Record: Anat Gofen, “Reconciling Policy Dissonance: Patterns of Governmental Response to Policy Noncompliance” in Policy Sciences 48, no. 1 (2014): 3-24. [Abstract]
Summary: Gofen is a lecturer at The Federmann School of Public Policy and Governance as part of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In this article she presents four patterns of governmental response to public noncompliance in the context of homeschooling and several other examples.
To begin, Gofen says that successful implementation of policy requires compliance. While there are many groups that have to comply with government mandates, for this study she focused on individual compliance.
Noncompliance is defined as “behavior inconsistent with or contravening a given policy’s objectives” (pg. 4). It is typically considered to be a negative response to policy implementation that public administrators need to address. However, the government’s response to noncompliance varies considerably. If it is considered acceptable, the government may ignore noncompliance. It may also over or under enforce the policy.
Various studies have shown that noncompliance should be met with “responsive regulation” as described by Ayres and Braithwaite
After the introduction, Gofen does a brief literature review of policy noncompliance and governmental response. She says that it is important to distinguish between the different types of of noncompliance, because there is a tendency in noncompliance research to view policy noncompliance as homogeneous. However, there are several different types of noncompliance:
- Direct noncompliance involves directly breaking the law (e.g., not paying taxes)
- Indirect, on the other hand, is the decision to not follow recommendations (e.g, not abiding by vaccination protocol)
- Active noncompliance is doing something different than what is expected by policy (e.g., exceeding the speed limit)
- Passive is refusal of a universal service (e.g., homeschooling)
Noncompliance also has an awareness factor because some people may be unaware that they are breaking the law, but usually noncompliance is a willful decision.
The motivations for compliance may be economic calculative, social, or normative. A person with economic calculative motivations for noncompliance decides that the perceived benefits of breaking the law outweigh the possible consequences. Social motivation has to do with peoples’ desires to fit in with society. Finally, normative motivations have to do with whether people like the government and policy. If they feel closer and more connected to government, they are more likely to comply.
After repeating what she said in the introduction about “responsive regulation,” Gofen concludes her literature review with a look at preventing noncompliance. She says that prevention is a better a approach than enforcing compliance and that well-designed policy should be dynamic enough to meet targets where they are.
Gofen’s first major point is that noncompliance is an ongoing interactive process between individuals and the government. She terms this “policy dissonance” (pg. 7). Policy dissonance motivates the government to seek reconciliation between the policy and the targets’ behavior. Noncompliance creates more dissonance when it gains social acceptance. As more and more people refuse to comply, the dissonance grows, and the government is more pressured to act. Its response can take one of four forms:
- Embracement (full legitimization): Policy embracement takes place when the government sees value in the noncompliant behavior. Examples include self-defense initiatives (where citizens work to prevent street crimes) and community gardening.
- Adaptation (reluctant legitimization): This is the classification that homeschooling falls under. It usually occurs if the noncompliant behavior does not violate social norms. It follows a lengthy process through which the noncomplying policy targets relentlessly advocate the legitimacy of their noncompliant behavior until the government concedes. As it gains popularity, the government is defeated. Although it is officially legitimized, the government only did it reluctantly. Decriminalization of marijuana is in this category along with homeschooling.
- Acceptance (implicit legitimization): Noncompliant behavior is not formally legitimized de jure, but the policy arrangements are modified to reduce harms of noncompliance. Some examples include needle exchange programs and personalization of immunization protocol.
- Stricter enforcement
To demonstrate these four responses, Gofen discusses several examples in-depth. Since most of the examples do not pertain to the topic of this blog, I will not discuss them in detail. Instead, we now turn our attention to homeschooling.
Gofen says that homeschooling practically disappeared during the early 1900s due to compulsory education laws (Ross 2010). When it reemerged in the 1980s, it was considered deviant to public education. Homeschooling is noncompliant with public education because it violates compulsory education laws.
There has been a significant increase in the prevalence of homeschooling in many Western democracies, and this has made homeschooling socially accepted as an educational option. However, because homeschooling was seen as a challenge to public education, it remained illegal for a number of years until the fledgling homeschooling movement of the 1970s grew big enough to attempt to have homeschooling recognized as a legitimate alternative to formal education.
The prevalence of homeschooling, as well as the widespread homeschooling movement, resulted in favorable court decisions and legislation. However, homeschooling is still considered noncompliance of traditional public education because it undermines the government’s traditional involvement in education. Therefore, even though homeschooling was legalized, it is still treated with alienation.
To conclude, Gofen restates her main three points that 1. noncompliance is an ongoing process, 2. governmental response to noncompliance does not always involve enforcement, and 3. policy targets can trigger change.
Appraisal: While the article does not tell us much about homeschooling that we did not already know, it might give a more complete picture of homeschooling’s legal standing. Also, it provides a nice background to this article by Thomas Spiegler about how homeschooling has grown in Germany despite the fact that it is practically illegal. Perhaps if the noncompliance grows enough, German officials will be forced to relax their policies like what occurred in the United States. Therefore, I think the biggest take-away for any homeschooling supporters reading this blog is that homeschoolers’ collective voice can and does have an impact on government policy.
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