Regime norms embed themselves in officials’ belief systems, creating internal momentum to perpetuate them.

Evidence

Third, we can subject ourselves to a mixture of internal and external inducements. We can be induced by norms that motivate and even sanction behavior. Norms can evidently be internalized, so that we simply act from them without need of sanction. I have little to say here about this possibility, on which even the best arguments for how it works are not very compelling, although the claim that it works seems clearly to be correct. Instead, I discuss norms primarily in their external role, in which their effectiveness depends on the success of sanctions from others. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 168 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

For instance, he pointed out the importance of the subject’s perception that he has willingly entered into a transaction governed by an authority that is legitimate and has the scope to command the particular actions in question. Second, once the interaction starts, other forces bind the subject into the situation. The cues that somebody is possibly being harmed occur only later, after a “momentum” has been built up around the legitimate definition of the punishing actions, and the shock-giving participant has incurred all the obligations (that Goffman, 1961, has so convincingly pointed out) to continue an ongoing social activity and the definition of that activity. From these materials an account could be created of why the modal subject in many of the Milgram conditions gave the maximal level of shock. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3939 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Frazier laments that people “have been kept in their places,” not just by external forces, “but much more subtly by a system of beliefs implanted within their skins. It’s sometimes an almost hopeless task to take the shackles off their souls, but it can be done.… You can’t in the long run enforce anything. We don’t use force! All we need is adequate behavioral engineering.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1187 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: NATO’s dense institutionalization beyond mutual defense is what made it survive its founding threat. — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 107; Norms work mainly through external sanctions, not internalized motivation — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 168; Internalized belief systems can shackle people more effectively than force — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1187 (+3 more)

Related

• Milgram subjects obeyed because legitimacy plus incremental momentum locked them into continuing (similarity 0.79)
• Norms can sustain regimes only while elites can plausibly invoke shared commitments (similarity 0.79)
• Domestic actors acquire personal stakes that perpetuate a regime. (similarity 0.79)
• Norms work mainly through external sanctions, not internalized motivation (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Norms work mainly through external sanctions, not internalized motivation #contradicts (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 168
• Milgram subjects obeyed because legitimacy plus incremental momentum locked them into continuing #exemplifies (0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3939
• Internalized belief systems can shackle people more effectively than force #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1187
• Social systems can be structured to institutionalize self-deception among officials #exemplifies (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 705
• Agency includes modes of submitting to norms, not only resisting #expands (0.70)