Abstract

Editorials

The article reports on some political developments in different countries during the year 1998. The annual foreign-policy farce called drug certification, in which the U.S. government verifies that a foreign government is cooperating in the fight against drugs, was passed on March 1 with relatively little controversy. Mexico was re-certified for aid, Colombia had its sanctions lifted and a handful of strategically marginal nations like Nigeria and Burma received failing grades. The World Bank still has a vast mandate and considerable influence, even though anti-Communism-the primary geopolitical impulse for U.S. participation-has evaporated, and the bank's net annual lending of $7.4 billion represents only 2 to 3 percent of the total flow of capital to developing countries.