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.

Stock market liberalizations lead private investment booms. In a sample of 11 developing countries that liberalized their stock markets, 9 experience growth rates of private investment above their non-liberalization median in the first year after liberalizing. In the second and third years after liberalization, this number is 10 of 11 and 8 of 11, respectively. The mean growth rate of private investment in the three years immediately following stock market liberalization exceeds the sample mean by 22 percentage points. The evidence stands in sharp contrast to recent work that suggests capital account liberalization has no effect on investment.

This timely study is the first to examine the relationship between competition for energy resources and the propensity for conflict in the Caspian region. Taking the discussion well beyond issues of pipeline politics and the significance of Caspian oil and gas to the global market, the book offers significant new findings concerning the impact of energy wealth on the political life and economies of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. The contributors, a leading group of scholars and policymakers, explore the differing interests of ruling elites, the political opposition, and minority ethnic and religious groups region-wide.

Placing Caspian development in the broader international relations context, the book assesses the ways in which Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey are fighting to protect their interests in the newly independent states and how competition for production contracts and pipeline routes influences regional security. Specific chapters also link regional issues to central questions of international politics and to theoretical debates over the role of energy wealth in political and economic development worldwide. Woven throughout the implications for U.S. policy, giving the book wide appeal to policymakers, corporate executives, energy analysts, and scholars alike.

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.

This book illuminates the central role played by international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) in the emergence and development of a comprehensive world polity. The contributors argue that the enormous proliferation of INGOs since 1875including international environmental organizations, human rights groups, bodies formed to regulate technical standards, and economic development organizations, among othersboth reflects and contributes to the spread of global institutions and cultural principles based on models of rationality, individualism, progress, and universalism. The contributors contrast this world-polity perspective to other approaches to understanding globalization, including realist and neo-realist analyses in the field of international relations, and world-system theory and interstate competition theory in sociology.

The volume considers transnational organizing as a historical process of the creation of global rules and norms, changing over time, that have identifiable effects on social organization at the national and local levels. The chapters provide empirical support for this approach, identifying specific mechanisms that translate global cultural assumptions and prescriptions into local social activity, such as the creation of state agencies, the formulation of government policies, and the emergence of social movements. The first part of the book deals with social movement INGOs, including environmental groups, womens rights organizations, the Esperanto movement, and the International Red Cross. The second part treats technical and economic bodies, including the International Organization for Standardization, population policy groups, development organizations, and international professional science associations.

Trading relations in Vietnam's emerging private sector are shaped by two market frictions: the difficulty of locating trading partners and the absence of legal enforcement of contracts. Examining relational contracting, we find that a firm trusts its customer enough to offer credit when the customer finds it hard to locate an alternative supplier. A longer duration of trading relationship is associated with larger credit, as is prior information gathering. Customers identified through business networks receive more credit. These network effects are enduring, suggesting that networks are used to sanction defaulting customers.

In 1992, a year before his death, Yasusuke Murakami published in Japanese An Anti-Classical Political-Economic Analysis: A Vision for the Next Century (English translation, Stanford, 1996). A work that distilled decades of research and thought by a distinguished economic theorist turned social scientist and philosopher, it sold more than 25,000 copies in Japan despite its highly scholarly nature. The book enjoyed such immediate recognition because it offered a sanguine vision for the community of nations and because Murakami's vision was supported by acute insights on, and seminal analyses of the crucial issues relating to economic growth, equality, peace, and cultural diversity we face at the end of the twentieth century.

This volume presents nine essays - by five political scientists, three economists, and a historian - that critically evaluate the vision and analyses in Murakami's book by focusing on his two key contributions. The first is "polymorphic liberalism," a new type of liberalism that reflects the needs of both developed and developing economies and the realities of the diversity of cultures; the second is "developmentalism," a long-term, multifaceted policy intervention in catch-up economic growth. The volume also contains, as appendixes, two essays that further a more complete understanding of Murakami's book: a brief summary of Murakami's "new economics," his replacement for neoclassical economics, and a discussion of England as the first developmentalist success.

All the essays deal, in one way or another, with Murakami's answers to such questions as: What new world order must be created to best provide peace and security to nations? What shared beliefs or principles can help evolve this new world order that is menaced by regional wars and serious international confrontations caused by political, economic, and ethnic-cultural conflicts? How will the character of industrialization change, and what must we do to best respond to changes that are likely to increase political and economic interdependence among nations? And what roles must the United States, the European Union, and Japan play to secure world peace, to maintain an orderly international trade regime, and to reduce disparity in nations' income and wealth?

The global trend that Samuel P. Huntington has dubbed the "third wave" of democratization has seen more than 60 countries experience democratic transitions since 1974. While these countries have succeeded in bringing down authoritarian regimes and replacing them with freely elected governments, few of them can as yet be considered stable democracies. Most remain engaged in the struggle to consolidate their new and fragile democratic institutions.

Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges that they face. In addition to the complete hardcover edition, Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies is available in two paperback volumes, each introduced by the editors and organized for convenient course use. The first paperback volume, Themes and Perspectives, addresses issues of institutional design, civil-military relations, civil society, and economic development. It brings together some of the world's foremost scholars of democratization, including Robert A. Dahl, Samuel P. Huntington, Juan J. Linz, Guillermo O'Donnell, Adam Przeworski, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Alfred Stepan.

The second paperback volume, Regional Challenges, focuses on developments in Southern Europe, Latin America, Russia, and East Asia, particularly Taiwan and China. It contains essays by leading regional experts, including Yun-han Chu, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, Thomas B. Gold, Michael McFaul, Andrew J. Nathan, and Hung-mao Tien.