This is the first of five ambitious volumes theorizing the structure of governance above and below the central state. This book is written for those interested in the character, causes, and consequences of governance within the state and for social scientists who take measurement seriously. The book sets out a measure of regional authority for 81 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific from 1950 to 2010. Subnational authority is exercised by individual regions, and this measure is the first that takes individual regions as the unit of analysis. On the premise that transparency is a fundamental virtue in measurement, the authors chart a new path in laying out their theoretical, conceptual, and scoring decisions before the reader. The book also provides summaries of regional governance in 81 countries for scholars and students alike. Transformations in Governance is a major new academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states up to supranational institutions, down to subnational governments, and side-ways to public-private networks. It brings together work that significantly advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series targets mainly single-authored or co-authored work, but it is pluralistic in terms of disciplinary specialization, research design, method, and geographical scope. Case studies as well as comparative studies, historical as well as contemporary studies, and studies with a national, regional, or international focus are all central to its aims. Authors use qualitative, quantitative, formal modeling, or mixed methods. A trade mark of the books is that they combine scholarly rigour with readable prose and an attractive production style. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the VU Amsterdam, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

"The book examines some of these questions in a historic perspective, arguing that the depletion of natural resources in the Basin of Mexico is not just a recent phenomenon."--BOOK JACKET.

"Science tends to generalize, and generaliza tions mean simplifications . . . . And generaliza tions are also more satisfying to the mind than details. Of course, details and generalizations must be in proper balance: Generalizations can be reached only from details, while it is the generalization which gives value and interest to the detail:' . . . (A. Szent-Gyorgy, Science 1964) The first edition of this book, published in German as Tabak abhiingigkeit in 2001, was prompted by the fact that no single volume was available in Germany or elsewhere summarising the adverse repercussions of cigarette smoking on human health. As far as my own research was able to ascertain, the last comprehensive work dealing with this subject was writ ten in Germany by the Dresden internist, F. Lickint, whose Tabak und Organismus was published in 1939 by the Hip pokrates-Verlag. All subsequent monographs in this field have tended to focus on detailed aspects, and there has been no shortage of publications on subjects such as how smokers can quit smoking, healthy eating for smokers etc. Friends and colleagues abroad have urged me to prepare an English language version of Tabakabhiingigkeit. In gladly complying with this suggestion, I have intentionally prepared an up dated and slightly enlarged new edition, taking account of the rapidly proliferating literature on the subject up to the start of 2002. The harmful sequelae of smoking are played down by politicians in many industrialised countries, including Ger many.

In this study of environmental risks in ten of the world's major cities, the contributors examine the hazard experiences of and analyze the future risks. They conclude that the natural disaster potential of the biggest cities is expanding at a pace which exceeds the rate of urbanization.