Compliance & Public Authority

A Theory with International Applications

Oran R. Young

• Publisher: RFF Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781617260605
• eBook ISBN: 9781135997298
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Offers a theory of compliance and authority that wouild be applicable to behavior concerning economic contracts, law, enforcement, and international relations. It examiones the problem of compliance in centralized (e.g. national and state laws) and decentralized (international treaties) systems. Applies the theory to explain the level of compliance with Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty anf the International North Pacific Fisheries Convention.

Originally published in 1979

CHAPTER 1
The problem of compliance

The mere existence of a rule, a law, a moral standard, a social norm, or any other behavioral prescription does not guarantee that those subject to it will actually comply with it. It is evident that various forms of noncompliant behavior are common in most social systems. Even those who acknowledge the authoritativeness and generally favor the existence of specific behavioral prescriptions frequently find it advantageous to violate them in practice.¹ That is, the presence of incentives to cheat need not imply a desire to reject the authoritative force of the relevant behavioral prescriptions altogether. Similarly, the promulgation of a negotiated settlement, a contract, or a treaty does not mean that the participants will automatically conform to the behavioral standards set forth in their agreement. Actors quite frequently enter into agreements whose terms they are by no means determined to carry out.

The issue of compliance invariably poses problems of choice for those who are subject to specific behavioral prescriptions. This is so whether a given actor ultimately chooses to comply or not to comply, either on the basis of conscious calculations or of subconscious forces. Consequently, the phenomenon of compliance is amenable to analysis in terms of various theories of choice. It also constitutes a central concern in all discussions of "enforcement" in the theory of games and in analyses of bargaining and negotiation. Posed in this way, moreover, the problem of compliance comprises a classic theme of political theory. All this leads straight to the principal issues I wish to tackle in this essay. What are the factors that govern whether subjects (individuals or collective entities) abide by rules, laws, moral standards, social norms, agreements, and so forth? How will public authorities approach the problem of compliance and what options do they have in attempting to elicit compliant behavior from specified groups of subjects? These questions encompass a broad range of topics. But, as we shall see, they constitute only a subset of the entire collection of important issues pertaining to behavioral prescriptions and compliance.

I propose to tackle these questions at two distinct levels. In the first instance, I shall address the problem of compliance in general, theoretical terms. Compliance is not uniquely a matter of politics, unless we make it so by definition. On the contrary, issues pertaining to compliance arise in a great many realms. Thus, such issues are pervasive in economic, social, religious, and educational arenas as well as in political arenas more narrowly defined. Furthermore, they constitute a major human concern in situations ranging from highly specific interpersonal relationships to international activities involving large collective entities. Can we formulate any general statements about compliance which are relevant to all these situations? Necessarily, I shall approach the problem in abstract terms in this context and analyze the major features of this problem quite formally.

At the same time, I shall examine the special characteristics of the problem of compliance as it arises in social systems that are highly decentralized with respect to the distribution of power and authority. More specifically, I shall engage in a detailed investigation of compliance in the contemporary international system. In the course of this investigation, I hope to be able to lay to rest certain entrenched myths (for example, the idea that the presence of well-developed enforcement mechanisms constitutes a necessary condition for the achievement of high levels of compliance). Also, I plan to argue that the compliance problems of highly decentralized social systems, like the international system, are not always qualitatively more difficult to solve than the parallel problems arising in more centralized social systems. In this connection, I shall make use of several case studies. I am not, of course, under any illusion that it is possible to confirm generalizations through the use of case materials. Nevertheless, I believe that detailed case studies constitute a flexible device both for the empirical examination of theoretically derived propositions and for the development of new hypotheses within a well-defined conceptual framework.

CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

A behavioral prescription is any well-defined standard setting forth actions (including prohibitions) that members of some specified subject group are expected to perform under appropriate circumstances.² A fully articulated behavioral prescription, therefore, must include a demarcation of the relevant subject group and the appropriate circumstances as well as a statement of the required action(s). Note also that behavioral prescriptions constitute normative standards in the sense that they specify behavior that actors ought to exhibit under the circumstances in question.³ This suggests questions concerning the nature of the authority underlying any given behavioral prescription and the reasons why members of the relevant subject group acknowledge it as authoritative. In this essay, I shall generally bypass these questions by assuming the existence of behavioral prescriptions that are widely acknowledged as authoritative.

The "domain" of a behavioral prescription refers to the subject group encompassed by the prescription. Some prescriptions are intended to be universal (for example, the moral prohibition against the taking of human life) while others are meant only to apply to some well-defined subset of the general population (for example, the rules pertaining to professional baseball). The "scope" of a behavioral prescription, by contrast, refers to the breadth of its coverage. Two dimensions of scope should be differentiated. Some prescriptions require far more extensive or costly actions than others. Thus, moral standards requiring certain individuals to provide substantial and continuous care for others are more extensive than laws demanding periodic performance of marginal acts (for example, having one's automobile inspected annually). Beyond this, however, the term scope applies to contextual limitations associated with behavioral prescriptions or to the appropriate circumstances in which the relevant actions are to be performed. Some prescriptions are broad with respect to scope in the sense that the required actions are to be carried out in virtually every situation (for example, there are relatively few contexts in which the taking of human life is morally or legally justifiable), whereas other prescriptions demand the performance of the appropriate actions only under highly restricted circumstances. Of course, there are also cases in which serious controversies arise precisely with regard to the proper contextual limitations to be associated with a particular behavioral prescription.⁴

A compliance system is a set of behavioral prescriptions designed to regulate an interdependent group of activities in a coherent fashion. Though boundaries are sometimes ambiguous and demarcation problems are common, human activities are typically divisible into relatively welldefined groups or categories. And behavioral prescriptions are commonly organized into easily differentiable sets to bring order into specific groups of human activities. For example, there are well-developed systems of rules to govern sports like baseball and football; systems of laws to provide order for functional areas such as interstate commerce or regions such as states; and systems of ethics to regulate the behavior of specified groups such as lawyers or physicians. Ideally, a compliance system should be fully consistent internally in the sense that its component prescriptions should not call for contradictory actions or be impossible to fulfill simultaneously. In fact, however, compliance systems exhibit significant inconsistencies from time to time. Note also that there are ordinarily extensive interdependencies among the component elements of compliance systems. Consequently, subjects will often make decisions with respect to the whole set of behavioral prescriptions included in a given compliance system rather than making separate decisions concerning compliance with each component prescription.⁵

The subjects of behavioral prescriptions are the units that must ultimately choose whether or not to comply with any given prescription. In this connection, a subject or an actor is any entity that (1) possesses preferences concerning alternative states of the world and (2) is capable of engaging in choice behavior. An entity that does not possess preferences is not capable of making meaningful choices concerning whether or not to comply with specific behavioral prescriptions. A unit that has no capacity to choose at all must behave in accordance with the dictates of some genuine actor and need not be dealt with separately in any study of compliance.

It is also relevant to touch on the distinction between individuals as actors and collective entities as actors in assessing choice behavior in the realm of compliance. While it is possible to proceed on the assumption that collective entities behave as though they were integrated individuals, their actual choice behavior diverges significantly from that of individuals in many real-world situations. This is particularly true with respect to the behavior of the actors in the international system, a case of special interest in the context of this study (Allison, 1971). Accordingly, it will be important to engage in a careful examination of the nature of the actors and their behavioral attributes in analyzing the problem of compliance as it arises in the international system.

The term compliance refers to all behavior by subjects or actors that conforms to the requirements of behavioral prescriptions or compliance systems. Conversely, noncompliance (or violation) is behavior that fails to conform to such requirements.⁶ In general, compliance or noncompliance with any specific behavioral prescription by a given actor involves an act of choice. However, such behavior may sometimes become largely habitual or subconscious, so that it is not necessary to assume that actors always engage in extensive calculations concerning such problems.⁷

A compliance mechanism is any institution or set of institutions (formal or informal) established by a public authority (for example, a government in a centralized social system or a diplomatic conference or ad hoc functional agency in a highly decentralized social system)⁸ for the purpose of encouraging compliance with one or more behavioral prescriptions of a compliance system. Compliance mechanisms obviously give rise to efforts to structure the incentives of the members of specified subject groups with respect to their choices concerning compliant and noncompliant behavior. One way to do this is through direct interventions in the decision making processes of subjects. Interventions of this type may take such varied forms as: (1) punishments or rewards,⁹ (2) inspection systems operating to reduce the probability of subjects engaging in undetected violations, and (3) the keeping of public records so that subjects violating prescriptions will subsequently be burdened with records of noncompliant behavior. On the other hand, compliance mechanisms sometimes rely on efforts to mold the underlying criteria of evaluation that actors use in their decision making about compliance. For example, public authorities can invest resources in programs of socialization designed to inculcate such things as habits of obedience or internalized norms.¹⁰

Public authorities will typically face a multiplicity of investment decisions concerning the use of resources for the development and operation of compliance mechanisms. Not only is there the basic decision about the proportion of the overall budget to devote to them as opposed to other goods, there is also the question of what mix of mechanisms will prove optimal in dealing with the set of compliance problems considered likely to arise during the foreseeable future. Public authorities will ordinarily have to make a stream of decisions in this realm based on considerations relating to such matters as production functions, fixed costs versus operating costs, problems of lumpiness, and the impact of changing technology. At this point, I wish only to flag the importance of these issues; I shall have more to say about them in a subsequent chapter.

PRINCIPAL QUESTIONS

The principal questions pursued in this study fall quite naturally under a small number of headings. Though each of these headings encompasses a range of topics, it is possible to characterize them with some precision.

The calculus of the individual actor

It is apparent that individuals in most social systems make continuous streams of choices concerning compliance and noncompliance. The typical actor is a member of numerous subject groups toward which behavioral prescriptions of various types are directed. Empirically, it is clear that choices both to comply and to violate occur with considerable frequency in conjunction with most behavioral prescriptions (Rottenberg, 1973). But is it possible to model these choices in such a way as to be able to explain or predict the behavior of individual actors in various situations?¹¹

At the outset, we need to identify the factors that go into the calculations of subjects concerning the benefits and costs of compliance. This leads to a range of more specific questions such as the following. How do actors cope with cross-pressures when specific prescriptions conflict with one another? To what extent do actors generate and use expectations concerning the probable behavior of others in making their own decisions? How do subjects react to probabilistic sanctions in making choices?¹² Are there significant differences in the ways in which actors respond to rewards and punishments in their calculations? Do actors develop decision rules or habitual responses to simplify choices, in view of the fact that there are numerous choices of this type to be made in each time period and that such choices will often be iterative in nature?

Perhaps the most elegant way to proceed with theory construction in this area would be to develop a generalized utility function incorporating all the factors (that is, benefits and costs) the individual subject considers in making choices regarding compliance.¹³ In principle, this would permit the application of marginal analysis and the calculation of equilibrium conditions for subjects with respect to compliance and noncompliance However, I do not believe this approach will prove fruitful. These choices are ordinarily so deeply affected by indivisibilities, uncertainty, strategic interaction, complex nonmonetary payoffs, and competition from other choice problems that models based on elaborate utility equations for individual a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• fm-chapter1
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Half Title page1
• Title Page1
• Copyright Page1
• fm-chapter2
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 The problem of compliance
• Part I A special theory of compliance
• Part II Applications to international politics
• Part III Toward a more general theory of compliance
• Bibliographical note
• Reference list
• Name index
• Subject index