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Progress in the study of international politics depends on systematic, rigorous theory & empirical testing. International Relations is most useful when scholars can identify with some confidence the causal forces that drive foreign policy & international interactions, not when they use their detailed empirical knowledge to offer opinions, however intelligent & well informed. Deterrence theory, the democratic peace research program, & the political economy of trade policy demonstrate the importance of both theory & empirical research in enhancing the understanding of international relations. The bargaining theory of war & open economy politics are the current frontiers of research on international relations & promise even greater understanding in the future. 1 Figure, 101 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2005 The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

Purpose
– Social science research is used to support the formulation of natural resource management decisions with accurate and timely information. Due to risk and potential impacts, this is important in wildland fire management. The purpose of this paper is to identify the respondent perceptions of a natural disturbance agent's impact on fire management in Colorado and Wyoming.


Design/methodology/approach
– The research methodology included a self-administered questionnaire completed by a random sample of respondents in three study locations adjacent to national forests. A quantitative analysis was conducted to identify attitudes about fuels management (prescribed fire) and beliefs about fire and fire management.


Findings
– Respondents viewed prescribed fire favorably and they understand the natural role of fire on the landscape. While results suggest respondents support management of forest conditions to decrease the effects of a wildfire, they do not feel that individuals have a right to expect their home to be protected from fire by land managers, nor do they agree with restricting home building near national forest land.


Research limitations/implications
– Future research should continue the longitudinal assessment of attitudes toward prescribed fires, incorporating respondent distance to the national forest or identifying respondents living within the wildland-urban interface.


Originality/value
– This paper illustrates how applied, social science research can meet the needs of agencies and public officials. Results of this paper have been presented to state and federal forestry officials, and members of an executive-level task force in Colorado studying wildfire insurance and forest health.

John Brunner's 1972 novel, The Sheep Look Up, is the story of the year leading up to a global ecological and political catastrophe. Set primarily in the United States in an unspecified near future, The Sheep Look Up tells the story of "death by a thousand cuts": problem upon problem, malfeasance upon malfeasance, which accumulate, reinforce each other and are met only by a failing political and economic system that ultimately collapses under its own weight. This article reflects on themes and topics of the novel that resonate for social science theorists and teachers in the environmental social sciences, including global environmental politics. First, it provides a type of counterfactual analysis. It opens a window into how the world might have been had certain actions not been taken. Second, it provides a warning: how the world might be if we do not act. Third, it provides a model of how a disastrous transition might unfold as social resilience has been worn down. Looking back on the almost fifty years since the novel was written demonstrates how its scenario was averted through concerted government and societal actions, but the article also points out how Brunner's work has strong resonance with our present – and at different times in the recent past.

Considers the contributions of the late sociologist Edward Shils to social scientific thinking on the nature of "the good society." In contrast to conventional thinking, which supposes that a good society demands a relatively intense social & political bonding among its members, Shils proposed that society demands no more than a loose attachment to common political values. Moreover, Shils warned that efforts to create a greater harmony of values would likely end in destruction of both plurality & liberty. His recently republished analysis of the (Joseph) McCarthy hearings, the Torment of Secrecy (1996), illustrates these themes, as do his writings on the role of the university in US life. It is concluded that Shils's complex conservative-liberal view of society offers a distinctive & useful standard against which any society, practice, or individual may be measured. 14 References. D. Ryfe

Los Estudios Sociales se diseñaron en la década de los años 50 del siglo XX, como un instrumento para difundir entre las nuevas generaciones de costarricenses, los valores y aspiraciones del proyecto político que gestó la fundación de la II República. Los nuevos consensos sociales surgidos entorno al proyecto socialdemócrata, se apoyaron en el poderoso instrumento de la educación para ser difundidos entre la sociedad costarricense. Surge así un componente del currículo oficial que hasta entonces no existía: La Enseñanza de los Estudios Sociales. Empero, el devenir histórico de nuestro país y el mismo desarrollo de la disciplina histórica, han generado múltiples cuestionamientos a las visiones del pasado que todavía se reproducen en las aulas de nuestras escuelas y colegios. Este artículo presenta una propuesta alternativa de enseñanza de la Historia sobre la base de la responsabilidad social de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje. Por tal razón, partimos del principio de que en el espacio social del aprendizaje se materializan relaciones sociales mediatizadas por la necesidad de conocer el pasado para comprender el presente. El concepto de didáctica aquí planteado, tiene que ver con la necesidad de que la enseñanza de la Historia en nuestro país evolucione hacia objetivos encaminados al desarrollo de la conciencia, el razonamiento de la realidad desde las herramientas que provee la Historia, el trabajo colectivo, el uso de recursos didácticos adecuados y la validación del aprendizaje en un campo o entorno social concreto, de ahí su carácter vivencial. The Social Studies were designed in the decade of the years 50 of the XX century, as an instrument to diffuse among the new generations of Costa Rican, the values and aspirations of the political project that it gestated the foundation of the II Republic. The new consents social arisen environment to the social-democratic project, leaned on in the powerful instrument of the education to be diffused among the Costa Rican society. It arises this way a component of the official curriculum that until then it didn't exist: "The Teaching of the Social Studies." But, becoming historical of our country and the same development of the historical discipline, they have generated multiple questions to the visions of the past that still reproduce in the classrooms of our schools. This article presents an alternative proposal of teaching of the History on the base of the social responsibility of the teaching and the learning. For such a reason, we portion of the principle that in the social space of the learning relationships social are materialized by the necessity of knowing the past to understand the present. The didactics concept here outlined, it has to do with the necessity that the teaching of the History in our country evolves toward objectives guided to the development of the conscience, the reasoning of the reality from the tools that it provides the History, the collective work, the use of appropriate didactic resources and the validation of the learning in a field or concrete social environment.