Assessing Children’s Risk for Homicide in the Context of Domestic Violence

Increasing evidence indicates that children are at risk of homicide in the context of domestic violence. Using a retrospective case analysis of 84 domestic homicide cases, this study sought to identify the unique factors that place a child at risk of homicide. Three groups of domestic homicide cases in which there were no children in the home (No Child in the Home, n?=?44), a child was targeted (Child Target, n?=?13), and a child was present, but not targeted (No Child Target, n?=?27) were compared. Overall, there were no significant differences amongst cases involving children (targeted or not) on major factors except for the higher number of agencies involved with couples with children. Few cases had risk assessment or safety plans completed. Despite the study limitations, the findings speak to the need for professionals to assess child risk and include children in safety planning in all cases of domestic violence.     

Does electoral fraud spread? The expansion of electoral manipulation in Russia

In this paper, we argue that the occurrence of electoral manipulation in Russia has been driven, in part, by diffusion across neighboring raions through emulation, incentives, and networks. Presumably, in Putin’s Russia all local authorities have some incentives to deliver a high number of votes to United Russia, the “party of power”. However, the perceived pressure to deliver ever higher levels of support for Putin’s party arguably increases considerably if one’s raion is located in a region marked by extraordinarily high turnout and high vote share for United Russia. Conversely, the absence of perceived competition to curry executive favor through delivering votes and networks of uncorrupted local authorities, as well as local opposition organizations working to combat electoral fraud, may help explain the absence of fraud among raions located in regions marked by clean elections. Our quantitative analyses suggest that a “neighborhood effect” – the existence of manipulated raions within a region – strongly influences the likelihood that raions are manipulated. Moreover, although results are more mixed, spatial autocorrelation analysis suggests that turnout levels in raions are influenced by the turnout in proximate raions.     

Implementing Developmental Screening Programs for Infants and Toddlers in the Child Welfare System

In 2003, revisions to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act required states to develop plans to refer children younger than 3 years of age with a substantiated case of abuse and neglect for developmental screening. A decade after legislation was passed, its implementation varies considerably across states. This article explains how research informs the need for careful developmental monitoring of young children, especially those experiencing trauma or living under stressful conditions. Finally, this article presents how one community used colocation to increase developmental screenings for young abused and neglected children.     

Good Governance Means Performance and Results

If the object of developing and developed world leaders is to uplift their peoples continually, then it is essential to measure approximations of actual service deliveries (what we ought to mean by “governance”), not to rate nations impressionistically according to the perceived quality of their operations, their perceived impartiality (as per Rothstein), the extent of their bureaucratic autonomy (as per Fukuyama and others), or their capacity to coax or coerce citizens. Only in that positive manner can we distinguish the governments that are producing abundant political goods (i.e., good governance) from those that no longer are, or never did.     

Sustainable citizenship for a technological world: negotiating deliberative dialectics

Incorporating the notion of sustainability is the biggest challenge for citizenship in a technological era. Existing conceptions of citizenship have not been able to grapple with compounded ecological, economic, cultural, and moral threats facing modern technology-infused societies. Nor has increased public participation, engagement, and dialogue resolved polarized positions on issues such as what constitutes quality of life or what is meant by the integrity of nature. This paper draws on the scholarship of both sustainability and citizenship to propose a framework of sustainable citizenship that seeks to emphasize shared values through a deliberated clash of ideas. Such a framework involves a negotiation of the dialectics of rights and responsibilities, state and non-state, public and private, human and non-human nature, universal and particular, and democracy and capitalism. The paper illustrates how sustainable citizenship can be applied to deal with contentious political and policy issues of new and emerging technologies.     

评阿兰·沃森的《法律移植:比较法的方法》

<正> 爱丁堡大学民法教授阿兰·沃森在其《法律移植:比较法的方法》(Legal Transplants:An Approach to Comparative Law,佛吉尼亚大学出版社,1974年版)一书中试图证实比较法是一门学科。沃森教授提出:"比较法是研究有关法律的本质,特别是有关法律发展的本质的学科。"其主要功能在于使人了解"决定法律发展进程的独特因素。" 然而,研究十六世纪在鲁瑞斯坦(本文作者杜撰的国家)以特殊形式出现的独特的法律