SCALE ECONOMIES AND IRON LAWS: MERGERS AND DEMERGERS IN WHITEHALL 1971–1984

Between 1971 and 1984 there were ten cases of merger or demerger in British central government departments, ranging in importance from the massive DTI demerger into four distinct departments (1973) to the absorption by the Lord Chancellor's Department of the Office of the Public Trustee (1982). By analysis of changes in aggregate indices of 'top staff', 'middle staff', ratio of administrative grades to total staff, salary costs relative to total budget, budget relative to total Government budget, and staff relative to total Civil Service staff, some common hypotheses about the rationale and effects of such bureau-shuffling are explored. It is found that, if anything, like attracts unlike (in terms of these indices); that change in scale creates neither economies nor diseconomies; that reorganization does not inevitably produce cost escalation (the 'Iron Law of Prodigality'); but that the 'Iron Law of Inertia' (reorganization in practice has little observable effect on bureaucratic structure and working) is supported by the observed results.     

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF VENGEANCE: A TEST OF BLACK'S MODEL*

The current research tests Black's (1990) model of vengeance through interviews with prison inmates. Drawing on a case‐control method, each respondent describes a matched pair of conflicts: the crime of vengeance and a similar nonviolent conflict from the same time period. The quantitative data are used to estimate the impact of conflict structure on conflict management. Conditional logistic regression models offer mixed support: relational distance and functional independence increase the odds of vengeance, but the remaining theoretical variables do not. The qualitative data are used to illustrate the quantitative patterns and unearth parallels between premodern and modern violence.     

DETERRING CORPORATE CRIME*

Using event history analysis, we examine the recidivism patterns of a sample of 38 corporations charged with one or more serious antitrust violations between 1928 and 1981 to see whether sanction experience decreases the likelihood of a firm's reoffending. Specifically, we analyze the effects of procedure type (e.g., civil, criminal, and administrative redress) and proxy measures of corporate deterrence while controlling for changes in antitrust law and the economic conditions of the firm, industry, and general economy. Though not robust, there is some evidence that past guilty verdicts and changes in penalties for lawbreaking from misdemeanors to felonies inhibit recidivism. We note, however, that industry characteristics are stronger by far in their effects on future illegality than formal sanction risk or consequence. The implications of these findings for organizational deterrence and corporate crime control are discussed.