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 paper examines the contributions of scholars of transitions by illuminating, first, key shifts in our theoretical understanding that occurred with the publication of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. Here it focuses on establishing different insights into the role of elections and, hence, the classification of regimes, as well as structural versus more voluntaristic interpretations of politics and, hence, the role of supposed preconditions. Second, it explores changes in research design that affect how we understand the role of states, nationalities and international factors as well as evaluate the importance of world regions and select units of analysis. Third, it looks at a central methodological challenge posed by the devices politicians choose during different modes of transition, especially the role of political pacts. A brief conclusion follows. This discussion is not intended to be comprehensive. It does not try to cover all of the relevant issues, critiques and literatures that have enriched the field over the last quarter century; nor does it address central questions concerning the definition of democracy, its quality or its testing and measurement that pose serious challenges for the future. Instead, it seeks to assess in broad brushstrokes how the field of democracy studies has changed with the publication of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule.

This Working Paper will be a chapter in an edited volume entitled The Diversity of Democracy: A Tribute to Philippe C. Schmitter, edited by Colin Crouch and Wolfgang Streck, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, US: Edward Elgar (forthcoming 2006).

The book honors the 20th anniversary of the publication of the landmark book, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule by Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter.

If Vladimir Putin were to be asked whether he has been performing as an effective state-builder during the almost five years of his presidency, he would surely reply in the affirmative. And if he felt it necessary to buttress his response, he might mention his oft-cited promises to "strengthen the vertical" and establish "the dictatorship of the law" in Russia. But has Putin been engaging in effective state-building? Has he in fact been strengthening the Russian state? If by the term state-building one means authoritarian state-building, then the answer would be: "maybe yes," but also "maybe no."

On the other hand, if one is speaking of democratic state-building then the answer must be a unequivocally no. The aim of this essay is to examine the issue of Russian state-building as it has been elucidated and discussed by Western political theorists and by Russian analysts in the pages of the Russian press during 2004. The results of recent Russian public opinion polls will also be scrutinized.

The question of "what a democracy is - and is not," to borrow a well-known title, should rather be understood as falling along a continuum. The points of this continuum represent the minimum standards that modern theorists associate with the definition of a democracy, with the advent of new, more complex standards added as we move from one end of the continuum to the other. The minimalist standard, which can be termed Schumpterian/Huntingtonian/Przeworskian, associates democracy with elections, while a more maximal standard, as advanced by post-modern theorists, including feminists and other advocates of minority rights, requires democracy also to encompass political, and ultimately group, equality.

Many scholars claim that democracy tends to improve the material well-being of the poor. I argue that previous tests of this claim were flawed, particularly by sample bias. Once these flaws are addressed, there is no evidence that poor people have benefitted from living under democratic governments. This disturbing result suggests that democracies have not functioned well for their poorest citizens. I speculate about the reasons for this finding, and suggest avenues for further research.

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.

This paper argues that it is difficult to understand the effects of American democracy promotion abroad without examining the bureaucratic context from which the policy emerges at home. Which actors within the U.S. government are involved in promoting political and economic change abroad? What strategies and conceptual models guide them? What tools and resources do they bring to bear? How does the interaction of American bureaucratic politics affect the impact of American democracy promotion? Articulating this mix of goals, strategies, and resources helps explain incoherent patterns of outcomes on the ground.

This paper explore these questions by reference to the U.S. government's most ambitious democracy promotion efforts of the past decade: the effort to rebuild its former Soviet enemies into a democratic allies in the 1990s. Yet the patterns of American bureaucratic politics are not unique to this democracy promotion effort. While American democracy promotion has changed in tone and substance under the watch of George W. Bush, American domestic politics has powerfully shaped American democracy promotion in similar ways in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.

Why did Israeli women not fight for social equality until the late 1980s? And what changed their individual and collective willingness to act? The paper maintains that social action to improve women's positions in society did exist before the late 1980s but it was mostly not rebellious in the sense that it was not directed against men or the existing social order. The main factor behind the inaction is the lack of feminist ideologies that affect and support gender identities. This kind of feminist gender identity was inhibited in Israel by the inter-relations among three factors: (1) the lack of ideological pluralism, (2) the influence of traditional and religious beliefs, and (3) the effect of national, total, and masculine institutions (like the Israeli army). The same factors - or some combinations of these factors - may inhibit women's activism in other societies as well.

The authors examine the global expansion of higher educational enrollments over the 20th century. Rates of growth accelerated in virtually all countries after 1960. Drawing upon institutional arguments, we discuss the nature of this transformation and the historical trends that brought it about. A changed model of society came into place globally - one in which schooled knowledge and personnel came to be seen as appropriate for a wide variety of social positions, and where many more young people could be viewed as appropriate candidates for higher education. An older vision of education as contributing to a closed society and occupational system - with associated fears of "overeducation" - was replaced by an open-system picture of education as useful "human capital" for unlimited progress. This shift involves several global changes, including:

1. increasing global emphasis on democracy and human rights;
   
2. the advent of modern national development planning; and
   
3. the expansion of science as a broad authority in social life. The authors these arguments and several others using pooled panel regression analyses over the period 1900-2000.
   

They find support for the institutional argument, as well as for several more specific arguments regarding national variation: enrollments are higher in countries better organizationally linked-in to world society, where secondary enrollments are high, where economic development is higher, and where state control over education is low. But global trends dominate the analysis, such that many developing countries now have higher enrollment rates than European countries did only a few decades ago. The article discusses implications of a world in which all countries have large elite sectors schooled in institutions that have a great deal of cultural commonality.

In this decade, fostering democratic regime change in Iraq is the great challenge (or folly) before American foreign policymakers. In the previous decade, fostering democratic regime change in Russia was the great challenge (or folly) before American foreign policymakers. For much longer and with much greater capacity than Saddam Hussein's regime, the Soviet regime threatened the United States. The destruction of the Soviet regime and the construction of a pro-Western, democratic regime in its place, therefore, was a major objective of America foreign policy. Some presidents pursued this goal more vigorously than others: Nixon cared less, Reagan more.

Almost twenty years after Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and soon thereafter began the process of political change inside the USSR, it is still not clear what kind of regime will eventually consolidate in Russia. To date, however, the influence of the United States in fostering regime change inside the Soviet and then Russia has been limited. This paper explores the causes and consequences of US efforts at regime change in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia.