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Abstract

After defining the concept of motivational law and giving several examples in Parts II.A and II.B, I discuss in Part II.C how motivational law fits into theories of law. In Part II.D, I explore the boundaries of motivational law and what it means to say that a law is "motivational." Part III.A examines motivational law as a type of intrinsic social control, and Part III.B explains how motivational law works through moral community-building, naming and shaming, cognitive dissonance and cognitive biases. Part IV.A asks why motivational law often fails, IV.B looks at the equivocal evidence of the efficacy of religious motivational law in preventing delinquency, and in IV.C I take a look on the dark side at the sad instances where motivational law succeeds, examining how authoritarian regimes and cults use motivational law to consolidate and preserve their power. In Part V, I offer a theory of the efficacy of motivational law. Motivational law improves compliance with regulatory law only if (1) either the motivational law itself is enforced by sanctions and threat of sanctions sufficiently severe to have a deterrent impact or the motivational law is consistent with the self-interest of those being regulated, and (2) the linkage between the motivational law and regulatory law is evident to those persons who are supposed to comply with the motivational law.

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