference, and GDP per capita, have no impact. Results suggest that claims alleging state abuse of human rights

1. increase as a country's human rights practices worsen;
   
2. decline as effective means of recourse become available domestically; and
   
3. increase with the cultural empowerment of individuals.

Why does Nigeria have a history of failed republics, failed governance as well as false starts and dead-ends on the path to economic development, social coherence, and peace? Is the Fourth Republic condemned to the fate of previous ones, or can it rise above the heavy weight ofthe past and chart a different path for itself? In this volume of 26 chapters, put together to honour one of Nigeria's foremost political scientists, four generations of political scientists, economists, political economists, sociologists, psychologists, international relations experts, lawyers, historians and specialists in literature from Africa and North America provide fresh and succinct insights on these and other posers in original essays that range from the theoretical to the analytical, from those that are historical and comparative to those that focus on the current situation in that important African country.

The essays focus on. four cardinal points that sin post Nigeria's perennial struggle for democracy and good governance as cause, effect and terrain. These are the structure, history, processes and dynamics of the country's putative federal system; governance issues; the formation and transformation of identities; and the global contexts of the production and reproduction of the Nigerian state, economy and society.

The book will be of great value to Nigerians, friends of Nigeria, and all those interested in understanding the path that has led Nigeria to its present, state and in finding alternative pathways to a future that is more democratic, better governed, and more developed.