This article considers issues pertaining to the linkages between rural populations, migration from and to rural areas, and the environment, focusing on developing countries in the latter part of the 20th century. more

May 2005 - Scholars of postcommunist change are beginning to take analytical note of a recent wave of regime liberalizations. What do we make of it? As scholars, we have misdiagnosed the trend. While we have rightly focused on the collapse of moderately authoritarian regimes in the face of mass resistance movements, we must begin to do more comparative analysis that includes illiberal countries that have become more authoritarian during the same period. Behind the headlines about liberal oppositions facing down corrupt, illiberal incumbents, the analytically salient pattern might be the instability of illiberal democracies and their movement in either a more democratic or authoritarian direction. more

This paper examines the conditions under which the so-called Soviet model of industrialization was introduced into East Central Europe. While it is difficult to define direct Soviet economic policy, one can discern the Soviet interest and its direct economic impact by analyzing Czechoslovakia and Romania in terms of both their internal development and their relations with the Soviet Union. No doubt, the primacy of politics is the main component of the Soviet relationship to East Central Europe; this paper, however, will focus on the economic side of that relationship. more

Photo essays by journalist J. Carl Ganter, a member of the Navigating Peace working group, chronicle water and sanitation endeavors in three resource-strapped regions of Mexico. more