Australian Citizenship and the Two World Wars

This article surveys Australian citizenship: its distinctive characteristics in the first half of the twentieth century, and how these were changed by the experience of the two world wars. It argues that Australian citizenship, at the time of Federation, was racially exclusive, imperial, masculine and deeply anchored in the traditional view of the military obligation of the individual to the state. The world wars, especially the war of 1939‐45, encouraged some adjustment to these ideas, particularly in terms of the imperial link, women's status and the social rights of Australians. However, these conflicts were fought within a context of imperial loyalty and the intensity of their demands reinforced military service in defence of the nation as the primary civic virtue. The centrality of Anzac to Australian nationalism also perpetuated a gendered dimension to Australian citizenship. The world wars therefore, for all their dramatic impact on the lives of Australian families and the national political culture, did not force a major reconceptualisation of Australian citizenship.     

Regulating Law Firms from the Inside: The Role of Compliance Officers for Legal Practice in England and Wales

Following the Legal Services Act 2007, which permitted the delivery of legal services through Alternative Business Structures (ABS), the Solicitors Regulation Authority required all regulated legal service firms to appoint Compliance Officers for Legal Practice (COLPs). COLPs are charged with taking reasonable steps to ensure that firms comply with their obligations, which entails interpreting what outcomes‐focused regulation (OFR) requires of the firm. Yet despite their importance, little is known about how compliance roles operate within legal service firms. We addressed this gap through a series of qualitative interviews that explored COLPs’ views of their roles, their attitudes to regulation, in particular to OFR, and to achieving compliance. We found that COLPs are a key regulatory mechanism in the context of firm‐based regulation and OFR and have a critical role to play in protecting and promoting professional values in both ABS and non‐ABS entities.     

Violence in Lenin's thought and practice: The spark and the conflagration

Drawing on Lenin's writings, the commentary of Soviet specialists, and the work of those who focus on the special character of violence, this article discusses Lenin's views on violence over his lifetime, his distinction among different types of violence, his policies and their results, and finally the doubts about his practices that he ultimately expressed near the end of his life. Beginning in the tsarist era with Lenin's campaign among his fellow revolutionaries to reject individual terror in favor of mass violence, it follows him into power as he put his tenets into practice and finally into his introspective retirement. It discusses how, oblivious to developing danger he unleashed mass violence and prodded it to action in the service of the revolutionary state; why he refused to incorporate safeguards against runaway violence; and how, as its deleterious effects became manifest, he continued to employ violence as both instrument of choice and substitute for legitimate authority. It shows that Lenin evinced an addiction to violence that caused him to overlook or foreclose other, less radical, political methods for accomplishing his goals. We see that Lenin's evident belief in the efficacy and controllability of violence blinded him to its potentially counterproductive and even disastrous effects. The state that resulted from Lenin's policies was not what he had envisaged, and not the result of a preconceived plan. But equally it did not emerge as the simple product of ineluctable circumstances defeating a hapless Lenin. Lenin made a series of policy choices ‐ none foreordained by circumstance ‐ which yielded an authoritarian state grounded in violence. These choices were explicitly contested by prominent contemporaries within and outside of the Bolshevik government, who correctly and vocally predicted the results which were becoming clearly visible during Lenin's tenure. Lenin chose to ignore the results, reject the alternatives and silence the critics, decisions he himself came to regret.