Two political scientists comment on Thomas Ambrosio's The Geopolitics

of Demographic Decay: HIV/AIDS and Russia's Great-Power Status (Post-Soviet

Affairs, 22, 1, January-March 2006).

Ambrosio's three indicators of great-power capacity, Russia's society, military, and economy, are reviewed in terms of his argument about how the projected effects of HIV/AIDS weakens each factor.

Bestselling author Francis Fukuyama brings together esteemed academics, political analysts, and practitioners to reflect on the U.S. experience with nation-building, from its historical underpinnings to its modern-day consequences. The United States has sought on repeated occasions to reconstruct states damaged by conflict, from Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War to Japan and Germany after World War II, to the ongoing rebuilding of Iraq. Despite this rich experience, there has been remarkably little systematic effort to learn lessons on how outside powers can assist in the building of strong and self-sufficient states in post-conflict situations. The contributors dissect mistakes, false starts, and lessons learned from the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq within the broader context of reconstruction efforts in other parts of the world, including Latin America, Japan, and the Balkans. Examining the contrasting models in Afghanistan and Iraq, they highlight the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq as a cautionary example of inadequate planning. The need for post-conflict reconstruction will not cease with the end of the Afghanistan and Iraq missions.

This timely volume offers the critical reflection and evaluation necessary to avoid repeating costly mistakes in the future. Contributors: Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution and Stanford University; James Dobbins, RAND; David Ekbladh, American University; Michèle A. Flournoy, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Francis Fukuyama, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Larry P. Goodson, U.S. Army War College; Johanna Mendelson Forman, UN Foundation; Minxin Pei, Samia Amin, and Seth Garz, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; S. Frederick Starr, Central Asia Caucacus Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; F. X. Sutton, Ford Foundation Emeritus; Marvin G. Weinbaum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In this Article, we describe an emerging arena of global administration. We claim that this arena, not bounded by a state, raises accountability problems of a kind different from those addressed by conventional administrative law. And we argue that measures designed to address these problems will have potentially large implications for democratic theory and practice. Our argument starts from the premise—stated here without nuance—that something new is happening politically beyond the borders of individual states and irreducible to their voluntary interactions. To distinguish these developments from what is commonly called “international law and politics,” we use the term “global politics.” The emergence of global politics is marked by a proliferation of political settings beyond domestic boundaries. This proliferation expands the range of relevant political actors, while shifting our understanding of political units and of relations among them: the emergence of human rights as limits on Westphalian sovereignty was a first step in this shift, but not the last.

The latest volume in this popular series focuses on the best ways to evaluate and improve the quality of new democratic regimes. The essays in part one elaborate and refine several themes of democratic quality: the rule of law, accountability, freedom, equality, and responsiveness. The second part features six comparative cases, each of which applies these thematic elements to two neighboring countries: Brazil and Chile, South Africa and Ghana, Italy and Spain, Romania and Poland, India and Bangladesh, and Taiwan and Korea.

Allen S. Weiner examines to what degree the global "war on terror" that has erupted since September 11, 2001 fits the "just war" doctrine of international relations or even whether it can properly be considered a war at all in terms of positive international law. Whether or not these labels apply is not merely a matter of academic debate, Weiner notes, but has broader implications for the international legal responsibilities of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters of the "war on terror."

The story of how the Angolan government was induced to begin creating checks and balances, from a starting point of massive corruption, is a case study in building institutions from scratch. A dysfunctional state has been driven by a combination of domestic and external pressure to take some initial steps toward accountability.