Hoover Institution Press publication ;

Contains previously published essays.

The contributions to this volume demonstrate how the principles of fiscal responsibility and individual accountability that have been applied to economic and social policies - essentially free market principles - can be applied successfully to environmental policy. The authors offer ten commonsense reforms as a starting point, all based on the compelling arguments that a new system of positive incentives can get us more environmental quality at lower cost. These reforms include land lease programs for nontraditional commodity production, long-term transferable land permits, landowner compensation for regulated endangered species property, and performance-based (as opposed to technology-based) water and air pollution laws.

The demise of communism in the Soviet Union could not have occurred without the activism of dissident, anticommunist leaders who created and nourished a climate in which ordinary Russians gained the courage to stand up to and defeat communist control. But with communism ousted, what new form of government and what new leaders will emerge in Russia, a society that has never known democracy? Michael McFaul, a research associate at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, and Sergei Markov, an assistant professor at Moscow State University, interviewed anti-communist leaders and collected the documents of anticommunist parties in the months preceding and immediately following the August 1991 attempted coup d'etat. To examine the range of the political spectrum in Russia, they also talked to procommunist leaders who emerged to oppose Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, nationalist and anti-Semitic leaders of movements such as Pamyat', labor unions, Christian movements, and organizations opposed to the division of the Soviet Union. What emerges is a kaleidoscope of leaders with distinct ideas on key issues facing Russia: how to reform the economy, what role the market should play in a new economic system, how to respond to growing demands from non-Russian republics for independence, what leaders can be trusted, what Russia's relations with the West should be, and what form of government would be best for Russia. Gathered here are essays offering historical background on the parties, selected interviews with prominent members of these groups, and important party documents. Whether democracy will flourish in Russia remains in question. The parties profiled here, actively involved in the debate over Russia's future, offer readers an insider's look into contemporary Russian politics.

In this latest collection of his always provocative essays, Thomas Sowell once again demonstrates why he is one of the most thoughtful, readable, and controversial thinkers of our time. With his usual unrelenting candor, Sowell cuts through the stereotypes, popular mythology, and "mush" surrounding the critical issues facing our nation today. Combining reason and common sense with actual historical and statistical evidence, he challenges the assumptions of those cultural and political elites he calls "the anointed" - those who are "presuming or pretending to know answers that could be applied through government programs" - and offers a hard-hitting perspective that is uniquely his own.

How did Boris Yeltsin - judged by most analysts and politicians the obvious underdog going into the 1996 Russian presidential election - emerge as the clear winner? Was Yeltsin's landslide reelection as free and fair as it appeared? In June 1996, for the first time in a thousand years, Russian citizens were given the chance to select their head of state in a democratic election. Yet the reformist incumbent, Boris Yeltsin, seemed poised for certain defeat at the hands of the Communist Party leader Gennadii Zyuganov; six months earlier, in parliamentary elections, Russian voters resoundingly rejected proreformist candidates in favor of those from the Communist Party and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Michael McFaul Analyzes three major factors that combine to explain why Yeltsin's victory should have been expected, namely, the "revolutionary" nature of the electorate's choices, polarizing and consolidating effects of the presidential election itself, and the superior, modern campaign strategy of Boris Yeltsin. In addition to the analysis, McFaul offers possible scenarios for Russia's next presidential election, as well as the potential future of democratic consolidation in Russia.