For almost three decades the U.S. embargo of Cuba was part of America's cold war strategy against the Soviet bloc. It should have been lifted after that ‘‘war’’ ended since Castro ceased to threaten the United States and its neighbors and adopted the standard rules of international behavior. But inertia, a powerful Cuban American lobby, and misguided politicians set new demands: democracy, improved human rights, and economic reform. When Castro demurred we tightened the sanctions in 1992 and again in 1996 with the Helms-Burton Law. The United States has never committed the resources necessary to overthrow Castro, however, and the pressures we have applied have utterly failed to advance the three objectives. Worse yet, in the post–cold war world the policy and political outlook that sustain it have become a strategic liability. They promote conflict, both within Cuba—where a crisis might draw in the U.S. military—and abroad, as occurred in 1999–2000 after the arrival in Florida of the rafter boy, Elián González. They allow pressure groups to stand in the way of the policy-making process of the U.S. government. For example, the lobby manipulated wishy-washy politicians in 1998–1999 and got the president to turn down a widely supported proposal for a bipartisan commission to conduct the first comprehensive evaluation of the policy in four decades. Finally, the imperialistic Helms-Burton Law alienates allies worldwide and will poison relations between the United States and Cuba for decades to come. Castro will benefit no matter what we do, but on balance he gains more if we maintain the sanctions because they provide a scapegoat for his own repression and economic failures even as they enable him to maintain his cherished global image as the ‘‘scourge of U.S. imperialism.’’ Castro can wage a worldwide campaign against the embargo to bolster his image knowing Washington is too inflexible to change it. Indeed, whenever Washington has lightened up, Castro has tightened up and effectively prevented further improvement. Lifting sanctions need not mean establishing friendly relations with Castro—which he would reject in any event—or supporting his efforts to get international aid without meeting standard requirements. The ultimate responsibility for maintaining this antiquated and potentially dangerous policy falls on politicians who either do not understand the need for, or for political reasons are afraid to support, a new policy to benefit both Americans and Cubans in the post–cold war world.

All countries have the right to defend their people from terrorists. Russia is no exception.

Many scholars have provided path-breaking contributions to the institutional analysis of systemic and systematic corruption. Descriptive studies focusing on corrupt practices and on the impact of corruption on economic development are abundant. Yet the literature has not yet isolated the main legal, organizational, and market-related causes of systemic corruption within the public sector in general and within the judiciary in particular.

This essay proposes a framework within which the institutional analysis of corrupt activities within the judiciary can be further understood in developing countries. First, an approach to the study of public sector corruption based on science, not on guesswork or intuition, must be verifiable if we are to develop reliable anticorruption policy prescriptions. Therefore, legal, economic, and organizational factors are proposed here to explain corruption within the judicial sectors of developing countries. Second, the economic theory of corruption should recognize that official corruption is a significant source of institutional inertia in public sector reforms. An account of the private costs and benefits of judicial reforms as perceived by public officials is also considered in this study.

July 1, 1998, marks the first anniversary of Hong Kong under Chinese rule. How has Hong Kong fared during its first year as the newly created Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region of China (HKSAR)? The one positive story was the HKSAR's successful defense of the fixed link between the Hong Kong dollar and the U.S. dollar, which serves as backing for Hong Kong currency. In almost every other respect, the people of Hong Kong are worse off than they were during the last years of British colonial rule. The greatest setback was in the political arena. Nearly two million Hong Kong residents lost the right to vote in the May 24, 1998, elections for thirty of the sixty representatives of the HKSAR's legislature, who were chosen from functional constituencies. In general, the principle of one man, one vote was violated in favor of extremely complicated, three-tiered, rigged electoral arrangements to ensure that pro-China candidates would constitute a legislative majority. Several civil liberties were eliminated or reduced. Mainland Chinese cronyism was reflected in the purchase of substantial stakes in Hong Kong firms by Hong Kong branches of mainland firms at a substantial discount to market prices, until the Asian financial crisis transformed connections with mainland business and political organizations from an asset into a liability. The stock and property markets lost up to half their peak August 1997 value. English-language education was curtailed over the objections of parents and students as numerous schools that formerly taught in English were converted into Chinese-language schools.