Commonwealthmen and Republicans: Dr. H.V. Evatt, the Monarchy and India

H.V. Evatt's foreign policy has attracted considerable historical attention, but his response as Australian External Affairs Minister to Commonwealth constitutional issues remains neglected. Evatt sought to retain India in the Commonwealth in 1948–49, but he insisted that India ought to recognise the king's prerogatives in its constitutional arrangements. He had developed his defence of the monarchy and its place in the empire in his writings of the inter-war years, and sought to apply these ideas in his Commonwealth diplomacy of the late 1940s. Evatt's failure to have these ideas accepted resulted from his attempt to impose an ideal of the relationship between the monarchy and the Commonwealth, derived from his understanding of the evolution of constitutional relations between the United Kingdom and the old dominions, to the very different context of Asian postwar decolonisation.     

Leviathan in the Crosshairs

Following in the spirit of the Leviathan hypothesis, this paper empirically examines how the degree of local government market power influences efficiency in the local public sector. Market power is measured by the number and relative size distribution of similar government units in the same market area. To avoid confusing market power with the comparative efficiency or superiority of larger sized organizations, the relative size distribution of the individual government unit is held constant in the empirical analysis. In the empirical test, aggregate property values serve as the measure of efficiency. The empirical results suggest that aggregate property values are lower and thus efficiency suffers, in more concentrated municipal market areas, ceteris paribus, thus providing some evidence for Leviathan-type governments in Connecticut.     

“Organized crime” and “organized crime”: Indeterminate problems of definition

Despite decades of effort, the search for a universal definition of organized crime has eluded both academics, criminal justice agencies, as well as international bodies. More than two decades ago, a content analysis of such definitional efforts by this writer (Hagan, 1983) noted that, while many writers, including those of textbooks, failed to supply explicit definitions of organized crime, some consensus was apparent. These earlier findings are explored and compared with updated content analyses of American criminology and criminal justice textbooks and organized crime textbooks. Also discussed are definitions offered by criminal justice agencies and those by international organizations. A distinction is made between “Organized Crime” groups and “organized crime,” activities by groups that are organized. This paper was presented at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Baltimore, Maryland, March 2006.