Coercion

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on one particular aspect of authoritativeness: voluntary compliance with the decisions of authorities. Social psychologists have long distinguished between obedience that is the result of coercion, and obedience that is the result of internal attitudes. Opinions describe “reward power” and “coercive power”, in which obedience is contingent on positive and negative outcomes, and distinguish both of these types of power from legitimate power, in which obedience flows from judgments about the legitimacy of the authority. Legitimate power depends on people taking the obligation on themselves to obey and voluntarily follow the decisions made by authorities. The chapter also focuses on legitimacy because it is important to recognize, that legitimacy is not the only attitudinal factor influencing effectiveness. It is also influenced by other cognitions about the authority, most notably judgments of his or her expertise with respect to the problem at hand. The willingness of group members to accept a leader's directives is only helpful when the leader knows what directives to issue.

Abstract: ‘Legitimacy’ has both a normative and a sociological meaning. To say that an institution is legitimate in the normative sense is to assert that it has the right to rule — where ruling is promulgating rules and attempting to secure compliance with them by attaching costs to noncompliance and/or benefits to compliance. Ruling in this broad sense does not require that the rules be backed by coercion, much less that the rulemaker claims a rightful monopoly on coercion within a jurisdiction, so it does not presuppose the state. Later we will see that the notion of the right to rule is subject to stronger and weaker interpretations, but for now it will suffice to say that an institution is legitimate in the sociological sense when it is widely believed to have the right to rule.1 When people disagree over whether the WTO is legitimate, they are not disagreeing about whether they or others believe that institution has the right to rule; they are disagreeing about whether it has the right to rule.

Abstract: Preface Sources 1. Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility 2. Freedom of the will and the concept of a person 3. Coercion and moral responsibility 4. Three concepts of free action 5. Identification and externality 6. The problem of action 7. The importance of what we care about 8. What we are mortally responsible for 9. Necessity and desire 10. On bullshit 11. Equality as a moral ideal 12. Identification and wholeheartedness 13. Rationality and the unthinkable.

Abstract: Social scientists have sketched four distinct theories to explain a phenomenon that appears to have ramped up in recent years, the diffusion of policies across countries. Constructivists trace policy norms to expert epistemic communities and international organizations, who define economic progress and human rights. Coercion theorists point to powerful nation-states, and international financial institutions, that threaten sanctions or promise aid in return for fiscal conservatism, free trade, etc. Competition theorists argue that countries compete to attract investment and to sell exports by lowering the cost of doing business, reducing constraints on investment, or reducing tariff barriers in the hope of reciprocity. Learning theorists suggest that countries learn from their own experiences and, as well, from the policy experiments of their peers. We review the large body of research from sociologists and political scientists, as well as the growing body of work from economists and psychologists, pointing to the diverse mechanisms that are theorized and to promising avenues for distinguishing among causal mechanisms.