FAMILY COURT ASSESSMENT:Dissolution of Marriage in Florida—Preliminary Assessment Findings

To obtain the empirical data necessary for the development of an effective family court case management model, staff from Florida's Office of the State Courts Administrator undertook a comprehensive assessment of (a) the movement of dissolution of marriage cases through the court system, (b) the factors affecting case flow and time frames, and (c) the system's responsiveness to the families and children it serves. Findings from this study are guiding the Florida Supreme Court's Family Court Steering Committee in its efforts to design an effective case management system that includes intake and referral, differentiated case management and tracking, case monitoring, and alternative dispute resolution.     

Passion,paternalism, and politics: DIY development and independent volunteers in Honduras

Independent development volunteers (IDVs) and their DIY development projects, although largely neglected in the literature, are part of an emerging movement of non-traditional agents within development. However, they are also participants in a deeply paradoxical industry; both a reflection of passion and commitment, and a paternalist and neo-colonial practice that reflects the messy realities of geo-political and cultural power and privilege. This article explores these debates, drawing on research with IDVs in Honduras. The intersection of passion, paternalism, and politics highlights the complex environments in which IDVs work, and the need to make them visible in discussions of development.     

The distribution of conflict and attention across energy infrastructure

Across the world, public administration and policy decisions are related to diverse levels of conflict and attention. However, the degree and variance of conflict and attention remain largely unspecified. This article examines how types of energy infrastructure and characteristics of project location are associated with the distribution of conflict and attention around the energy infrastructure siting process. Our empirical focus is on gas pipelines, electricity transmission lines, solar power projects, and wind power projects across the United States in 2018. Primarily relying on regression analysis and interviews, this article finds differences in the distribution of conflict and attention intensity within and between these energy infrastructure types, with gas pipelines and wind power projects presenting relatively higher conflict and attention intensities. However, conflict and attention are skewed to low intensities across infrastructure types. Characteristics of project locations that are positively associated with high conflict and attention intensity include the proportion of Democratic voters and the level of urbanization in the places where projects are sited. In contrast, the proportion of Black or Hispanic residents is negatively associated with high conflict and attention intensity.