Jimmy Carter entered the White House with a desire for a collegial staff that would aid his foreign-policy decision making. He wound up with a "team of rivals" who contended for influence and who fought over his every move regarding relations with the USSR, the Peoples' Republic of China, arms control, and other crucial foreign-policy issues. Carter, the outsider who had sought to change the political culture of the executive office, found himself...

"The transition from a Soviet to a Russian society has not been a smooth ride: crime rates have soared, corruption is at an all-time high, ethnic tensions are fierce, and alcoholism is on the rise. There is perhaps no greater challenge for today's political science student than the study of this transition. The Russian Transformation explains the difficulties in this process from a multi-disciplinary perspective, combining sociological and political-psychological...