Foreword

This year has seen a flood of media reports on recent and upcoming national elections from around the world. While the outcomes of these elections are often dramatic examples of political transitions, as in India or Taiwan, the transfers of power that have the deepest consequences are often less obvious and less public. These generational shifts and incremental openings rarely make headlines, but they play a defining role in the nature and direction of international relations. Understanding the long-term trends in a country’s leadership, society, and the relationship between the two is crucial to the development of stable relations and effective policy. This issue of the SAIS Review offers a wide range of articles that examine current leadership transitions and social development.

While economic developments and major political change in Asia are closely monitored in the West, subtle transitions in leadership are too often neglected. As the western press waits for electoral results in Moscow, the Russian Far East looks away from its European capital and toward China. Sherman Garnett analyzes the effects of this shift on Sino-Russian relations. Lyman Miller takes us inside China and argues that, while observers look for signs of a destabilizing power struggle, an important leadership transition has already taken place—the post-Deng era has begun. As a new generation takes its place in Beijing, a similar shift is occurring in Vietnam and Japan. Mark Sidel illuminates the internal workings of the Vietnam policymaking institutions and the domestic actors who were crucial to the recent normalization of relations with the US. In his discussion of Japan, Nathaniel Thayer focuses on the role of the Prime Minister and his cabinet. Hooshang Amirahmadi moves away from this focus on the power elite to discuss the rise of civil society in Iran. The case of Iran shows that even in states where the government is not in transition, subtle but important changes are taking place in society.

We have also included articles that examine the role of leaders in relation to society in other contexts. Howard Gardner offers a cognitive perspective on the issue, judging leaders based on their ability to draw the populace into the stories that they weave. He also indicates that leaders are influenced by their followers. Kristina Egan takes this bottom-up approach to show how the indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon have worked with Northern non-governmental organizations to force their own leaders to listen and change. Ambassador Ray Flynn outlines another mutually beneficial relationship, not between societal groups, but between a moral authority and a political superpower. As the most recent contributor to our “Ambassador’s Corner,” he discusses the common goals of the Vatican and the US in promoting global peace and development. Observers offer many explanations for the failure of structural adjustment programs, among them a lack of will on the part of the leadership in developing countries. Ho-Won Jeong provides alternative reasons, focusing on the failure of international financial institutions to take political and social considerations into the design of their structural adjustment policies.

Finally, we tried something completely new in this issue. In the past, the SAIS Review has held written forums on topics of special interest. With the new communication possibilities offered by the Internet, the Review decided to hold an electronic forum. In advance of the Second UN Conference on Human Settlements, we invited urban experts from six diverse countries to discuss political and economic issues related to urbanization. The outcome of this experiment, “Metropolis 2000,” is reproduced here.