Many countries have adopted the form of democracy with little of its substance. This makes the task of classifying regimes more difficult, but also more important.

Appendices to article available at link below.

A new narrative about Post-Soviet Russia is taking hold in policy, media, and academic

circles and shows signs of entrenching as a new conventional wisdom. By this reading, Russia's experiment with democracy has flat-out failed. So misconceived and mismanaged were the political and economic reforms of the 1990s that they have fueled mass disenchantment with democratic norms and brought authoritarianism back into repute. Russians, in short, are said to be giving up on democracy.

For those concerned with democratization in the communist world, the final years of the Soviet Union were a truly exhilarating time. At the end of the Gorbachev era, the Soviet Union experienced an explosion of grassroots nongovernmental activity. For the first time in nearly a century, civic groups, trade unions, political parties, and newspapers organized and operated independent of the state. 1 In the final year preceding the collapse of the USSR, these newly formed organizations also cooperated with each other, forming horizontal links in their shared quest to challenge the Soviet system. Most impressive were the miner's strikes in 1989 and again in 1991, as well as the mass demonstrations on Manezh Square in downtown Moscow that occurred repeatedly throughout fall 1990 and spring 1991. At times, hundreds of thousands filled the expansive square. Russian society was politicized, organized, and mobilized. The Soviet state had to respond. Occurring in the shadow of decades of totalitarian rule in the Soviet Union, this kind of social activity was remarkable. The proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and exponential rise in citizen participation in these groups fueled hope that a proto-civil society was taking root--one capable of strengthening Russia's young and tenuous democracy.

The immediate response of President Bush and his administration to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States was superb, both purposeful and principled  a military, political, and diplomatic success. But what comes next? In his State of the Union address, Bush suggested specific targets of future phases of the war  the axis of evil of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. But what has been missing in the discussion of the second stage (and perhaps the third, fourth, and fifth stages) of the war on terrorism is an articulation of the general principles that will guide policy in difficult times ahead. The new threat to American national security and the American way of life is no less threatening than such earlier challenges as the defeat of fascism in Europe and imperialism in Japan during World War II, or the containment and ultimate destruction of world communism during the Cold War. A grand vision of the purposes of American power is needed not only to shape strategy, but also to sustain support from the American people and Americas allies.

...

Just about a year ago, this newly created Subcommittee opened its formal hearings with a look at the U.S.-European relationship. I said at the time I felt that the transatlantic relationship was the most important relationship this nation had. Today, in the aftermath of 911, I feel this relationship is even more important and in many respects stronger than ever.

It is fitting today that we open our hearings with what I consider the second most important relationship we have, that with Russia. U.S.-Russian relationships have significantly changed since the terrorist attacks on September 11.

Russian President Putin, in what some have defined as a bold defiance of many in his own population, his bureaucracy and his military, has seized upon the tragedies of the World Trade Center and Pentagon as an opportunity to transform relations with the U.S. from distant and sometimes hostile to one of broad cooperation and new opportunities in many fields.

By identifying terrorism as the common enemy and associating Russia with the common cause of the United States and others to deal with global terrorism, President Putin seems to be attempting to forge a new alliance with the West and with the United States.

...

The transition from communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy. Since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of the twenty-eight new states have abandoned communism, but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies. The remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidated "transitional regimes." This article seeks to explain why some states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rule. In endorsing actorcentric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization, this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancien régime to new regime that can account for both democracy and dictatorship as outcomes. Situations of unequal distributions of power produced the quickest and most stable transitions from communist rule. In countries with asymmetrical balances of power, the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful. In countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage, democracy emerged. Conversely, in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage, dictatorship emerged. In between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime and its challengers was relatively equal. Rather than producing stalemate, compromise, and pacted transitions to democracy, however, such situations in the postcommunist world resulted in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers. The regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated, unstable, partial democracies.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, questions have arisen as to which course the United States should sail in the new international order. In this volume, some of the nation's foremost foreign policy experts present carefully crafted and bold perspectives of what America's global role should be. All contributors, leading authorities in the fields of economics, history, international relations, and political science, offer alternative viewpoints. These sharply drawn approaches permit the general reader and scholar alike to glean an understanding of the main schools of thought about American foreign policy today.

They are written in accessible prose without esoteric language or scholarly jargon. The past decade witnessed a transition from an era of bipolar confrontation with the Soviet Union to a new and still-emerging epoch. Although American economic, military, and diplomatic influence stood unrivaled in the past decade, the future looks much less predictable. The unique insights represented in this volume will help inform the reader about possible courses America can navigate in uncharted seas. Rogue states, humanitarian interventions, terrorism, major and middle powers, international organizations, global trade agreements, and other political and economic developments are analyzed in the context of the policies recommended in this volume. The perspective spans the spectrum from global activism to antiglobalization.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous country; its citizens are perhaps the best educated on the continent. It is the world's sixth-largest producer of oil. Nigeria also has probably the most elaborate system of government in the region. Yet the country teeters perilously close to massive civil upheaval.

In this compelling new work, Suberu examines the profound political contradictions that make up Nigeria, a nation whose leaders have constantly tinkered with a colonial federal legacy that sought to balance the country's three major ethnic groups. He explores the evolution of Nigerian federalism through its various constitutional experiments and administrative redesigns, including those in the periods of military rule.

While acknowledging the genius of Nigerian federalism in trying to subdue ethnic and regional conflict, Suberu expertly analyzes the troubling flaws in a system that breeds corruption, prioritizes distribution over development, and encourages the country's further political fragmentation.

In the book's final chapter, Suberu outlines bold constitutional reforms that seek to promote institutional innovation in Nigerian federalism to keep pace with the country's growing demographic and ethnopolitical complexity.

What went wrong in Russias decade-old post-communist transition? A group of leading young scholars answer this question by offering assessments of five crucial political arenas during the Yeltsin era: elections, executive-legislative relations, interactions between the central state and the regions, economic reforms, and civil-military relations. All of the contributors recognize that adverse historical legacies have complicated Russian democratization. They challenge structural explanations that emphasize constraints of the pre-existing system, however, and concentrate instead on the importance of elite decisions and institution-building. The authors agree that elites failure to develop robust political institutions has been a central problem of Russias post-communist transition. The weakness of the state and its institutions has contributed to a number of serious problems threatening democratic consolidation. These include the tensions between the executive and the legislature, the frail infrastructure for successful market reform, and the absence of proper civilian control over the armed forces.