This book is the immediate result of the co-operation of a great number of scholars in the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG). NIG is an interuniversity research school. As such it has a double task. In addition to offering a Ph.D program to students in Public Administration it also is a research institute in which a great number of scholars from seven Dutch universities participate and work on a common research program. The chapters in this book are all products of the research program that started in 1995. This program had the ambition to explore the frontiers of the discipline in two respects. First by studying a number of recent developments in society and their consequences for the functioning of government. These consequences can be summarised as the development of a system of multi level and multi actor governance. Second, by contributing to the knowledge of institutions, both by studying what factors are most important in the formation and change of institutions and by studying the effects of institutions on the behaviour of actors in different political and administrative settings. Most contributions to this volume either have their origin in conferences organized by the NIG or were published as an NIG working paper. We are grateful to Marcia Clifford and Connie Hoekstra who prepared the final version of the manuscript, to Ian Priestnall who took care of the language editing and to an anonymous reviewer whose comments were gratefully used.

The Prisoner of Migration is an autobiographical novel, informed by the author's expertise on Mauritian migration. The author's researches have trawled deep into the oasis of the respondents' varied colonial cultural heritages striving to explore the factors that have contributed to their paralysis of indecision. This pursuit has unavoidably led him to find clarification by delving into the history of Mauritius, beginning from the Dutch occupation in 1598 to the French colonisation in 1715 and the surrender of Ile de France to Britain in 1810. The analytical approach is eclectic, supported by colonial documents and studies as well as information from books and news media. The exposure of African slaves and Indian indentured labourers and their successors to the crucible of the melting pot of the varied cultural legacies seems to have resulted in a Mauritian population that V.S. Naipaul has defined as a 'manufactured people'."