(iPoster) Enforcement as Message: A Dynamic Theory of Legitimacy and Compliance

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Formal Political Theory & Foreign Policy II – Alliances, Coercion, and Foreign Policy Decision-Making
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Formal Theory

Abstract

Why do identical laws yield different compliance norms across jurisdictions? I develop a dynamic model in which the government chooses both enforcement intensity and an applied standard that may depart from the statute, creating a de jure-de facto gap. Citizens are not fixed types: behavior switches at a legitimacy threshold that evolves endogenously from observed enforcement. When the law in action aligns with the law in books, citizens act as rule-followers; when perceived alignment falls below the threshold, they behave opportunistically. Tight and transparent enforcement replenishes legitimacy and gradually transforms compliance into an internalized norm, while large or opaque gaps erode legitimacy and normalize violation. The government faces an intertemporal trade-off: relaxing enforcement conserves resources and accommodates private preferences in the short run but undermines the credibility needed to sustain order over time. The model generates multiple equilibria under a common legal code: a high-legitimacy regime with voluntary compliance, a low-legitimacy regime reliant on coercion, and an intermediate regime characterized by cyclical trust and disorder. Small initial differences in enforcement choices thus push jurisdiction onto divergent long-run paths, explaining why the same legal rules become self-enforcing in some polities yet remain costly and brittle in others.

Author

• Ke Liang, Princeton University