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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2018
It is crucial for policymakers to focus their attention on social norms if they want to improve policy outcomes, but doing so brings in new normative questions about the appropriate role of the state. Indeed, I argue that efforts to reduce coercion at the state level can create potentially pernicious and difficult to eliminate forms of coercion at the informal level. This creates a new normative challenge for thinking about the broader regulatory apparatus, and complicates our approach in utilizing social norms for democratic policy ends. I will distinguish between two forms of social norms orientations in policy: a diagnostic approach and a design approach. We will see that the diagnostic approach better models a Humean approach to supporting social norms, and a design approach has a more Millian character. While it is easier to justify a design approach in the abstract, as it has very little room for abuses of state authority, if Mill is right that social norms can be a source of coercive power that runs afoul of the harm principle, then a design approach will sometimes be necessary to counter this form of tyranny. However, this latter approach is complex, and as such we may want to take a recommendation from Mockus to focus on deliberative approaches to norm change.
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4 Bicchieri, Cristina, The Grammar of Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).Google Scholar The Grammar of Society is a book-length examination of the nature and structure of social norms. Bicchieri’s Norms in the Wild (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) is more focused on the policy consequences of the definition, along with a detailed account of how norms can be measured and how they can be changed. Much of this essay is inspired by Bicchieri’s approach.
5 See Michael P. Haines, “A Social Norms Approach to Binge Drinking at Colleges and Universities,” The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention; Perkins, H. Wesley, “Social Norms and the Prevention of Alcohol Misuse in Collegiate Contexts,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 14 (2002): 164.Google Scholar
6 Hans Christian Anderson’s The Emperor’s New Clothes is an exemplary account of pluralistic ignorance in a fictional context.
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8 This process follows analytically from Bicchieri’s definition of norms in The Grammar of Society.
9 Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild.
10 Importantly, social norms can also cause people to fail to exhibit certain behaviors: norms may dictate that individuals should not trust people outside of the group, for instance. Norms can likewise be so onerous that people avoid putting themselves in certain situations, to avoid triggering the obligations that a norm might impose: earning more money than one immediately needs may obligate the earner to loan or give her excess money to extended family or friends who have less. Accepting help or a gift may trigger an obligation to reciprocate even more generously. These norms can be powerful, even if we never see their prescribed behavior. Norms can also proscribe behavior: anti-corruption norms will mean that we systematically would not see public officials accept bribes.
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18 Ibid.
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20 Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild.
