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The growing literature on the relationship between democracy and war has focused on two questions-Whether democracies are more pacific than other types of government, and why democracies do not seem to go to war against each other. In the spirit of Lakatosian cumulativeness - looking for explanations with excess empirical content - this commentary supports one explanation of the `why democracies do not fight democracies' question. The model supported is an expected utility formulation by Bueno de Mesquita & Lalman based on the logical relationships between states which are `doves' and `non-doves'. The same explanation for democracy-to-democracy peace provided by the Bueno de Mesquita-Lalman analytics, based on the ability to `separate' states into doves and non-doves, can be used to explain the linkages between integration and the Deutschian concept of `security community'.

Distance learning has become increasingly prominent in discussions of educational change. It holds promise of external learning beyond the physical confines of traditional schools, creating new forms of community. During the last decade, considerable experience has accumulated through projects that have implemented different innovative visions of distance learning. Five groups of issues have emerged that affect the success of projects; they are technology functioning, community creation, discourse forms, activity definition, and quality control. Several projects illustrate the influence of these factors in different contexts. The first research phase allows us to understand how the potential of the technologies can best be used and what supports are needed to ensure that these innovations are robust. The second phase of research asks questions about the impact of distance learning on cognitive and social functioning. These questions can be legitimately asked only from the prior sustained platform of practice.

Recent ethnographic studies of workplace practices indicate that the ways people actually work usually differ fundamentally from the ways organizations describe that work in manuals, training programs, organizational charts, and job descriptions. Nevertheless, organizations tend to rely on the latter in their attempts to understand and improve work practice. We examine one such study. We then relate its conclusions to compatible investigations of learning and of innovation to argue that conventional descriptions of jobs mask not only the ways people work, but also significant learning and innovation generated in the informal communities-of-practice in which they work. By reassessing work, learning, and innovation in the context of actual communities and actual practices, we suggest that the connections between these three become apparent. With a unified view of working, learning, and innovating, it should be possible to reconceive of and redesign organizations to improve all three.

Overview of current trends in the integration of telecommunication technology and education in the public and private sectors; 12 articles. Partial contents: Research on telecommunicated learning: past, present, and future, by Sally M. Johnstone; German by satellite, by Harry S. Wohlert; Industry training and education at a distance: the IBM approach, by Charles L. Bruce and others; Technology-mediated communities for learning: designs and consequences, by Jan Hawkins.

In the next decade, our society may change from its present extensive use of technology as a mediator of human experience to a reliance on technology-permeated experience as a primary form of personal consciousness. In response, our paradigm for distance learning must evolve so that we can replicate the workplaces and communities of the future in schools today. This will aid students in filtering and interpreting the complex, pervasive informational environment that sophisticated media are creating in society. This article presents a scenario crafted to suggest the capabilities of advanced technology for making distance-learning environments more effective. Policies should be developed so that the benefits of these innovations for distance learning are realized as rapidly as possible, but we must ensure that these powerful new media do not shape the instructional message in unwanted ways.

IN THIS ARTICLE, THE GOAL HAS BEEN TO CONVINCE SCHOLARS OF COMPARATIVE PUBLIC POLICY MAKING THAT THE POLICY-COMMUNITIES APPROACH IS BOTH INTERESTING AND ILLUMINATING. THE AUTHORS ARE PERSUADED OF THE LEARNING VALUE OF EXAMINING POLICY COMMUNITIES IN QUITE DISPARATE CONTEXTS - EVEN ACROSS DEMOCRATIC AND AUTHORITARIAN SYSTEMS - AND HOW WELL THIS APPROACH INTEGRATES THE SEPARATE CONCERNS OF HOW INTEREST GROUPS, PARTY SYSTEMS, BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATION AND LEADERSHIP STYLES AFFECT POLICY MAKING. IT IS BECAUSE SO MUCH DECISION MAKING IN MODERN GOVERNMENT TAKES PLACE IN AND AROUND POLICY COMMUNITIES THAT UNDERSTANDING THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND DYNAMICS IS IMPERATIVE IN THE FIELD OF COMPARATIVE PUBLIC POLICY MAKING.