9701518 Hechter A society can use two kinds of control (legal and normative) to ensure that individuals comply with its rules. Legal control refers to punishment of deviant behavior by a legal institution that is supported by taxes. Normative control refers to punishment by individuals themselves who personally take action against a person who commits a deviant act. This Doctoral Dissertation research will investigate the relationship between these two types of control -- specifically, how change in the strength of one control institution affects the strength of the other. The two hypotheses that will be tested are: 1) cohesive communities with strong normative controls facilitate the growth of strong legal systems; and 2) investment in the legal system, for example in the police and prisons, will weaken normative controls and thus the ability of communities to address social problems like crime in more informal ways. In other words, strong communities contribute to the growth of the legal system which in turn weakens the communities upon which it depends. An experimental design will be employed where subjects will interact with each other using computers. They will make decisions about sanctioning (i.e., how best to sanction a thief) and about responding to the sanctioning decisions of others (i.e., provide data through the assignment of points on subjects' reactions to the sanctioning decisions of others). Resulting changes in the strengths of the two types of control will be measured. Analysis of variance will be used to determine the effects of variation in the initial strength of one control institution on the later strength of the other.
