Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations is a fine work which is right to defend the “moral reality” of war and to dismiss relativist approaches. But he does not provide a defense of his position against beliefs (for example, in absolute pacificism, in revolutionary war, or in collectivist approaches) fundamentally at loggerheads with his own. If the discussion of just war is to be more than an exchange of opinions, there must be attention to ethical foundations.

Five texts on mathematical modeling in the social sciences which have appeared within the last five years are described and evaluated. The analysis of the texts proceeds by considering such issues as the mathematical background required, general readability, ability of the text to train the reader to develop his own models, consideration of important philosophical issues inherent in modeling, and the types—substantive and mathematical—of models covered. The goal of the review is to pinpoint those texts, or parts of texts, that are most useful to the researcher in international relations.

Recent micro-level studies of rural communities in the developing areas address themselves to three basic issues: (1) What are the major external forces that determine the welfare of persons residing in rural areas? (2) How do peasants respond to these forces? (3) What ethical evaluations are to be made of the outcome of the encounter between peasant communities and the forces intruding upon them from their environment? By addressing these questions, and by formulating and utilizing explicit models of peasant behavior, these studies provide a coherent approach to the study of the developing areas.

Despite a vast literature on nationalism, theoretical investigations on the subject are rare. Historians generally are not interested in theory, although they use typologies. The most thoroughgoing typology has been produced by the sociologist Anthony D. Smith, who has constructed a matrix with 55 locations that allows categorization of both ancient and modern types of nationalism. Smith divides nationalist ideology into a core doctrine and its accretions, but he may underestimate the importance of language. Kedourie has produced a theory of the intellectual development of nationalism, but only Gellner has a theory of modernity in which nationalism plays a key role. Interest in ethnicity has given a new direction to studies of nationalism by stressing the function of group allegiance in achieving political ends. Finally, despite the sharpness of Smith's definitional insights, his theory itself is too narrow to establish the link he seeks between modernization and nationalism.

This review article presents three case studies of the U.S. strategic weapons acquisition process: the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Polaris fleet ballistic missile (FBM), and the multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV). By considering programs that stretch from the 1950s to the 1970s, the essay provides a record of the changing environment of American weapons choices over the past 25 years. After a description of research methods and major arguments, each study is assessed in terms of bureaucratic politics and of its relevance to contemporary policy. Conclusions are drawn about the most fruitful approach to the study of weapons acquisition, about the lessons of these cases for the development of weapons in an age of arms control, and about the challenges of future studies.

Ever since arresting the progressive deterioration of the physical habitat emerged as a live political issue in the United States in the early 1960s, it has been a subject of continuing disputation—both as to the urgency of repair and protection, and as to who should bear responsibility for deciding what and how much to undertake or to leave undone. Since all societies, especially industrial societies, are exposed to proliferating damage and hazards from diverse sources, environmental programs compete for support with a multiplicity of other claims on disposable resources. Since nearly everything that is done to maintain a decently livable physical habitat affects to some extent the distribution of income within and among nations, public authority has become increasingly the focus of environmental repair and protection, and the budgetary decisions of government the core of that focus—claims of some economists and other specialists to the contrary notwithstanding. The four books compared in this article consider these and related issues from various perspectives, both domestic and international.