Conventional sovereignty assumes a world of autonomous, internationally recognized, and well- governed states. Although frequently violated in practice, the fundamental rules of conventional sovereigntyrecognition of juridically independent territorial entities and nonintervention in the internal affairs of other stateshave rarely been challenged in principle. But these rules no longer work, and their inadequacies have had deleterious consequences for the strong as well as the weak. The policy tools that powerful and well-governed states have available to "fix" badly governed or collapsed statesprincipally governance assistance and transitional administration (whether formally authorized by the United Nations or engaged in by a coalition of the willing led by the United States) are inadequate. In the future, better domestic governance in badly governed, failed, and occupied polities will require the transcendence of accepted rules, including the creation of shared sovereignty in specific areas. In some cases, decent governance may require some new form of trusteeship, almost certainly de facto rather than de jure.

Since most of the world's sovereign states are now democracies, there is a growing scholarly focus on "good" or "better" democracy, and on how improvements can not only be measured, but encouraged.

"If Russia eventually reverts to a full-blown autocratic regime, it is not inconceivable that tension and competition once again will define Russian-American relations. At this critical moment in Russia's internal development, American foreign policy makers cannot afford to be disengaged."

Three experts on Russian elections analyze the surprising degree to which Russian voters supported their leaders, especially Putin, in the December 2003 Duma elections and the March 2004 presidential election. Drawing on the results of surveys of a nationally representative sample of Russians of voting age made between December 19, 2003, and February 15, 2004, and then between April 4 and May 11, 2004, the authors identify some distinctive trends in voting behavior. The results of the election are analyzed in terms of the views and characteristics of the people who voted in particular ways. The trends revealed by the surveys and the authors' analysis are used to consider how Putin's Russia compares to "delegative democracies" in Latin America.

The field of authoritarian subtypes has usefully described the third wave's undercurrent, an international trend toward plebiscitarian politics among persistent dictatorships. Yet classification does not replace explanation and the proliferation of "authoritarianism with adjectives" risks diverting attention from the core question of comparative regime change studies: Under what conditions do authoritarian regimes become democracies? This paper attempts to reorient the study of contemporary authoritarianism with a theory of ruling parties and coalition management. Whether electoral or exclusionary, authoritarian regimes with ruling parties prove more robust than other nondemocratic systems. Statistical analysis of 135 regimes during the period 1975-2000 shows that the presence or absence of multiparty elections, the key feature of the brand new authoritarianism, has no significant impact on regime survival while party institutionalization remains a strong predictor of regime longevity. Process tracing in four cases with limited multiparty politics details the causal relationship between ruling parties and regime persistence. Egypt and Malaysia evince a pattern of durability in which the dominant party resolves intra-elite conflict and prevents the defection of influential leaders. Iran and the Philippines show that the decline of ruling party institutions generates elite polarization and public rifts, a necessary but insufficient condition for successful opposition mobilization and regime change. Contrary to widespread expectations, elections do not destabilize authoritarian regimes. Authoritarian regimes that have neglected the institutions of coalition maintenance destabilize elections.

The enlargement of the EU to Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) candidates, Turkish candidacy and the Stabilization and Association Process in the Balkans, provides researchers with intriguing opportunities for exploring the effects of international actors on democratic and rule of law reforms in a diverse group of countries.

The fifth enlargement round (Enlargement) of the European Union (EU), which took place on May 1st 2004, is rightly recognized to be a momentous landmark in the history of modern European integration; the culmination of a fifteen-year process that has variably transformed and will continue to deeply impact the regime characteristics of the post-communist New Member States (NMS) and the remaining candidates (Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Turkey) - as well as the EU governance system and its perception of itself as an international actor.

This paper will address some of the legal and institutional issues that arise in relation to the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), its genesis, rationale and policy context. These include the interaction between the ENP and other legal instruments governing EU relations with the neighbourhood states, the appropriateness of its methodology and structures, and the approach taken towards the membership aspirations of (some of) the states concerned. It will focus in particular (and with an emphasis on the Eastern European states) on the EU's emphasis on the rule of law, in the light of its overall objectives in relation to the ENP states, especially its security objectives.