External institutional incentives can align interests with commitments

Evidence

Second, we can subject ourselves to external inducements. We can try to arrange matters so that our interests will be aligned with our commitment when the time for acting on that commitment comes. We can do this by setting up ad hoc personal devices or by relying on societal and institutional devices. An individual cannot do much about the availability of societal and institutional arrangements—they either exist or they do not. But if they do, I can hope and often even contrive that they will help me rely on you. Legal and other institutional constraints can give us strong incentives to be trustworthy. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 167

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the question of what happens when those societal and institutional devices collapse — as they momentarily do when the quarantine in Saramago’s Blindness first forms — leaving only internal inducements and ad hoc devices. — connects to: Ownership in place-based programs grows from multi-sector institutional partnerships — David Sobel, Place-Based Education: Connecting…, 13; Default standards flipped industry incentives to favor prompt EPA rulemaking — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 849; Established regimes persist because compliance incentives and vested interests accrue over time — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 114