Understanding the Powers and Limits of Legal Expression to Create Change Through the Integrated Approach to Compliance

This chapter utilizes the integrated approach to compliance developed in Chaps. 2 and 3 to understand the role and limits of legal expression in changing behaviors and attitudes. After briefly describing the existing theoretical and empirical research on legal expression, it embeds the explanation within the integrated approach. It is evident that legal expression can create compliance through weak and strong identification within the integrated approach. However, this exercise also reveals the conditions necessary for legal expression to change behaviors and attitudes. Why mere expression has so effectively changed behaviors and attitudes in some contexts but not others can be better understood when we take into account the social and institutional conditions in which this interaction takes place. As importantly, the chapter highlights how legal expression (both when successful and unsuccessful) changes the conditions in which individuals will interact with future laws. The advantages, disadvantages, and success of legal expression as a tool for behavioral change, therefore, cannot be estimated without taking into account a more integrated approach.