Punishment regimes that assume everyone is corrupt produce six documented perverse effects.
Evidence
- Hiding of virtue. Many compliers are likely to be motivated by the regard and trust that their compliance earns: more on this later; but that motivation is undermined if rewards or penalties are so knaveapt that people can only expect their compliance to be seen as knavishly prudent, not as virtuous. 2. Labelling. Labelling, at least when it stigmatizes people, is effective in leading them to act according to label, and introducing knave-apt sanctions in an undiscriminating way can have the effect of labelling all relevant parties, including the naturally compliant, as potential deviants. 3. Sanction-dependency. Even if compliers continue to comply in the presence of knave-apt sanctions, their compliance may become sanction-dependent—it may become conditional on identifying suitable rewards or penalties—and they may be more likely to deviate when a suitable temptation arises. 4. Defiance. Compliers may feel themselves alienated, undervalued, resentful, even defiant, in face of sanctions that represent them as parties who need watching; and such feelings are quite likely to reduce their motivation to comply. 5. Closing of ranks. The introduction of knave-apt sanctions, in particular penalties, may cause those whom they affect to develop solidarity, so that they are unwilling to blow the whistle on one another, they close ranks around anyone under threat, and they develop the habit of shifting the blame onto other individuals or groups. 6. Adverse selection. The salience of knave-apt sanctions, be they rewards or penalties, may mean that spontaneous compliers are no longer attracted to public office; the people attracted may be those whose motivation would not be undermined by the presence of such sanctions (Brennan 1996). — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 984
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to social capital literature where trust-based reciprocity, not surveillance, elicits compliance — Clayton’s social capital notes on Coleman.
- SEED: Crowley’s clocking-in line is already here — the six named effects (labelling, sanction-dependency, defiance, closing of ranks, adverse selection) are a cheat-sheet for an essay on why surveillance backfires in workplaces.