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This text employs a cultural approach to take issue with the conventional wisdom that military organizations inherently prefer offensive doctrines. It argues instead that a military organization's culture affects their choices between offensive and defensive military doctrines

Part of a review symposium on Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 2001) contends that Matthew Evangelista & Elisabeth Prugl (both, 2003) missed a key critique of the text's central claims & a key contribution that Goldstein's findings make to advancing equal opportunity in the military. Issue is taken with Goldstein's argument about the relationship between combat motivation & a militarized masculinity on the basis of three related claims: (1) This gendered identity does not contribute to military effectiveness. (2) There is no evidence that this militarized masculinity underpins combat motivation, &, in fact, Goldstein offers substantiation that it is not necessary for military effectiveness. (3) Goldstein also offers evidence that the values & attitudes that support militarized masculinity are as unnecessary & probably dysfunctional as those that propped up racial segregation. In this light, & in claiming that "biology is not destiny," three explanations are posited for the prevalence of male-dominated warfare: (A) Instead of assuming that a culture of militarized masculinity is functional to the military, the role that it plays in excluding women from combat should be examined. (B) Noting that not everything about militarized masculinity is dysfunctional, one should consider for whom it is functional. (C) Women's role in their near-exclusion from combat should not be underestimated. It is concluded that the larger legitimate concerns of Goldstein, Evangelista, & Prugl should not obfuscate War and Gender's capacity to further women's equality in the military. 9 References. J. Zendejas

After some initial trepidation, I was excited about teaching a graduate seminar in qualitative methods. It could hardly be a more interesting time. The publication of King, Keohane, and Verba's Designing Social Inquiry reinvigorated interest in qualitative methods, and I wanted to design the course to profit from this emerging debate. Whereas KKV appealed to qualitative researchers to do their best to adopt quantitative methodological guidelines, I wanted to encourage students to think about whether that is always the best prescription for qualitative research. What is gained, and what is lost from evaluating case-oriented, comparative research from the perspective of large-N, variable-oriented research? What are the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research, and what types of questions or issues are best addressed with it? How does a researcher make valid causal inferences about complex political phenomena on the basis of case-study or comparative case study methods? I hoped to teach students how to create and critique sophisticated case study and comparative research. I also wanted them to be able to explain their methodological decisions to quantitative researchers in terms that the latter could understand and appreciate.

Describes how the abolition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would advance civil rights and military readiness and not disrupt unit cohesion and compares with integration of women and Blacks into the armed forces.

Examines definitions of conventions and precedents in international relations, and argues that existing taboos regarding use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons should be supported; US.