Institutional Transition and Local Self-Government in Russia

This paper includes the following parts: 1) "Vertical or Triangle? Local, regional and federal government in the Russian Federation after Law 131.", by Adrian Campbell, and 2) comments to the paper "Softness and hardness of the institutions in Russian ocal self-government" by Satoshi Mizobata, 3) "Local budget and local self-government in Russia" by Kazuho Yokogawa and 4) "The Struggle for Power in the Urals" by Adrian Campbell and Elena Denezhkina.

The Road to Rights: Establishing a Domestic Human Rights Institution in the United States

While human rights are often discussed as international standards, they are realized first and foremost at home. Respect for human rights is a domestic endeavor — the promotion, protection and fulfillment of these rights falls to national and local governments, not to international bodies. Because the front line of human rights is domestic, full realization of these rights requires coordination and dialogue between civil society, national policy-making bodies and local institutions. U.S. human rights advocates have continually emphasized that “human rights begin at home,” and it is only when the full spectrum of rights are recognized and protected in local communities that we can claim equality, dignity and fairness for all. Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized this in his 1941 Four Freedoms speech, stressing that “[f ]reedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.” A. Philip Randolph, one of the founders of The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, highlighted this in 1942 when he stated that “[a] community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess” and that engaging in a domestic “fight for economic, political, and social equality, thus becomes part of the global war for freedom.” The idea of fundamental, inalienable rights has permeated our history and serves as a foundational principle upon which U.S. democracy is built

One Year Later: September 11 and the Internet

Presents findings from a survey that looks at how the terror attacks affected Americans' views about access to online information, Internet use, and the Web after September 11. Contains scholarly studies built around analysis of hundreds of Web sites