School Reform, Corporate Style Chicago 1880 – 2000
by Dorothy Shipps
University Press of Kansa

“Although Chicago made school reform history in the twentieth century, the performance of the system’s large majority of black, Latino and low-income students has not met reformers’ expectations. This failure lies at the heart of a question facing urban school systems across the nation: Why, despite a century of reform, have city schools failed to become what their citizens want?”

A Carnegie Corporation scholar in the education department of Teachers College at Columbia University, author Dorothy Shipps was managing director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research from 1996 to 1999. It was during this period that she became convinced “nothing is more important for educators than to master the politics of urban schooling,” and “urban school politics is fundamentally about power.” In other words, it’s not really about the students.

The book’s chapters trace the development of the modern school system from its formative stage, beginning in the 19th century, through racial upheaval and political sea changes to the recent reform movements Shipps sees as yielding demonstrably poor results. How could so many powerful, civic-minded corporate activists have achieved so little, she asks? The author’s careful research reveals why political reform agendas fail to affect the teacher-student relationships at the heart of performance improvements. For this reason, the lessons of Chicago can, and should, have far-reaching affects.

Immigration’s New Frontiers
edited by Greg Anrig, Jr. and Tova Andrea Wang
The Century Foundation Press

“For all of the passion that the debate over comprehensive immigration reform has aroused, just about everyone agrees that the status quo is a mess.”

Before 1995, about three-fourths of the nation’s immigrants settled in just six states: California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, New York and New Jersey. In the decade since, influx into these states has dropped by a third, while twenty-two other states have experienced extremely rapid growth in their immigrant populations. In these “new destination” states, most immigrants are recent arrivals with limited English and low incomes. To find out how governments there have responded to burgeoning immigrant populations, the nonpartisan Century Foundation commissioned papers that would help readers interested in immigration reform understand the extent to which absence of a functional federal system has impacted other levels of government in five key states.

With grant support from Carnegie Corporation, social policy experts Greg Anrig, Jr. and Tova Andrea Wang compiled these papers into Immigration’s New Frontiers. While each narrative presented is unique, the experiences of North Carolina, Iowa, Georgia, Minnesota and Nebraska share three overriding themes: (1) All the states initially showed a willingness to accommodate new immigrants; (2) Over time, all the states developed a more ambivalent attitude that tended to discourage acceptance of immigrants into mainstream society; (3) None of the states managed to find effective solutions to major public policy challenges posed by undocumented immigration. Indeed, if there is to be a workable solution, the editors conclude, “the federal government will have to provide it.”

Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics
by Carol Lancaster
The University of Chicago Press

Why is aid given? Today, a half century into foreign aid’s existence, it is a familiar and expected element in relations between states. But the reasons for aid remain cloudy, author Carol Lancaster contends, because it is “difficult to grasp fully the welter of events and how important apparently small or hidden details can be. “We need to understand not only the domestic politics of aid-giving countries, but the interests competing for influence over aid’s purposes and the manner in which governments manage their aid, to name just a few of many factors.

A Carnegie Scholar with decades of experience in U.S. government aid agencies, Lancaster provides case studies of five major donor countries—the United States, Japan, France, Germany and Denmark—focusing on aid’s myriad purposes and its evolution over time. While diplomatic and developmental goals play a prominent role, humanitarian relief, commerce, culture and promotion of democracy have also been in the mix, she points out. The author is confident that “aid is with us to stay,” but she warns that if the public cannot see how increased aid has accelerated development in a country, weakening support may pose “the most serious threat to the future of foreign aid.”

The Essentials of Global Politics
by Richard Langhorne
Hodder Arnold Publishing

Under-standing globalization is important, says Richard Langhorne, because it is drastically changing the way we live our personal lives and the institutions on which we depend. Yet the term globalization is so widely used that its meaning has become obscured. This straightforward overview of global politics explains how, over the past two centuries, the interests and actions of the peoples, organizations and institutions of our world have become more closely entwined and integrated, and it traces the ways technological advances, changing values, political priorities and social mores have affected this growing interdependence.

Using maps, charts and timelines to clarify difficult concepts, Langhorne, a Carnegie Scholar, covers the processes and consequences of globalization, the threats of conflict and terrorism as well as environmental and humanitarian disasters. He identifies the most influential actors on the global stage and clarifies the role of governments, civil organizations, markets and industries. And he asks: how are the irreversible consequences of the process of globalization to be made fair and broadly beneficial to the global community? While this critical question is beginning to be understood, he says, a plausible answer is not yet in sight.

Financing the 2004 Election
edited by David B. Magleby, Anthony Corrado and Kelly D. Patterson
Brookings Institution Press

“The federal election of 2004 centered on the contest for the presidency,” David B. Magleby reminds readers in the opening chapter of Financing the 2004 Election, due to “the intensity of feeling for and against the incumbent president, George W. Bush. These sentiments ran deep and motivated people to contribute to candidates, party committees and interest groups.” Add to that the “war on terror” and the lingering doubts about the disputed outcome of the 2000 presidential election, and it’s understandable that the 2004 election would break new ground in terms of the sums donated, and the sources.

How money was raised, spent and regulated in the 2004 federal election was also novel due to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002. Considered the most important piece of campaign finance legislation in nearly three decades, the legislation aimed to end the undue influence of soft money—stemming the funding surge from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals that had reached nearly $500 million in the past two election cycles. In nine instructive chapters, each written by an authority on money and politics, this book (written with research support from Carnegie Corporation) explores the changing landscape of campaign finance and outlines how individuals and interest groups found new ways to influence outcomes in 2004, continuing the inexorable rise in the costs of campaigns.

Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev
Volume 2: Reformer
edited by Sergei Khrush-chev
The Pennsylvania State University Press

While many Americans remember Khrushchev only as a Cold War bête noir, readers of his memoirs will form a more nuanced opinion. In Volume 2: Reformer, which covers the period from 1945 to 1956, the one-time Soviet Premier thinks back on the famine and devastation following World War II, through Stalin’s death to the struggle for power within the Communist Party.

These were dreadful times, for the most part, and Khrushchev’s recollections reveal the incompatibility between humanity and party policy. For instance: “I received letters from collective-farm chairmen that were simply heart-rending,” he recounts of the early post-war days. “ ‘So, Comrade Khrushchev …we have handed over everything and now have nothing left. We are sure that the party will come to our aid.’ …I knew of course he was deluding himself.”
There are detailed descriptions of struggle and progress, from agricultural production to the space program, as well as political developments and behind-the-scenes machinations. There are also eye-opening descriptions of the family life of Joseph Stalin, the story behind the trumped-up “Doctor’s Plot” and Khrushchev’s views on the intelligentsia. Perhaps the most unexpected feature of this book, which was funded in part by Carnegie Corporation, is the translation of notebooks written by Khrushchev’s wife, Communist Party official and propagandist Nina Petrovna, found by her daughters after she died.

Volume 1: Commissar 1918 – 1945 can be found in its entirety online at Google book search.

Why Not Parties in Russia?
by Henry E. Hale
Cambridge University Press

If the existence of political parties is inevitable and essential to electoral competition as many theorists claim, why does Russia remain nonpartisan more than fifteen years after Gorbachev introduced his democratizing reforms? The problem, according to political scientist and author Henry E. Hale, is that theories of party development only examine countries where political parties already exist—which creates a false sense of their inevitability and ignores the role of independent politicians.

Hale’s extensive research in the former Soviet Union, supported largely by Carnegie Corporation, examines the puzzle of stalled party development beginning with Russia’s first multiparty parliamentary elections in 1993. A number of surprising facts emerge: Russian voters recognize what parties stand for, for example, and party activists are ideologues who loyally vote the party line. The weakness of parties can best be explained by the laws of supply and demand, he contends; parties are producers of goods and services and candidates are consumers. According to market theory, the strength of political parties depends on the balance between them and other kinds of political organizations. Parties will dominate only when they learn how to outsell the competition.

Russian Foreign Policy in the 21st Century & the Shadow of the Past
edited by Robert Legvold
Columbia University Press

What light can history shed on the present, com-plex re-la-tion-ship between Russia and the world? Focusing on the underlying patterns that have marked four centuries of Russian foreign policy and that persist today, eight leading historians and political scientists explore such topics as the impact of the loss of empire, longstanding approaches to national security and the effect of globalization over time. This unique collection, written with support from Carnegie Corpo-ra-tion, reveals how Russia’s approach to the outside world has evolved and helps pinpoint changes needed to allow the still unsettled land to take its place in the larger international setting.

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