Research program

Abstract: In the past several decades, decision makers in the United States have increasingly called upon publicly funded science to provide “usable” information for policy making, whether in the case of acid rain, famine prevention or climate change policy. As demands for usability become more prevalent for publicly accountable scientific programs, there is a need to better understand opportunities and constraints to science use in order to inform policy design and implementation. Motivated by recent critique of the decision support function of the US Global Change Research Program, this paper seeks to address this issue by specifically examining the production and use of climate science. It reviews empirical evidence from the rich scholarship focused on climate science use, particularly seasonal climate forecasts, to identify factors that constrain or foster usability. It finds, first, that climate science usability is a function both of the context of potential use and of the process of scientific knowledge production itself. Second, nearly every case of successful use of climate knowledge involved some kind of iteration between knowledge producers and users. The paper argues that, rather than an automatic outcome of the call for the production of usable science, iterativity is the result of the action of specific actors and organizations who ‘own’ the task of building the conditions and mechanisms fostering its creation. Several different types of institutional arrangements can accomplish this task, depending on the needs and resources available. While not all of the factors that enhance usability of science for decision making are within the realm of the scientific enterprise itself, many do offer opportunities for improvement. Science policy mechanisms such as the level of flexibility afforded to research projects and the metrics used to evaluate the outcomes of research investment can be critical to providing the necessary foundation for iterativity and production of usable science to occur.

Abstract: Sustainability science has emerged over the last two decades as a vibrant field of research and innovation. Today, the field has developed a core research agenda, an increasing flow of results, and a growing number of universities committed to teaching its methods and findings. Like “agricultural science” and “health science,” sustainability science is a field defined by the problems it addresses rather than by the disciplines it employs. In particular, the field seeks to facilitate what the National Research Council has called a “transition toward sustainability,” improving society's capacity to use the earth in ways that simultaneously “meet the needs of a much larger but stabilizing human population, … sustain the life support systems of the planet, and … substantially reduce hunger and poverty” (1). In early 2005, Bruce Alberts and Ralph Cicerone, in their respective roles as outgoing and incoming presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, proposed that the maturing field of sustainability science might be ready for a “room of its own” in PNAS. After a committee study and extended discussion, the PNAS Editorial Board approved a new section on Sustainability Science, which now shares the masthead with other long-term residents such as Physics, Genetics, and Cell Biology. This editorial constitutes a progress report on the field itself and on the role of PNAS in fostering its development. Research relevant to the goals of sustainable development has long been pursued from bases as diverse as geography and geochemistry, ecology and economics, or physics and political science. Increasingly, however, a core sustainability science research program has begun to take shape that transcends the concerns of its foundational disciplines and focuses instead on understanding the complex dynamics that arise from interactions between human and environmental systems. Central questions (2) include the following. How can those dynamic interactions be …

Abstract: Recent developments in the philosophy of science, particularly those falling under the rubric of “scientific realism,” have earned growing recognition among theorists of international relations but have failed to generate substantive programs of research. Consequently, the empirical relevance of much philosophical discourse, such as that centering on the agent-structure problem in social theory, remains unestablished. This article attempts to bridge the gap between the philosophy and practice of science by outlining a model of international structure based on the principles of scientific realism and by considering its implications for a structural research program in international relations theory. Appealing to Imre Lakatos's methodology of theorychoice, the article presents an ontological case for adopting a “transformational” model of structure over the “positional” model developed in the work of Kenneth Waltz. The article demonstrates that the positional approach offers no conceptual or explanatory hold on those features of the international structure that are the intended products of state action. In conclusion, the article argues that the stakes in the agent-structure debate include the capacity to generate integrative structural theory and the ability to theorize the possibilities for peaceful change in the international system.