Chairman King, Ranking Member Moloney and distinguished members of the committee, my name is Peter Henry Blair. I am Associate Professor of Economics at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. I am also a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and my research is funded by the National Science Foundation's Early CAREER Development Program. I have wirtten extensively on the economic effects of capital account liberalization. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the implications of my research for the financial services component of the recent U.S. trade agreements with Chile and Singapore.

The central question I want to address is: What is being constructed in El Salvador? Is it what I have elsewhere labeled a "hybrid regime?" Is it a democradura, that is, a "hard" democracy, or a dictablanda, a form of "soft" authoritarian rule? Is it, perhaps, a full-blown, consolidated democracy?

How do we characterize the nature of the Salvadoran transition?

The type of transition matters a great deal. This may seem obvious to many people, but it goes against the arguments of some who claim that the type of transition from authoritarian rule has no lasting effects. Some scholars have maintained that it doesn't matter how countries "transition" to another regime type because, after 10 or 15 years, the results tend to be similar. I do not believe this is correct; El Salvador illustrates why.

After the devastation of World War II, Germany and Japan built national capitalist institutions that were remarkably successful in terms of national reconstruction and international competitiveness. Yet both "miracles" have since faltered, allowing U.S. capital and its institutional forms to establish global dominance. National varieties of capitalism are now under intense pressure to converge to the U.S. model. Kozo Yamamura and Wolfgang Streeck have gathered an international group of authors to examine the likelihood of convergence to determine whether the global forces of Anglo-American capitalism will give rise to a single, homogeneous capitalist system. The chapters in this volume approach this question from five directions: international integration, technological innovation, labor relations and production systems, financial regimes and corporate governance, and domestic politics.

In their introduction, Yamamura and Streeck summarize the crises of performance and confidence that have beset German and Japanese capitalism and revived the question of competitive convergence. The editors ask whether the two countries, confronted with the political and economic exigencies of technological revolution and economic internationalization, must abandon their distinctive institutions and the competitive advantages these have yielded in the past, or whether they can adapt and retain such institutions, thereby preserving the social cohesion and economic competitiveness of their societies.

Over the course of the last century, political scientists have been moved by two principal purposes. First, they have sought to understand and explain political phenomena in a way that is both theoretically and empirically grounded. Second, they have analyzed matters of enduring public interest, whether in terms of public policy and political action, fidelity between principle and practice in the organization and conduct of government, or the conditions of freedom, whether of citizens or of states. Many of the central advances made in the field have been prompted by a desire to improve both the quality and our understanding of political life. Nowhere is this tendency more apparent than in research on American politics, a field in which concerns for the public interest have stimulated various important insights.

This volume systematically analyzes the major developments within the broad field of American politics over the past three decades. Each chapter is composed of a core paper that addresses the major puzzles, conversations, and debates that have attended major areas of concern and inquiry within the discipline. These papers examine and evaluate the intellectual evolution and natural history of major areas of political inquiry and chart particularly promising trajectories, puzzles, and concerns for future work. Each core paper is accompanied by a set of shorter commentaries that engage the issues it takes up, thus contributing to an ongoing and lively dialogue among key figures in the field.

Since Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, political theorists have depicted the state as "sovereign" because it holds preeminent authority over all the denizens belonging to its geographically defined territory. From the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 until the beginning of World War I in 1914, the essential responsiblities ascribcd to the sovereign state were maintaining internal and external security and promoting domestic prosperity. This idea of "the state" in political theory is clearly inadequate to the realities of national governments and international relations at the beginning of the twenty-first century. During the twentieth century, the sovereign state, as a reality and an idea, has been variously challenged from without and within its borders. Where will the state head in the age of globalisation? Can Catholic polilical thinking contribute to an adequate concept of statehood and government? A group of German and American scholars were asked to explore specific ways in which the intellectual traditions of Catholicism might help our effort lo rethink the state. The debate is guided by the conviction that these intellectual resources will prove valuable to political theorists as they work to revise our understanding of the state.

There is a reading of democracy in both these countries that is not optimistic. In a recent assessment of the nature of Brazil's democratic regime, Kurt Weyland characterized Brazil's democracy as "low quality." He bases this characterization on Brazil's gross level of inequality and the incapacity of Brazilian civil society effectively to demand that government redress inequality. He goes on to argue that it is precisely because Brazil's democracy is of "low quality" that it can survive so well.

Russia, once seen as America's greatest adversary, is now viewed by the United States as a potential partner. This book traces the evolution of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, and later Russia, during the tumultuous and uncertain period following the end of the cold war. It examines how American policymakers -- particularly in the executive branch -- coped with the opportunities and challenges presented by the new Russia.

Drawing on extensive interviews with senior U.S. and Russian officials, the authors explain George H. W. Bush's response to the dramatic coup of August 1991 and the Soviet breakup several months later, examine Bill Clinton's efforts to assist Russia's transformation and integration, and analyze George W. Bush's policy toward Russia as September 11 and the war in Iraq transformed international politics. Throughout, the book focuses on the benefits and perils of America's efforts to promote democracy and markets in Russia as well as reorient Russia from security threat to security ally.

Understanding how three U.S. administrations dealt with these critical policy questions is vital in assessing not only America's Russia policy, but also efforts that might help to transform and integrate other former adversaries in the future.

James M. Goldgeier is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Michael McFaul is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, the Peter and Helen Bing senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and an associate professor of political science at Stanford University.

Chechnya has been and remains one of the greatest stains in Russia's efforts to move toward a more open and democratic system . The Chechen wars, as Professor Michael
McFaul of Stanford University reminds us in this important essay, "rank as the most serious scars of Russia's troubled transition." Since 1994 these wars, with their vast destruction and terrible human rights abuses, have also posed an enormous policy (and moral) problem for American administrations intent on trying to better integrate Russia into the Western community of nations. Dealing with Chechnya has aroused much debate in and out of the US government-a debate that over the years has sadly declined.

In 2001 the Stanley Foundation and the Century Foundation established a task force to look at the broad question of the impact of American domestic political forces on US-Russia relations. (A report was issued in October 2002.) The first subject the task force discussed was Chechnya, which we labeled "the dog that did not bark." Professor McFaul made an impressive oral presentation on US policy on Chechnya, which we asked him to expand and bring up to date. This essay is the result, a detailed analysis of US policy from the Clinton to Bush administrations and the impact on that policy from forces within Congress and from the NGO community who tried to generate greater public debate and secure a tougher American response toward Russia's actions in Chechnya.

McFaul's tale is a sad one. Its bottom line is that US policy has had little impact on Russia's behavior in Chechnya. Similarly, while many like Senator Jesse Helms fought very hard to toughen policy, domestic political forces had little impact on changing it.

On 15-16 November 2002, the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law of the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University sponsored a workshop in Stanford, CA on "Regime Transitions from Communist Rule in Comparative Perspective." Over 40 individuals attended the workshop, including many notable American and international scholars. The six individual sessions of the workshop examined a variety of issues: the transitions model two decades later; whether transitions from communist rule are distinctive; theoretical perspectives seeking to explain the variation in outcome among post-communist regimes; and regional perspectives examining the variation in outcome in Central and Eastern Europe, the Slavic Region, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The workshop also sought to determine whether there is a compelling intellectual rationale for a larger scale, multi-year project on transitions from communism or if the workshop itself represented the capstone event.

The workshop was organized by Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Michael McFaul, Hoover Institution and Political Science, and Gail Lapidus, Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Studies. Workshop participants included scholars at many of the leading political science and government departments in the United States, as well as scholars associated with international academic institutions, governments, and development organizations. This report summarizes the presentations given as part of the workshop, and the discussion that followed. Every effort has been made to portray accurately the range of opinions expressed; however, space and organizational considerations resulted in omissions and paraphrasing. Kathryn Ducceschi, who served as a rapporteur during the meeting with John Cieslewicz, authored this document, and the workshop organizers served as editors.

Any errors in fact or interpretation should be attributed to the author and the editors.