Collective Sanctions and the Creation of Prisoner's Dilemma Norms

Abstract

Social psychologists, sociologists, and economists have all proposed theories of norm emergence. In general, they views norm emergence as depending on three factors: (i) actors' preferences regarding their own behavior (inclinations); (ii) actors' preferences regarding the behavior of others (regulatory interests); and (iii) measures for enforcing norms (enforcement resources), such as access to sanctions and information. Whereas most studies of norm emergence have focused on inclinations or enforcement resources, this article analyzes the role of regulatory interests in norm emergence. Specifically, it analyzes systems of collective sanctions in which, when and individual violates or complies with a rule, not merely the individual but other memgers of that person's group as well are collectively punished of rewarded by an external agent. These collective sanctions give individuals an incentive to regulate one another's behavior. This paper demonstrates that when a group is subjected to collective sanctions, a variety of responses may be rational: the group may either create a secondary sanctioning system to enforce the agent's dictates, or it may revolt against the agent to destroy its sanctioning capacity. According to the proposed theoretic model. the optimal response depends quite sensitively on the group's size, internal cohesion, and related factors.