The Fading Miracle provides a lucid account of economic policy in West Germany from the late 1940s up to the present. First published in hardback in 1992, this paperback edition has been updated to include events since then. The authors describe and evaluate the major policy controversies and decisions, and place particular emphasis on the characteristically German institutions of policy counselling and their role in policy formation. The book will be of interest to students and teachers of economics, and to all those with an interest in the development of the greatest economic power in Europe.

In this book a foreign affairs analyst takes a hard look at the influence that U.S. officials and organizations brought to bear between 1960 and 1976 on the armed forces and police, large corporations, political parties, news media, and regional development agencies of Brazil.

The War Ledger provides fresh, sophisticated answers to fundamental questions about major modern wars: Why do major wars begin? What accounts for victory or defeat in war? How do victory and defeat influence the recovery of the combatants? Are the rules governing conflict behavior between nations the same since the advent of the nuclear era? The authors find such well-known theories as the balance of power and collective security systems inadequate to explain how conflict erupts in the international system. Their rigorous empirical analysis proves that the power-transition theory, hinging on economic, social, and political growth, is more accurate; it is the differential rate of growth of the two most powerful nations in the system—the dominant nation and the challenger—that destabilizes all members and precipitates world wars. Predictions of who will win or lose a war, the authors find, depend not only on the power potential of a nation but on the capability of its political systems to mobilize its resources—the "political capacity indicator." After examining the aftermath of major conflicts, the authors identify national growth as the determining factor in a nation's recovery. With victory, national capabilities may increase or decrease; with defeat, losses can be enormous. Unexpectedly, however, in less than two decades, losers make up for their losses and all combatants find themselves where they would have been had no war occurred. Finally, the authors address the question of nuclear arsenals. They find that these arsenals do not make the difference that is usually assumed. Nuclear weapons have not changed the structure of power on which international politics rests. Nor does the behavior of participants in nuclear confrontation meet the expectations set out in deterrence theory.