Abstract

Governments and organizations use law not only to set standards and rules of conduct, but also to motivate people to observe those standards and rules and thereby improve intrinsic social control. Motivational law consists of those laws or rules, the primary purpose or function of which is to motivate people to comply with the laws that regulate their behavior. Motivational law maintains military discipline so as to motivate soldiers to comply with rules of engagement, but it also can motivate religious fanatics to commit atrocities in the name of God. Theocratic states, cults, and religious terrorist groups aside, most religions lack coercive power, and instead make extensive use of motivational laws governing prayer, ritual, religious dress, diet, and religious education to increase their adherents' compliance with religious law. Empirical evidence suggests that motivational law functions most effectively in religion by increasing the cohesiveness of moral communities, which in turn causes adherents to be shamed if they fail to comply with religious law. Studies of secular compliance indicate that shaming and the threat of shaming are more effective at achieving compliance with law than deterrence through punishment and the threat of punishment. Motivational law has given religious legal systems great longevity, and underutilization of motivational law can jeopardize the effectiveness of New Governance in the secular realm. However, pervasive use of motivational law entails risks that include authoritarianism, censorship, and cultism. The implications of motivational law both for New Governance and for authoritarianism and cultism are explored in Parts IV and V. Motivational law, pervasively used and enforced by punishment and threat of punishment, can become ritualized, in the sense that it takes on non-motivational functions, and as such both exerts resistance to social change and engenders stress within society. The wearing of hijab, for example, serves as a method of motivating Muslims to observe rules of marital fidelity, but in some Islamic countries it becomes a symbol of religiosity, and implicitly, of allegiance to the existing political regime, enforced by religious police. In such cases, ritualized motivational law on hijab slows the pace of social and religious change, yet inspires resistance among women who resent having a motivational device forced upon them.