At the Gleneagles summit in July 2005, the heads of state from the G-8 countries - the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom - called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the African Development Bank to cancel 100 percent of their debt claims on the world's poorest countries. The world's richest countries have agreed in principle to forgive roughly $55 billion dollars owed by the world's poorest nations. This article considers the wisdom of the proposal for debt forgiveness, from the standpoint of stimulating economic growth in highly indebted countries. In the 1980s, debt relief under the "Brady Plan" helped to restore investment and growth in a number of middle-income developing countries. However, the debt relief plan for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) launched by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1996 has had little impact on either investment or growth in the recipient countries. We will explore the key differences between the countries targeted by these two debt relief schemes and argue that the Gleneagles proposal for debt relief is, at best, likely to have little effect at all. Debt relief is unlikely to help the world's poorest countries because, unlike the middle-income Brady countries, their main economic difficulty is not debt overhang, but an absence of functional economic institutions that provide the foundation for profitable investment and growth. We will show that debt relief may be more valuable for Brady-like middle-income countries than for low-income ones because of how it leverages the private sector.

Beginning in 1993, left or communist successor parties have achieved electoral success in several postcommunist countries as critics of neo-liberal reform. They have focused their electoral appeals on the social costs of reform, promising greater public welfare and moderation of economic policies. The present volume examines the impact of these parties on social policy in Poland, Hungary, Russia, Eastern Germany, and the Czech Republic, asking: Do left parties commit greater resources to social policy, or are they constrained by finances, international pressures, or their own conversion to market ideology? Do they seek to promote a social-democratic model of the welfare state, or look to models that assign the state a more limited role? Are they acting opportunistically in appealing to popular grievances or effectively building a consensus around a policy agenda? Answers to these questions are used to address a broader theoretical concern: What does being "left" mean in the postcommunist context?

The book is intended for a wide audience and has been written in a style which is readily accessible to people from many different disciplines.

Cappelen Akademisk Forlag (a leading Norwegian Publisher) are pleased to announce the publication of a new and highly challenging book on the rise of New Public Financial Management (NPFM) reforms. Edited by Olov Olson, James Guthrie and Christopher Humphrey, the book is the outcome of a unique two year collaborative project involving 24 senior accounting academics from eleven different countries, including Australia, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States of America. The book is intended for a wide audience and has been written in a style which is readily accessible to people from many different disciplines. As John Meyer, Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, observes in his foreword to the book: "This book is about the rise and international impact of a social movement trying to reform public management around the world along rational and rationalistic lines. The roots of the movement are in professional accounting, especially in the private sector, and has gained considerable force in the last two decades, and has had widespread effects on the ways public organizations are perceived, on policies governing them, and sometimes on organizational practices.

In response to scores of requests, this textbook edition of Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries has been abridged to convey the core arguments of the book in a format appropriate for classroom use.

The authors explore the complex and reciprocal interactions between a society's dominant beliefs, values, and attitudes about politics and the nature of its political system. Among the issues they address are: to what extent is political culture cause or effect; how can its causal importance for democracy be weighed; what are the most important elements of a democratic political culture; and how are these elements developed over time?

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