Do party leadership contests forecast British general elections?

When assessing election forecasts, two important criteria emerge: their accuracy (precision) and lead time (distance to event). Curiously, in both 2010 and 2015 the most accurate forecasts came from models having the longest lead time—albeit at most 12 months. Can we increase the lead time further, supposing we tolerate a small decrease in accuracy? Here, we develop a model with a lead time of more than 3 years. Our Party Leadership Model relies on the votes of MPs when selecting their party leader. We assess the forecasting quality of our model with both leave-one-out cross-validation and a before-the-fact forecast of the 2019 general election. Compared to both simple forecasting methods and other scientific forecasts, our model emerges as a leading contender. This result suggests that election forecasting may benefit from developing models with longer lead times, and that party leaders may influence election outcomes more than is usually thought.     

Subjects with agency? Children’s participation in family law proceedings

Galvanised by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, many jurisdictions now recognise children’s rights to participate in decisions that affect them. While such legal rights have increased, research on family law proceedings shows how children’s views can still be undermined, ignored or not even sought in decisions about them. This article uses the academic resources of childhood studies, to consider dominant and alternative narratives of children’s participation within Scottish family law. Drawing upon reported case law and empirical research, the article concludes that children’s participation gains protection by being institutionalised but children’s participation is attenuated because it is not recognised as relational and contextual. As rationality, consistency and autonomy are privileged, the weight given to children’s views is lessened by concerns about children being manipulated or distressed. Courts and their decisions may be child-focused, centring on children’s welfare, but they are not child-inclusive, involving children in decision-making.     

How do parents experience relocation disputes in the family courts?

Relocation cases are known to be amongst the most difficult decisions for family court judges. This article reports the findings of an empirical study of parents who were involved in relocation disputes, reporting their views on the experience of being involved in one of these difficult cases. We consider the origins of the disputes and parents’ perceptions of how their cases were resolved, as well as some initial discussion of the aftermath of the cases as seen in the first few months.     

Legal responses to child sexual abuse cases in the Children’s Court of Victoria: study findings on a case-management approach

Child sexual abuse cases present Children’s Courts with distinctive challenges. The highly conflictual nature of child sexual abuse cases means they do not lend themselves to the usual adversarial court processes that characterise the conduct of Magistrate Court matters in Australia. With this in mind, the Children’s Court in Victoria established for 12 months in 2013 a pilot specialised judicial list (known as the ‘D’ List) which offered an intensive Magistrate-led case management approach to child sexual abuse cases in the Family (child protection) Division of the Court. The operation of the List was evaluated to assess the suitability and effectiveness of this approach, and to investigate the challenges associated with managing and deciding this class of cases. The findings confirmed that the List provided better management of cases and reduced delay. Given this, the Court is continuing the judicially proactive intensive case management approach and dedicated list for child sexual abuse matters and extending it to regional courts; believing it to be a more effective approach to managing and deciding this complex class of cases.     

Making mothers: parenting classes in a women’s jail

In the wake of the War on Drugs, more mothers are incarcerated in US prisons and jails than ever before. Parenting classes have become ubiquitous in penal facilities that incarcerate women, but research about mothers’ experience in parenting class is limited to measures of efficacy about things like parenting attitudes and mental-health indicators. This study supplements existing research by adding an ethnographic lens to women’s experiences with parenting classes during incarceration. Drawing on 18 months of participant observation in the women’s unit of a county jail and 83 interviews with incarcerated mothers, I analyze incarcerated mothers’ experiences with parenting classes. Staff and inmates used parenting classes to create ways for women to do mothering during incarceration. Mothering in your head, longing to mother, and guilt as mothering enabled incarcerated mothers to maintain their identities as mothers despite their separation from their children. However, these practices could also be poor substitutes for spending time with children and did not necessarily reflect the reality of women’s lives outside of jail. These ways of doing mothering from afar were also a form of social control for the penal institution, as these mothering behaviors were consistent with being a good inmate.     

A marriage made in heaven: the functioning of patriarchy and nostalgia in Boer soek ’n vrou

This article explores the functioning of patriarchy and nostalgia in a South African reality television series, Boer soek ’n vrou. A hermeneutical analysis is used to unpack visual and verbal narratives that depict romantic relationships and an idealised future. Concepts such as nostalgic appropriation, benevolent patriarchy and the courtship narrative are explored to illustrate the latent patriarchal agenda which is conveyed to the audience. Interactions between the two genders not only naturalise but also reaffirm gender stereotypes. Throughout the series, female contestants are relegated to the sphere of domesticity whereas male farmers are shown as active social agents. Footage that sentimentalises the farmers’ feelings is also used to regenerate Afrikaner masculinity, arguably as a direct result of the perceived loss of male authority. This ‘renegotiated’ image of a white, heterosexual man is indistinguishable from the historical, patriarchal portrayal of men. In the series, patriarchy and nostalgia collaborate to create a cultural product that can be commercially marketed. The colonial gaze is employed to depict farms as picturesque spaces where benevolent patriarchal power relations are enforced. selective erasure, however, distorts reality and exploitative power relations remain hidden from the audience.