COMMENTARY ON TIPPINS AND WITTMANN'S "EMPIRICAL AND ETHICAL PROBLEMS WITH CUSTODY RECOMMENDATIONS:

Although in substantial agreement with Tippins and Wittmann's analysis, their call for a moratorium on the practice of custody evaluators making recommendations to the court does not solve the many problems that they have raised, and may have unintended consequences which place families at even greater risk. This commentary reflects our agreement with some of the authors' major points of contention, focuses on several points of disagreement, and suggests alternative remedies for the shortcomings and ethical problems described in child custody evaluations.     

India’s middlemen: connecting by corrupting?

Much of India’s corruption involves middlemen: go-betweens who bring citizens’ cases to the attention of state officials, producing results – for a price. Citizens pay bribes, often for benefits for which they already qualify, and much (but not all) of that money is passed on to officials by the middleman. On its face such arrangements would seem to benefit no one but the middleman himself, but closer examination shows that middleman corruption involves much more than a discrete material transaction. There are important intangible dimensions: officials’ status is reaffirmed, while for citizens government takes on a comprehensible human face. These dimensions of corruption become all the more important over time, for both reputational capital and expectations are built up that shape future transactions. Most important, middlemen reduce transaction costs for citizens and officials alike. Thus, while middleman corruption falls far short of the ideal sorts of market, government and personal systems of “micro-coordination” assumed in many accounts of the effects of corruption, it may well be a better way of getting things done than most of the alternatives actually available. The analysis yields a more subtle but precise view of how cultural factors – especially mediating social institutions – figure into the study of corruption, and may suggest reasons why extensive corruption and solid economic growth have coexisted in India for decades.     

State Social Services Contracting: Exploring the Determinants of Effective Contract Accountability

This article examines the effectiveness of contract accountability in social service contracts. The analysis is based on five case studies of Kansas contracts for selected welfare, Medicaid, and foster care and adoption services. Results indicate the state has achieved moderate to high levels of accountability effectiveness, especially in terms of specifying social service contracts and selecting appropriate accountability strategies. However, accountability is undermined by the use of risk shifting, reliance on a system of multiple competing providers, and the adoption of new information technologies. These conclusions contradict the conventional wisdom, theory, and existing research on contracting.     

“If You've Got Friends and Neighbours”: Constituency Voting Patterns for the UK Labour Party Leader in 2010

Most attention in British electoral studies has been paid to the pattern of voting for parties, with relatively little to that for individual candidates. In intra-party elections, however, candidates may perform better in some areas than others, illustrating V. O. Key's well-known “friends and neighbours” effect. This paper explores whether that was so at the election for the leader of the UK Labour party in 2010, expecting each of the five candidates to perform better in their own constituency and its environs and also with those constituency parties whose MPs supported their candidature. The results are in line with the expectations, especially for one of the candidates who ran an explicitly geographical campaign.     

MPs' Responses to a Proposed New Constituency Map: Electoral Prospects,Community Ties and Party Organisation

Until new legislation was passed in 2011, community ties and continuity of representation were the major criteria deployed by the United Kingdom's Boundary Commissions when defining parliamentary constituency boundaries. Equality of electorates is now the paramount criterion, and the Commissions' first proposals using that new format substantially fractured many of the existing constituencies. MPs were able to respond to the Commissions' proposals under the altered public consultation procedures. Only a small majority did so, however: there were significant differences across the political parties in both response rates and the nature of the responses, the majority of which used community ties as the main grounds for either supporting or opposing the Commissions' proposals.     

Sustainable use of wildlife: The role of private contracts as a conservation tool

Abstract

This paper focuses on the ability of local communities to make effective use of private legal tools as a means of assuring sustainable wildlife use. Using recent legal developments in Kenya as a case study, the paper examines a series of contracts entered into between local communities in the Samburu District and tour operators wishing to bring wildlife “photo safaris”; onto Samburu lands. These contracts, typically referred to as “Eco‐tourism contracts,”; are designed simply to allow tour operators to lead tour groups through community property without trespass. The authors argue that to achieve their true potential, these contracts must be treated, in essence, as “wildlife easements,”; or “eco‐easements,”; that can become publicly‐recorded mutual conservation commitments, and as such must incorporate conservation principles with a focus on environmental impact and wildlife management. Moreover, these contracts must be linked both conceptually and financially to the communities’ governance structure and to its broader conservation efforts.