This book makes an important contribution to Soviet and third world studies by offering the reader a guide to the publications on development, a complex and evolving aspect of the Soviet view of the world.

This volume is the first work to emerge from a major international comparative research project exploring the political economy of globalization. This inter-disciplinary team of scholars is focusing on the semi-periphery of world power. Whether defined in social, cultural, economic or simply spatial terms, 'semi-peripheral' countries share two qualities: they are conscious of their subordination to the hegemonic powers at the centre of the global system - the United States and the European Union; they are also strong enough to have some ability to resist their domination. The structural position of these middle powers in global capitalism is unlike those countries at the centre that do not experience domination, and different from those Third World countries on the periphery that have no means to achieve more cultural and political autonomy, more distinctive and diversified development, or greater social equity and better income redistribution. Four countries in North America, Central America, Europe and the Antipodes - namely Canada, Mexico, Norway and Australia - have been selected in order to explore the complexities of globalization from the perspective of the semi-periphery. Opening chapters examine the international institutions, including the North America Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization and the European Union, which now amount to a quasi-constitutional conditioning framework for middle powers under globalization. In the second part, contributors detail the pressures with which these countries have to cope and consider their ability to pursue policies appropriate to the needs and democratically defined goals of each. And in the concluding part, after discussing the new economic, political and social issues of 'governing under stress', they appraise the possibilities for middle powers to chart distinctive national courses in the face of globalization's constraining challenge.

Political authority in todayOs leading democracies rests on generally shared perceptions by a given people that their government is responsible to them and considers each individual citizen equal under the law. Yet since the dawn of the industrial age, democratic governments have presided over economies that function on the basis of an unequal distribution of real resources. As globalization opens these economies, the gap between legal, ideal and economic reality widens and boundaries separating Othe peopleO of different democracies erode. This thought-provoking book explores the consequent challenge posed for the inherent legitimacy of democratic systems. When distinctive bonds between political power and social obligation break down, that erosion creates Odemocratic deficits.O Pressures build to reconstitute political authority beyond the state, and governance-in-practice grows ever more distant from democracy-in-principle. Nowhere is the deepening dilemma more evident than in the European Union. This book examines the contemporary breakdown and transformation of the democratic welfare state in Europe and draws fascinating contrasts with North America. In a cohesive and insightful collection of essays, a group of distinguished political scientists debates the implications of these trends both for theory and for policy.