A 1995 survey shows that Mexican citizens depend on their cognitive and affective orientations toward the United States in forming opinions about economic agreements between the two countries. The degree to which respondents utilized general feelings toward the United States rather than images of the United States varies by educational level and across the two agreements that were examined, NAFTA and the Clinton economic stabilization package of 1995. Whether respondents utilized an image of U.S. economic imperialism or of racial discrimination against people of Mexican origin in forming their opinions also depends on the level of education attained and on the policy domain of the agreement. The cognitive processes respondents utilized to form opinions about these economic agreements also differ across educational levels and policy domains. The findings have important implications for the capacity of Mexican elites to mobilize support for agreements with the United States and more generally for U.S.-Mexican relations.

This article analyzes the campaign of Nicaraguan president Arnoldo Alemán (1997–2002) against organized competitors, what has been called his war against the nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. Alemán's attacks on the NGO sector are shown to be consistent with the logic of the new populism in Latin America. At the same time, his choice of targets—prominent NGO figures who were often foreign-born and always female—must be explained with reference to the specifics of Nicaraguan civil society and its evolving relationship with the political parties. This study argues that by choosing to respond to the challenges of international neoliberalism and local feminism through the anti-NGO campaign, Alemán helped to weaken democracy in Nicaragua.

The article synthesizes contributions from the recent comparative research on civil war and the case-specific literature on Colombia to argue that too often, commentators on this conflict overlook some of its key dimensions. A comprehensive analysis shows that no fewer than six factors are fueling violent conflict in Colombia: economic forces, state weakness, landscape, U.S. policies, long-duration and spin-off violence, and malicious opportunism by non-combatants. The first three are the ones that matter most. The case made here is that when analysts disregard the range and interrelatedness of the factors involved, the result is a distortion of reality and a tendency to support policies that will not enhance the prospects for peace.

In the transition from military rule to democracy, the government of Augusto Pinochet bequeathed to Chile a unique electoral law by which all legislative seats are contested in two-member districts. A key implication of this rule is that in order to secure legislative majorities, coalitions have to put their strongest candidates in the most precarious electoral list positions. This generates a divergence of interests between coalitions and politicians. Chile's largest coalition, the Concertación, has resolved the dilemma by providing appointed posts to unsuccessful congressional candidates who accept personal political risk on the coalition's behalf. This study argues that this insurance system has provided the critical glue to hold the coalition together since Chile's transition to democracy in 1990. Recent changes in the electoral environment could threaten the Concertación's control over the appointed posts that have sustained this informal institution. This could jeopardize the Concertación's cohesion during the process of negotiating coalition candidate lists for the 2005 legislative elections.

There can hardly be any doubt that goods moved in large quantities and over great distances under the Roman empire. This awareness is borne out of a long tradition of archaeological research attesting to the widespread distribution of specific categories of material culture across the full expanse of the Mediterranean and beyond. This phenomenon has been interpreted as a more or less direct result of Rome's military expansion and the fundamental political unification which came with it, bringing about unprecedented conditions which favoured trade and exchange. Scholarship has often stressed the rôle played in this by ‘institutions’: the spread and adoption of a common set of laws, currency and units of measure, fostered by a relatively long period of internal peace and political stability, would have boosted the economic performance of the empire to levels that had not been witnessed before and would not be seen again for many centuries. Indeed, the notion of ‘efflorescence’ has sometimes been employed to describe and explain the kind of economic growth to which this process might have contributed.

The Ploutonion of Hierapolis (Phrygia) is mentioned in numerous Greek and Latin literary sources, which stress its distinctive natural features and the rites that were performed there. From the 19th c. onwards, this sanctuary was the object of investigations and hypotheses on the part of various scholars regarding its exact location, without however reaching a satisfactory solution to the problem. The famous place of worship was finally identified thanks to a large-scale topographic survey of the entire settlement and the surrounding area, undertaken by the Italian Archaeological Mission (hereafter MAIER) as part of the creation of the Atlas (Atlante) of Hierapolis. Specifically, in the area south of the Sanctuary of Apollo, as a result of these investigations various masonry structures belonging to monu-mental buildings were discovered. Also found in the area were sculpted marble capitals with lions attacking bulls and Ionic capitals with masks, which had clearly been brought from the Stoa-basilica, built in the Antonine period along the E side of the North Agora.

The coins minted by the Carthaginians in silver, gold, electrum, billon and bronze comprise one of the largest coinages that circulated in the W Mediterranean before the Roman conquest. They provide essential information on both the history and economy of Carthage and on Carthaginian interactions with their neighbors, allies and adversaries. Carthaginian bronze coins, in particular, are frequently found throughout the Punic world, in each of its core regions (N Africa from Tripolitania to Algeria, Sicily, Sardinia, Ibiza and the southernmost Iberian peninsula), as well as in Italy. Yet few accounts of Carthage and the Punic Wars take Carthaginian coinage into consideration, and an emphasis on Greek and Latin literary sources continues to drive the narrative. Of course, in evaluating the political and economic implications of numismatic evidence one needs to distinguish from the start between the issues of the Carthage mint and those of other mints that struck coins under Carthaginian authority. Carthaginian coinage did not follow a linear path of development. As the Carthaginians began to produce coins in Sicily earlier than in N Africa, the start of minting at Carthage deserves careful scrutiny. This essay, based upon an ongoing study of Carthaginian bronze and billon coins, will review the history of modern scholarship and current research on Carthaginian coinage, focussing upon the formative period of the Carthage mint between c.350 and 300 B.C. in order to define the main aspects of its output, its relevance for the monetization of the Carthaginian homeland, and the sequence of the earliest issues.