Institutionalized Compliance

"These walls are funny. First you hate 'em. Then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized."
--Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding (The Shawshank Redemption)

Although many of the draconian measures imposed to counter COVID-19 appear unconstitutional, the vast majority of US citizens are complying. One would think that, at the very least, gross infringements on personal liberty such as 'stay at home' orders and forced shutdowns of 'non-essential' businesses would spark public protests and perhaps outright rebellion.

By and large, however, Americans are not only complying with COVID countermeasures, but they have become zealots in promoting them. In fact, some locales have established tattletale systems for reporting non-compliance to authorities.

Why are Americans so willing to accept infringements on their liberty that they famously fought so hard for in the past?

One explanation is fear. As these pages have noted, conditions of threat drive reactive, fast thinking processes less capable of reason. When we are afraid of what a novel virus strain might do to us, we find it difficult to 'think straight,' making us more likely to bow to central authorities that promise safety.

Another, perhaps more comprehensive explanation can be found in institutional theory. Institutions are cognitive, normative, and regulative structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behavior (Scott, 1995). Although we often refer to them as people, places, or dates (e.g., President of the United States, courts, prisons, markets, holidays, 'institutes of higher learning'), institutions are better thought of as the laws, customs, and other norms produced, practiced, or symbolized by those agencies.

When viewed in this manner, institutions constitute an approach for managing environmental uncertainty. Because uncertainty threatens to upset resource flows necessary for survival, people create 'negotiated environments' laden with governance mechanisms to regulate transactions in the name of stability (Oliver, 1991; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).

Institutions support the stability motive by specifying 'rules of the game' in social settings; their primary role in society is to reduce uncertainty by establishing stable structure for human interaction (North, 1990).

Individuals and organizations can seen as operating in 'fields' that exert institutional pressures for sameness (a.k.a. 'isomorphism') through various mechanisms (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). These mechanisms can be coercive ("Do this or you'll go to jail"), normative ("This is the proper thing to do"), or mimetic ("Let's copy what they're doing"). Individuals and organizations that adopt the rules are rewarded with resources and legitimacy that enable survival and prosperity. Those who do not adopt are sanctioned.

The general proposition is this: The greater the environmental uncertainty, the greater the institutional pressure exerted by the field to stabilize the situation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused perceptions of environmental uncertainty to shoot through the roof. Witness, for example, the spike higher in the measure of economic policy uncertainty pictured above.

We should expect, therefore, greater imposition of institutional rules aimed at quelling the threat to resource stability posed by the COVID-19 situation. Indeed, we've seen the complete range of institutional mechanisms at work: coercive (mandatory business shutdowns), normative (social distancing standards), mimetic (NBA shutdown quickly cascades to all active professional and amateur sports).

Sanctions for noncompliance are currently so strong that few are tempted to break the rules.

However, if people begin to perceive less acute uncertainty (e.g., "the virus threat has passed" or "the virus threat is less than we originally thought") or if they perceive that newly imposed institutional rules create uncertainty in other areas (e.g., "COVID countermeasures might tank the economy"), then isomorphic pressures exerted by the field must be revised. Ineffective rules must be rescinded or replaced. Otherwise, extant institutions will be seen as creating more instability than they suppress, and rebellion to topple those rules will intensify.

We may be entering such a situation now.

References

DiMaggio, P.S. & Powell, W.W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48: 147-160.

North, D.C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Oliver, C. (1991). Strategic responses to institutional processes. Academy of Management Review, 16: 145-179.

Pfeffer, J. & Salancik, G.R. (1978). The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective. New York: Harper & Row.

Scott, W.R. (1995). Institutions and organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.