Michael Dobbins Libri

The summer of 1996. In nineteen days, six million visitors jostled about in a southern city grappling with white flight, urban decay and the stifling legacy of Jim Crow. Six years earlier, a bold, audacious partnership of a strong mayor, enlightened business leaders and Atlanta's Black political leadership dared to bid on hosting the 1996 Olympic Games. Unexpectedly, the city won, an achievement that ignited a loose but robust coalition that worked collectively, if sometimes contentiously, to prepare the city and push it forward. This is a story of how once-struggling Atlanta leveraged the benefits of the Centennial Games to become a city of international prominence. This improbable rise from the ashes is told by three urban planning professionals who were at the center of the story.

A political science perspective on higher education reform in Central and Eastern Europe. Examines the impact of historical institutions and transnational networking on institutions of higher education and assesses whether Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania are converging towards a common model of market-based governance.

It is frequently assumed that intergovernmental negotiations in the European Union will become more tedious and complex in light of the growing number of states and interests. The goal of this study is to measure the preferences of the new member states along several individual political dimensions in the EU and to compare these preferences with those of the current members. On the basis of the data gathered through interviews and structural statistics, prognoses will be made on the further course of integration along several important conflict dimensions in EU decision making. This analysis serves to establish whether such conflict lines will be intensified and whether the previous voting coalitions in the Council of Ministers will be modified in the course of enlargement. The ultimate aim is then to present different decision making scenarios for individual policy areas so that future developments in the EU can be anticipated and modelled.