P7: Interactive compliance: The acceptance of collective decision rules and outcomes

Legal rules that have been established as the outcome of collective decision-making procedures are often incompletely complied with: the behavior of political and state actors (politicians, civil servants, judges) and citizens may diverge considerably from the letter of the law. It is clearly important to account for this potential non-compliance when trying to understand the implications of constitutional rules for society.

This project investigates the factors that determine the non-compliance of state representatives with their constitutions, as well as interactions with non-compliance at the level of the citizen with derived decisions. The different dimensions of the project are to be tackled using a variety of methods including traditional empirical studies of (large n) cross-country studies, (small n) case studies as well as experimental studies on the legitimacy–compliance link.

Objectives

To study the determinants of non-compliance.
To explore the interactions between compliance at different levels of society.
To investigate the dynamics that result from externally changing conditions.

Supervisors

Suggested Readings

Acemoglu, D. and M. Jackson (2014): “Social norms and the enforcement of laws,” NBER Working Paper No. 20369.

Alm, J., Bloomquist, K., and M. McKee (2015): “On the external validity of laboratory tax compliance experiments,” Economic Inquiry, 53, 1170-1186.

Chilton, Adam and Mila Versteeg (2016). Do Constitutional Rights Make a Difference? American Journal of Political Science, 60, 575-89.

Dal Bó, P., Foster, A. and L. Putterman (2010): “Institutions and behavior: Experimental evidence on the effects of democracy,” The American Economic Review, 100, 2205-29.

Dwenger, N., Kleven, H., Rasul, I. and J. Rincke (2016): “Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for tax compliance: Evidence from a field experiment in Germany,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 8, 203-232.

Fellner, G., Sausgruber, R., and C. Traxler (2013): “Testing enforcement strategies in the field: Threat, moral appeal and social information,” Journal of the European Economic Association, 11, 634-660.

Goodin, R.E (2007): “Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35, 40-68.

Hurd, I. (1999): “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics”, International Organization, 53, 349-408.

Khadjavi, M., Lange, A. and A. Nicklisch (2017): “How Transparency May Corrupt – Experimental Evidence from Asymmetric Public Goods Games,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 142, 468-481.

Tyran, J.-R. and L. P. Feld (2006): “Achieving compliance when legal sanctions are non‐deterrent,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 108, 135-156.

Voigt, S. (forthcoming): “Mind the Gap – Analyzing the Divergence between Constitutional Text and Constitutional Reality,” forthcoming in International Journal of Constitutional Law.