George W. Bush, it seems plausible to argue, wouldn’t have been elected president in 2000 if George H. W. Bush hadn’t been elected president in 1988. And George H. W. Bush wouldn’t have been elected president in 1988 if Ronald Reagan hadn’t invited him to be Reagan’s running mate in 1980. Hoover fellow Edwin Meese III describes how Reagan decided to issue that 1980 invitation–starting the Bushes on their way.

Despite being corrupt and unpopular, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) managed to hold onto power for seven decades before opposition candidate Vicente Fox won the presidency last July. How did the PRI manage this feat? Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Beatriz Magaloni, and Barry R. Weingast explain.

Although the term ethnic cleansing became part of the lexicon only with the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the brutal practices the term describes occurred with numbing frequency during the past century. Hoover fellow Norman M. Naimark on what causes ethnic cleansing—and how it can be stopped.

Since the 1960s liberals have held America’s moral high ground. Now conservatives want to charge the hill. By Hoover fellow Shelby Steele.