Directly Elected Mayors: A Tonic for Local Governance or Old Wine in New Bottles?

The introduction of directly elected mayors into the landscape of English local politics has the potential to change the dynamics of local political leadership and the relationship between citizens and local government. The paper explores whether the conditions exist locally for such potential to be realised. It focuses on the reaction to the mayoral experiment of both mayors and the councillors that sit on mayoral authorities, as it is the reactions of the latter, as well as the actions of the former, that indicate the success or failure of mayoral governance. The paper also assesses the way in which political parties and party groups have accommodated the mayoral experiment and changed or maintained patterns of political behaviour and organisation.     

When Should the Police Investigate Cases of Non-recent Child Sexual Abuse?

Non-recent child sexual abuse (CSA) and child sexual exploitation (CSE) have received recent attention. Victims often do not report their ordeal at the time the incident occurred, and it is increasingly common for agencies to refer concerns to the police years, or decades, after the event. The combination of the non-recent nature of the offence, the lack of engagement by the (potentially vulnerable) victim, and the huge resource burden of investigation make deciding whether to proceed with investigation complex and ethically challenging. Although there will always be a presumption in favor of investigation, for some cases the reasons against investigating will outweigh this presumption. We examine the considerations at stake in making a decision about whether to make contact with the victim and proceed with investigating a particular non-recent CSA case. Arguing for a “broad rights” approach, we identify considerations relating to (1) the victim, (2) criminal justice and crime prevention, (3) limited resources, and (4) legitimacy. We argue that, all other things being equal, non-recent and current investigations are equally worthy of investigation. We assess the implications of suspects being persons of public prominence. We outline a principled decision-making framework to aid investigators. The Oxford CSA Framework has the potential to reduce unnecessary demand on police resources.     

Progressive lawyers under siege: Moral panic during the McCarthy era

Our goal is to analyze the culture within the San Francisco law firm of Gladstein, Andersen and Leonard (circa 1945–1965). For this we utilize archival documents, FBI files, oral histories, and personal interviews. The law firm represented alleged subversives, including Harry Bridges the longtime president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Thus, the law firm partners were stigmatized by the clients they represented and they all had lengthy FBI files. The partners all had working class backgrounds, one was an immigrant and two were Jewish. Clearly, religion and ethnicity were not litmus tests for participation in the firm, nor was educational pedigree. Gladstein and Leonard graduated from elite law schools while Andersen did his legal training at a night school. During the dark days of the Cold War various partners were threatened, shot and jailed for merely engaging in their legal practice. Ironically, as the FBI blacklisted alleged subversives, these attorneys had more clients to defend.     

Quantifying the Temperature of Maggot Masses and its Relationship to Decomposition

Numerous Calliphoridae species have been observed to form larval aggregations during the feeding stage of development, resulting in localized increases in temperature. This study investigates the relationship between maggot numbers in a mass and heat generation. Single‐species aggregations (Lucilia sericata) of various sizes (50–2500 individuals) were reared in the laboratory at a constant ambient temperature of 22°C. Internal mass temperatures were recorded every 5 min throughout the feeding stage of development. Results showed that mass temperatures increased with mass numbers (p‐value < 0.001), ranging from 2.5 to 14°C above ambient. A minimum mass size of 1200 produced overall temperatures that were significantly warmer than ambient, diverging away from 22°C after c. 26 h. These results indicate that the microclimate of a mass has the potential to differ significantly from ambient, which may be influencing larval development rates and should therefore be factored into mPMI estimates to increase accuracy.     

Forecasting the 2010 general election using aggregate local election data

The paper presents a revised method for estimating national vote shares using aggregate data from local government by-elections. The model was originally developed to forecast the annual outcome of local elections but was adapted in time to provide an accurate forecast of Labour’s landslide victory at the 1997 general election. However, over the past decade the changing pattern of party competition which has seen parties becoming more selective about which elections to contest has led to more elections being excluded from the modelling because they failed to meet the exacting criteria that all three major parties, Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats, had contested both the by-election and the previous main election, normally held in May. Relaxing these criteria, although increasing the number of available cases would adversely affect the forecast, over- or under-estimating party votes. Instead, the revised method overcomes the problem of differential competition by estimating vote shares for parties that contest one but not both elections. A further innovation is the calculation of a weighted moving quarterly average which takes account of the number of days elapsed between the by-election date and the date of forecast. Using the new method we provide estimates for likely party shares for the 2010 general election.     

Impelling and inhibitory forces in aggression: sex-of-target and relationship effects

The finding of symmetry in intimate partner aggression is now generally accepted, but the convergence of male and female rates in these relationships remains unexplained. From qualitative analysis of male and female focus group discussions, we identified factors believed to influence the expression of aggression toward targets differing in sex and degree of intimacy. These factors were then used to construct a questionnaire in which 355 respondents indicated the applicability of the items to conflicts with a partner, a same-sex friend, and an opposite-sex friend. Principal component analysis revealed a clear two-factor structure of impelling forces (tending to provoke or initiate aggression) and inhibitory forces (tending to suppress or diminish the likelihood of aggression). Participants' scores on scales derived from these two factors were used in the subsequent analyses. Men reported lower inhibition and greater impulsion toward same-sex friends than to female friends and partners, who did not differ significantly from one another. Women showed lower inhibition to male targets, regardless of relationship, than to a female target. However, women rated their male partners as significantly higher on impelling forces than their male friends, who in turn were rated significantly higher than female friends. The results are broadly consistent with a sex-of-target effect corresponding to a chivalry norm held by both sexes that inhibits the expression of aggression toward women. The reasons why women are especially impelled to aggression by intimate partners are explored. Disaggregating the dynamics of interpersonal conflict into impelling and inhibitory components may prove useful in understanding and treating dispute escalation and resolution.