Exploring the controversies and problems surrounding post-communist transitions, this innovative volume brings together a distinguished group of political scientists, economists, historians, and sociologists. Within a strong theoretical framework, the book moves between general issues of transitology and specific analyses. Hungary, a state that has weathered political and economic transition more successfully than most, is used as the volume's case study for illuminating both comparative and regional issues. By bridging the divide between area studies and comparative politics, this book will be a key resource for advanced students and for scholars in East-European/post-communist studies, comparative politics, and international relations.

This volume explores the impact of democratization and marketization on the environment in East Central Europe. The essays investigate: how the twin processes of change affect the physical environment; the expression of environmental interest; and environmental management policies.

Exploring the tensions inherent in transition, this perceptive book offers a wide-ranging overview of the impact of democracy and capitalism on the former Soviet republics. Leading scholars assess the region's daunting problems in the key realms of privatization, democratization, foreign investment, agrarian reform, local governance, and market economics. The contributors argue that the central dilemma facing all these fledgling countries is the inherent contradiction between the immediate pursuit of privatization and foreign investment and the long-term policy goal of democratization. Offering both theoretical and comparative perspectives on the far-reaching implications of nation-building and democratic transition, this valuable study will enable both students and scholars to comprehend the unique difficulties of transition.

The economic, political and geopolitical future of Central Asia has been subject to speculation since the region emerged from under the Soviet banner. With contributions from Central Asian, Russian, US and Japanese experts, this book gives an analysis of the issues and choices facing the region.

These gripping biographies poignantly illustrate the strengths and the vulnerabilities of professional housewives and of families facing social change and economic uncertainty in contemporary Japan.

Calhoun innovatively examines how the ideology of liberal democracy influences one of the most contentious and potentially traumatic and divisive issues facing countries transitioning from authoritarian regimes to democracy: how to confront the past violations of human rights. Competing views of liberal democracy frame debates about how to confront the past and in particular how to deal with the truth of systematic human rights violations. Democratic values may not determine the precise method of dealing with the past - whether through truth commissions, lustration, or tribunals - but the very process of debate inherent in democratic theory and practice has important implications for the perceived fairness of the result. These implications are examined through a comparison of transitional justice in East Germany, Poland and Russia. The result is a provocative integration of democratic theory and comparative politics.

Questions of who can access land and who is excluded from it underlie many recent social and political conflicts in Southeast Asia. Powers of Exclusion examines the key processes through which shifts in land relations are taking place, notably state land allocation and provision of property rights, the dramatic expansion of areas zoned for conservation, booms in the production of export-oriented crops, the conversion of farmland to post-agrarian uses, “intimate” exclusions involving kin and co-villagers, and mobilizations around land framed in terms of identity and belonging. In case studies drawn from seven countries, the authors find that four “powers of exclusion”—regulation, the market, force and legitimation—have combined to shape land relations in new and often surprising ways. Land debates are often presented as a conflict between market-oriented land use with full private property rights on the one side, and equitable access, production for subsistence, and respect for custom on the other. The authors step back from these debates to point out that any productive use of land requires the exclusion of some potential users, and that most projects for transforming land relations are thus accompanied by painful dilemmas. Rather than counterposing “exclusion” to “inclusion,” the book argues that attention must be paid to who is excluded, how, why, and with what consequences. Powers of Exclusion is a path-breaking book that draws on insights from multiple disciplines to map out the new contours of struggles for land in Southeast Asia. The volume provides a framework for analyzing the dilemmas of land relations across the Global South and beyond.