A Primer on Child Abuse and Neglect Law

This article surveys major aspects of child abuse and neglect law encountered by judges, lawyers, child advocates, and child care professionals. The authors, whose casebook, Children and the Law: Doctrine, Policy and Practice (West 4th ed. forthcoming 2010), is required reading in nearly seventy law schools, analyze both statutory and case law.     

Traumatic Event Exposure and Behavioral Health Disorders among Incarcerated Females Self-Referred to Treatment

At least half of the women inside prison have mental health problems, have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional abuse during their formative years and often in adulthood, and have addiction problems. Only a minority of these women receive treatment for their behavioral health problems associated with trauma while incarcerated, even though these problems are risk factors for returning to prison after release. This study focuses on the traumatic experiences and behavioral health problems of a group of female inmates who volunteered in August 2009, to be screened for admission into an integrated trauma-reentry program implemented at an adult female correctional facility. Of the 278 women who self-referred for screening, 196 preliminarily met the time eligibility criterion of residing at the prison for eight to 24 more months. Half of these women (n?=?97) were actually time-eligible for screening and agreed to be screened. Of this sample of treatment-seeking soon-to-be-released female prisoners, the vast majority (93%) reported significant and complex histories of traumatic event exposure and high rates of either posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or sub-threshold PTSD, past alcohol and other substance abuse or dependence, other axis I psychiatric disorders, and subjective distress. Identifying trauma exposure histories and associated behavioral health problems within this population and providing effective interventions holds potential promise for preparing incarcerated women to manage their post-release lives in ways that will keep them safe, healthy, and in the community.     

Structural Budget Balance as a Fiscal Rule in the European Union—Good,Bad, or Ugly?

The EU's Fiscal Compact requires member states to legislate structural budget balance rule(s) (SBR). We use elite interviews and government documents from Austria, Ireland, and Portugal to assess the extent to which SBRs are perceived to have resulted in improved accountability, coordination, and credible commitment on the part of elected officials. We find that establishing the SBRs in legislation has not resulted in domestic ownership on the part of the member states. Furthermore, SBRs do not appear to have improved accountability due to questions about their accuracy. There is some evidence that SBRs aid finance ministries' coordination efforts.     

Safeguarding Children's Welfare in Non‐Contentious Divorce: Towards a New Conception of the Legal Process?

This article considers the working of the current procedure intended to ensure the welfare of children when their parents divorce but are not seeking any orders relating to them. It shows that the process is ineffective in safeguarding children's welfare and is not geared to ensuring that their wishes and feelings are taken into account. It argues that the focus of policy should shift away from assuming that the legal system can handle the problems of divorce, towards using the legal process as a point of contact through which families can be offered the full range of services they may need during relationship breakdown.     

NATIONAL ATTITUDES REGARDING GENDER BIAS IN CHILD CUSTODY CASES

Recent changes in family law have mandated equal treatment in child custody cases. Surveys of 4,579 attorneys and judges from four states, deemed to be nationally representative, were used to discover whether attorneys or judges perceive any favoritism toward mothers' or fathers' claims in the awarding of custody of children. Whereas attorneys, particularly males, perceive that mothers continue to be favored over fathers in custody cases, judges do not share this opinion.     

International political economy: a tale of two heterodoxies

International political economy (IPE) originated in the early 1970s. For almost 20 years it has been dominated by separate, largely non-communicating schools, one centred on scholarly institutions in Britain, the other associated with the US journal, International Organization (IO) . In terms of the evolving norms of both economics and political science, both schools are surprisingly heterodox. Rather than developing strong systematic data collections and systematic theory, the IO school has been characterised by a shifting set of conceptual and metatheoretical debates. The British school, which has tended to take a deliberately critical position, has been characterised by an ever-widening set of concerns topical concerns fuelled by a desire to include more and more voices in the study of IPE. These outcomes are explicable only by tracing the specific historical developments of the two schools.     

Public affairs,issues management and political strategy: methodological approaches that count

This essay reviews the primary methods that have been used to study corporate public affairs, issues management, and corporate political activity (PA/IM/CPA). We identify three tractable areas of research in these areas: (1) the determinants of PAM/IM/CPA; (2) the effects of PAM/IM/CPA on public policy outcomes; and (3) the effects of public policy outcomes on overall firm financial performance. Despite the considerable difficulties in gathering data to test these phenomena, we posit that scholars have made progress in understanding some aspects of these relationships. Still, we conclude that the greatest weakness for the advancement of methodological progress is the lack of a theoretical model describing the PAM/IM/CPA process, which ultimately hinders the ability of empiricists to seek the ‘proper’ data to test such relationships. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Collaborative Institutions in an Ecology of Games

This article seeks to improve our understanding of policy institutions and cooperation by adapting Long's (1958) analysis of the ecology of games to the context of collaborative land use and transportation planning in California. The traditional institutional rational choice analysis argues that collaborative institutions reduce the transaction costs of cooperation among multiple policy actors. The ecology of games framework extends IRC by emphasizing the consequences of multiple institutions and identifies several reasons why collaborative institutions may actually reduce the amount of cooperation in existing policy venues. Analyses of survey data from policy actors in five California regions demonstrate that higher levels of cooperation in collaborative institutions are associated with lower levels of cooperation in other land‐use and transportation planning institutions.