What in the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville could conceivably be thought to offer any guidance for the study of contemporary China?

It is China's underlying civic culture that will reveal how the Chinese address particular policy issues and how China is likely to develop in the future.

The numerous and spirited ways in which Chinese people are objecting--despite repression, risk, and sometimes their own involvement in the problems--show that popular ideas about social morality are still alive and well in China.

India's democratic institutions, freedom, and social capital rank it thirty places above its rival China in the 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index.

American exceptionalism, often mistaken by liberals to be an artifact of the right wing, is rather a testament to the qualities that make American institutions distinct from all others, especially those of Europe.

No environmental problem is more important than that posed by the degradation of our cities, and we must reflect on the factors that might prevent or reverse the decay that we are witnessing. In urban planning, civic leaders should think in terms of fostering beauty through the use of aesthetic constraints.

Every revolution is a surprise. Still, the latest Russian Revolution must be counted among the greatest of surprises. The failure of Western experts to anticipate the Soviet Union's collapse may in part be attributed to a sort of historical revisionism -- call it anti-anti-communism -- that tended to exaggerate the Soviet regime's stability and legitimacy.

Nongovernmental organizations are growing in number and finding ways to survive in China, even though the country's political limits artificially restrict their growth, as they take up political issues but are not yet political actors.