Comment on Parkinson and Cashmore's (2015) Research and Proposal for Reforming Child Custody Relocation Law: Child Custody Evaluator and Psychological Perspecitve

Parkinson and Cashmore ( 2015 ) described their innovative, qualitative, and longitudinal research program on the experience of Australian families involved in relocation family law litigation. This constructive comment discusses the value and limitations of their main findings. Parkinson and Cashmore's approach is contrasted with the excellent quantitative research on the effects of residential mobility on children of divorce. The author disagrees with Parkinson and Cashmore's position of opposing the use of relocation factors in statute and/or case law so as to not hinder the exercise of judicial discretion any further, but agrees with their integration of the least detrimental alternative concept into a relocation analysis.     

Longitudinal Associations between Social Relationships and Alcohol Use from Adolescence into Young Adulthood: The Role of Religiousness

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - As adolescence is a time characterized by rapid changes in social relationships as well as an increase in risk-taking behaviors, this prospective longitudinal...     

NATO Special Operations: Promise and Problem

NATO special operations forces (SOF) are at a crossroads as the NATO role in Afghanistan winds down. After more than a decade of development, NATO SOF have greatly increased their ability to operate together in the field and in headquarters. If the alliance continues to emphasize SOF development, these forces can play a major role in future NATO campaigns, particularly outside Europe. Moreover, SOF can be maintained effectively in times of austerity. Yet intelligence sharing, particularly in real time, is currently one of the major limitations on NATO SOF, creating divisions between United States and United Kingdom on one hand and much of the rest of NATO on the other. In order to make truly effective use of SOF the alliance needs to make fundamental changes to its decades old system for sharing intelligence.     

‘Ground-Truthing’ Chinese Development Finance in Africa: Field Evidence from South Africa and Uganda

A new methodology, Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF), leverages open-source information on development finance by non-transparent, non-Western donors. If such open-source methods prove to be valid and reliable, they can enhance our understanding of the causes and consequences of development finance from non-transparent donors including, but not limited to, China. But open-source methods face charges of inaccuracy. In this study we create and field-test a replicable ‘ground-truthing’ methodology to verify, update, and improve open-source data with in-person interviews and site visits in Uganda and South Africa. Ground-truthing generally reveals close agreement between open-source data and answers to protocol questions from informants with official roles in the Chinese-funded projects. Our findings suggest that open-source data collection, while limited in knowable ways, can provide a stronger empirical foundation for research on development finance.     

New Chinese Discussions about Securing China's Territorial Frontier

This article places the emergent Chinese discussion about frontiers into a broader historical context. It then turns to a detailed analysis of the heterodox stances on frontiers that Yu Xiaofeng and Xu Lili, and Ma Rong have recently articulated. The conclusion notes that such relatively iconoclastic approaches to territory still stand outside the mainstream of official policy and elite writing about China's boundaries. However, it will also maintain the writings that are the focal point of this article have nonetheless begun to carve out a space for re-imagining China's current approach to territory and nationality.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

Stalkers and their Victims. By Paul E. Mullen, Michele Pathé and Rosemary Purcell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 310 pp. ISBN 0 521 66950 2 (pb).

Violence: Reflections on Our Deadliest Epidemic. By James Gilligan. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2000. 320 pp. ISBN: 1-85302-842-8 (paperback), €12.95.

Violence, Crime and Mentally Disordered Offenders: Concepts and Methods for Effective Treatment and Prevention. By S. Hodgins and R. Müller-Isberner (Eds.). Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2000. ISBN 0-471-97727-6.