Clinton Administration in the context of Reform Party of the United States of America

Howard Eliot Wolpe (November 3, 1939 – October 25, 2011) was an American politician who served as a seven-term U.S. Representative from Michigan and Presidential Special Envoy to the African Great Lakes Region in the Clinton Administration, where he led the United States delegation to the Arusha and Lusaka peace talks, which aimed to end civil wars in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He returned to the U.S. State Department as Special Advisor to the Secretary for Africa's Great Lakes Region. Previously, he had served as Director of the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and of the Center's Project on Leadership and Building State Capacity. While at the Center, Wolpe directed post-conflict leadership training programs in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia.

A specialist in African politics for 10 of his 14 years in the Congress, Wolpe chaired the Subcommittee on Africa of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. As chair of the House Africa Subcommittee, Wolpe co-authored (with Rep. Ron Dellums and others) and managed legislation that imposed sanctions against South Africa, by over-riding President Ronald Reagan's veto of that sanctions legislation (the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986). He also authored and managed the passage of the African Famine Recovery and Development Act, -- a comprehensive rewrite in the 1980s of America's approach to development assistance in Africa that included the creation of the African Development Fund.

Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (January 19, 1937 – May 6, 2025) was an American political scientist. He and Robert Keohane co-founded the international relations theory of neoliberalism, which they developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence. Together with Keohane, he developed the concepts of asymmetrical and complex interdependence. They also explored transnational relations and world politics in an edited volume in the 1970s. More recently, he pioneered the theory of soft power. His notion of "smart power" ("the ability to combine hard and soft power into a successful strategy") became popular with the use of this phrase by members of the Clinton Administration and the Obama Administration. These theories from Nye are very commonly seen in courses across the U.S., such as I.B. D.P. Global Politics.

Nye was the Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he later held the position of University Distinguished Service Professor, emeritus. In October 2014, US Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Nye to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He was also a member of the Defense Policy Board. He was a Harvard faculty member since 1964. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a foreign fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

The National Information Infrastructure (NII) was the product of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. It was a telecommunications policy buzzword, which was popularized during the Clinton Administration under the leadership of Vice-President Al Gore.