2. The Integrated Framework of Compliance with Law as Social Influence: When Law Changes Behaviors

Kelman and Hamilton discussed in detail My Lai massacre and Watergate scandal as well as public attitude toward the two in this book; Kelman (1997a) discusses how defining and renegotiating national identity can result in both plural national identities or problematic majoritarianism; Kelman (2001, 2004) dealt with the complex issue of reconciling Palestinian and Israeli citizens.

In the very first experiment conducted in the 1950s involved African American freshmen students at a university campus in the USA. The Supreme Court’s decision on desegregation of public schools was awaited. The proposition posed to the students was: Is it desirable to maintain some exclusively African American education spaces to preserve the culture, history, and tradition of the group?

This choice is made merely to avoid any confusion between influence through compliance and legal compliance. The book utilizes a close synonym “acquiescence” to refer to what is termed as influence through compliance within Kelman’s framework. It is a logistical simplification which has no effect on the content of the theory.

Kelman (1961) provides a summary of the three processes.

These indirect social sanctions can be severe in certain contexts. Mobs can and do enforce rules through violence, societies ostracize members who do not follow social norms and businesses loose clients. But the focus is on who administers the cost/benefit associated with the compliance decisions. To the extent that the state delegates enforcement to public facing businesses, these businesses may be enforcing the law on behalf of the state. For example, government may fine cafés and restaurants that do not enforce the mask mandate for it to qualify as state administered punishment. If cafés, on the other hand, are enforcing the legal mask mandate but for other reasons (to make other customers feel safe, for example) then it will not be considered as direct effect of law for the purposes of this framework.

Chapter 5 discusses in further detail how perceptions about the legal process influence compliance through each of the three motivational processes.

In fact, Basu (2018) takes the argument further and states: The law works, to the extent that it does, by creating new focal points in the game of life or the economy game; and further; this is the only way in which the law affects individual behavior and collective outcomes. Unlike the other scholars who argued that this is one of the ways in which law changes behavior, he argued that this is the exclusive way in which law changes behavior.

McAdams (2015) at p. 58—“Judges, Legislatures and the law they create have no power except for the expectations for how people will react to them.”

Roy (1997) interestingly indicated that more educated women are as likely to be subjected to violence.

Chapter 4 discusses in greater detail how legal expression can be potent even when not salient for the identity once there are initial compliers/adopters who comply with the law. However, in that case as well, the initial compliance will not be purely through identification with law and may need assistance from other processes.

Bradford et al. (2015) are one of the few studies that tried to empirically test the relationship between procedural fairness and social identity.

Gibson et al. show that in the Bush v. Gore decision, US Supreme Court continued to enjoy public support and the judgment was accepted by the population because of the reservoir of support it enjoys in US demography and not because people agreed with the judgment per se.

Bradford et al. noted that police continued to enjoy positive support in population despite news and criticism about excessive use of force due to their pre-existing positive relationship among the group.

Williamson et al. (2016) concluded as follows: First, smokers in EU countries with higher TCS scores are more concerned about the effect of their smoke on others, which can be regarded as a marker of tobacco denormalization. Second, support for tobacco control measures is higher in countries that have more of these concerned smokers. Together, these findings support the idea that the issue of passive smoking is central to tobacco control in Europe; Philip Morris (1998) concluded that “this is much stronger than any other driving factor such as social acceptability or disliking the smell.”

Tsai et al. highlighted how the Liberian government used trusted intermediaries to enhance their legitimacy and increase compliance with hygiene and social distancing requirements during the Ebola crisis in Liberia.

Infra Chap. 5.

This problem is especially aggravated because majority of explanations were evolved through empirical testing on the USA and Western European citizenry. Research on procedural justice explanations for compliance in developing countries like Ghana and China, for example, is starting to show discrepancies in how these explanations manifest in societies with different underlying contexts. See, for example, Guangzhen Wu, & Jianhong Liu, Extending the Procedural Justice Theory to the Chinese Context: The Role of Collective Efficacy, 63 British J. of Crimin. 1, 40–58 (2021); Larry Heuer, Steve Penrod, et al., The Role of Resource and Relational Concerns for Procedural Justice, 28 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 11, 1468–82 (2002); Devon Johnson, Edward Maguire, & Joseph Kuhns, Public perceptions of the legitimacy of the law and legal authorities: Evidence from the Caribbean, 48 L. & Soc’ty Rev. 947–978 (2014); Justice Tankebe, Public Cooperation with the Police in Ghana: Does Procedural Fairness Matter?, 47 J. of Crimin. 1265–93 (2009).