Social Order and the Justice

Social Order and the Justice System Maintaining Social Order with the Justice System There is a book entitled Why People Obey the Law, by Tom R. Tyler, that addresses the writings of various authorities in the areas of political science and public policy and management who question of the tie between law, democracy, government policy and behavior. This book analyzes the link between law, democracy, government policy and the behavior of the people (2006). Laws were designed to control public behavior.

There are many theories of how compliance with the law can be achieved, but most use threats or the use of punishment. The idea of deterrence, Tyler points out, has been widely utilized since the 1980s and has remained the predominant way social order has been maintained into the twenty-first century. The values of the normal populace are based upon voluntary deference to authority, because doing so is part of their obligation to and respect for their leaders.

However, the way that a local government manages social order among its residents does not apply to how nations might maintain social order among other nations in the world, which is something the U.S. has had to contend with this century. Terrorism is an integral part of the problem that has arisen and poses the aspect that members of organizations, groups or societies have unique relationships to the institutions and authorities that govern them. Threats or rewards by governing bodies seem to have no effect on a terrorist.

This assumption that incentives and sanctions are the main factors motivating human behavior has been the subject of various studies on the influence of risk assessments based on law-related behavior and enhanced performance through incentives. The results show that the amount desired performances is tied to reward provision and deterrence to punishment varies greatly. It has even been shown that widespread deterrence (a good example being the actions of the current government in Pakistan) has the opposite effect on the general population, creating a general disregard for authority.

In the United States the dramatic growth of the prison population in proportion to its population has made it a world leader in deterrence philosophy, a fact that some say shows deterrence of crime (especially among the disadvantaged) has undermined regard for the law and destroyed police-community relations in urban and minority neighborhoods. Deterrence in a democratic or any other type of government seems to have no positive behavioral effect.

Legitimacy, it is suggested, has not been evidenced as having any sort of behavioral side effect, while a vision of social order through the consent and cooperation of the populace with the law and legal institutions does seem to have an effect. This is called a noninstrumental vision and has been tried out in Chicago, where it was used to provide support for the fact that, though legitimacy is called for, legitimacy is not based on instrumental judgments but on procedural justice.

"Respondents defined procedural justice in reference to noninstrumental issues... people's motivation to cooperate with others, in this case legal authorities, is rooted in social relationships and ethical judgments and does not primarily flow from the desire to avoid punishments or gain rewards" (Tyler, p. 269). In other words, people obeyed the law when they thought they were being listened to and the law considered their arguments. Once the government and legal system starts to disregard justice and the rights of the people, the people begin to disregard the law.

Many people believe that mental disorders create violence and that people discharged from acute psychiatric facilities are to blame for many violent crimes. This has generally been found to be untrue. On the basis of research in this area many social policy changes have been recommended and implemented (Monahan, p. 10). To measure the extent of compliance with deterrence laws, one might look at an example of how employee behavior has been influenced by government policy within a democracy.

In a situation where smoking laws were enacted by the state of Vermont, and supposedly private worksite policies reflected this, two surveys were taken to measure compliance with the law were taken through (1) a random-digit telephone survey of employees and (2) a survey of employers through subsequent mail. The employers were not made aware that their employees had been surveyed. Policies being in compliance with state law were described by little more than half (56%) of the employees and 66.5% of their employers.

Overall there was agreement on compliance with state law in 67.6% of the cases. After the institution of the law, the amount of smoking at work-places declined, as did the prevalence of smoking at home. But changes toward restrictive policies were associated not with quitting, but with reductions at work in cigarette consumption. A large percentage of smoking policies at worksites may not comply with statewide smoking laws, the final result of the study suggested.

The study also suggested that if information is obtained only from employers on compliance, the proportion of companies in compliance with such laws may be overestimated (Paulozzi, p. 726). The relationship of law and employee behavior is affected by governmental policy. Some studies suggest that public administration has lost its theoretical distinction over the past five decades. It has largely abandoned or forgotten its roots in public law, derived from the Constitution, statutes, and case law, and has adopted the generic behavioral principles of management taught in business schools.

Those practitioners and those who study government administration have been disarmed by advocates of entrepreneurial management, the highest example of which is the Vice President of the United States. Reinventing government in the corporate image, according to Osborne and Gaebler's (1992) book, requires adherence to the entrepreneurial management model outlined there, later reiterated in Vice President Cheney's National Performance Review Report.

But this just seemed, to many major professional organizations and practitioners of public administration, to be the next step in synthesizing management science, and was not widely seen as competing with democratic fundamental values (Moe, p. 29). The foundation of management of public administration is in public law, not in theories of corporate management.

Theories of management have been developed through trial and error throughout the ages and the public administration sector seems to have come to the conclusion that the public sector is the same as the private, where profit is the goal. Unfortunately, the public sector works for public good, not profit, though this goal seems to have been forgotten. The fact is that governmental and private sectors are based on radically different streams of legal doctrinel.

The private sector laws are founded in laws handed down from the bench or traditional and common law, whereas the governmental sector laws are based on "the body of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and articulated by a truly enormous body of statutory, regulatory, and case law to ensure continuance of a republican form of government and to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens at the hands of an all-powerful state" (Moe, p. 29).

The two types of theoretical structures may exist to a certain extent, but they cannot replace or be substituted, in the end, for each other. The Constitution protects the people from the government and the people control the government, not the other way around, as it exists in the profit-oriented corporate world.

The principles that make up this theory can in many settings embrace useful precepts such as those of "management by objectives" (MBO) or "total quality management" (TQM) and they can accommodate and be enhanced by an almost infinite variety of technological innovations. But such techniques and advances are not - and cannot be - a substitute or replacement for the traditional, constitution-based method of doing the public's business" (Moe, p. 30). The U.S.

Office of Personnel Management has a Training Policy Handbook that gives guidance on training restrictions in public law in their Training and Development Policy. Linda M. Springer, Director, includes the following guideline (among several) in establishing development of current and future leaders in government: "Under the President's Management Agenda, leadership is considered a Governmentwide [sic] "mission-critical occupation," and agencies have established goals to close leadership competency gaps through their quarterly and annual 'Proud to.