No News Is News: Nonignorable Nonresponse in Roll‐Call Data Analysis

Roll‐call votes are widely employed to infer the ideological proclivities of legislators. However, many roll‐call matrices are characterized by high levels of nonresponse. Under many circumstances, nonresponse cannot be assumed to be ignorable. We examine the consequences of violating the ignorability assumption that underlies current methods of roll‐call analysis. We present a basic estimation framework to model nonresponse and vote choice concurrently, build a model that captures the logic of competing principals that underlies accounts of nonresponse in many legislatures, and illustrate the payoff of addressing nonignorable nonresponse through both simulated and real data. We conclude that modeling presumed patterns of nonignorable nonresponse can yield important inferential payoffs over current models that assume random missingness, but we also emphasize that the decision to model nonresponse should be based on theoretical grounds since one cannot rely on measures of goodness of fit for the purpose of model comparison.     

Reclaiming Politics: Popular Democracy in Britain after the Scottish Referendum

Referendums are often criticised for being elite‐controlled and undeliberative. This article argues that the detailed, multiactor regulation of the Scottish referendum resulted in an elaborate legal regime which helped to overcome these potential pathologies, diluting executive control and facilitating an exercise in national public engagement. It addresses the troubled history of referendum use in the UK and contends that the Scottish process may well transform how referendums are now viewed. Indeed, one outcome of the Scottish process is likely to be a greater demand at UK level for the use of direct democracy in processes of significant constitutional change. It is by no means certain, however, that these demands for greater popular engagement in the process of constitutional change will be met, particularly when we consider the Smith Commission process, which marks a return to elite interparty bargaining.     

Withdrawal of Parental Responsibility: Lost Authority and a Lost Opportunity

This comment examines Re D (Withdrawal of Parental Responsibility), the first reported Court of Appeal decision on withdrawal of parental responsibility pursuant to section 4(2A) of the Children Act 1989. It demonstrates that the Court overlooked earlier Court of Appeal authority, resulting in tension in the Court's guidance. The comment criticises the Court of Appeal's characterisation of parental responsibility as entirely child‐centred and its uncritical acceptance that the child's welfare is the paramount consideration in applications for withdrawal of parental responsibility. It argues that such an approach may not adequately respect the parent's interests in retaining parental responsibility, especially in the context of an order which is more draconian in effect than a care order. The impact upon applications for removal of parental responsibility of the new presumption of parental involvement, which was implemented shortly after the decision in Re D, is also considered.     

The Interdisciplinary Settlement Conference: A Grassroots Alternative for Resolving High‐Conflict Parenting Disputes in Lean Times

This article describes a court‐connected alternative dispute resolution program, the Interdisciplinary Settlement Conference. The key feature of this program is the participation of two volunteer panelists, one a family law attorney and the other a mental health professional experienced in parenting disputes, who assist the judicial officer in working with the parties and their attorneys (if any) to reach a resolution of their parenting dispute. Significantly, in addition to addressing the parties’ legal issues, the panelists also address the parties’ psychological and emotional issues relevant to the dispute on an as‐needed basis. Findings from six years of experience with the program are discussed, including evidence of high satisfaction with the program, a high rate of settlement, a decrease in relitigation, and a concomitant savings of scarce judicial resources.     

The ‘Knowledge Exchange Train’: a model for capacity building for participatory governance in the south-western Amazon

National frontiers with ecosystems experiencing rapid changes pose difficult challenges for scientific contributions to democratic processes for environmental governance. We describe an innovative outreach model, the ‘Knowledge Exchange Train’, which combines educational outreach with capacity-building mechanisms to broaden public participation in planning for sustainable development. This involved an international team of scientists and practitioners from conservation and development organisations who travelled across a tri-national frontier area of the south-western Amazon to share recent findings with local leaders and stakeholder constituencies of several municipalities. The Knowledge Exchange Train quickly increased public awareness in many places and provided a means of broadening participation in planning and governance. This model supports planning for sustainable development and can be adapted to other geographic contexts and topics.     

Work Sharing Policy: Power Sharing and Stalemate in American Federalism

Work sharing benefits are partial unemployment benefits, andfederal policy related to them is in an administrative muddle.A lack of leadership by the federal government has stalled stateimplementation. During economic downturns when political voltageis high, policy makers look to work sharing as one way to managejob loss. Conversely, work sharing is often forgotten duringprosperous times. This article describes how federalism sometimesfacilitates state initiation of work sharing policy and at othertimes impedes it. The authors discuss work sharing through sixpolicy phases during a thirty-year era of devolving federalauthority to states for employment services and job training,and they make observations about the stalemate in federal policy.     

Whistleblowing at work: The results of a survey of procedures in further and higher education

This article briefly explains the concept of whistleblowing and why it should be encouraged. It then describes the way in which the law both constrained and encouraged the disclosure of information prior to the introduction of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. Having outlined the effect of the PIDA 1998, the authors present the background to their survey and summarise their results.