Abstract
To provide detailed insight into the processes of real-life compliance behavior, yet without addressing what influences or explains such behavior, the ethnographic approach, descriptive analysis of compliance behaviors, was employed.
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Notes
- 1.
Noutcheva (2006, 2009) also used the term “fake compliance” when researching the compliance patterns of Balkan states in light of the European Union’s conditional offer of membership. I identified fake compliance as one of four compliance propensities: genuine compliance, conditionality-driven compliance, socialization-driven compliance, and fake compliance. Noutcheva’s definition of fake compliance differs from the definition used in this study. Noutcheva used two dimensions to build a model to identify the four compliance propensities, namely legitimacy and cost/benefit analysis. According to the author, fake compliance occurs when the legitimacy of EU conditions is low and the cost exceeds the benefit in the long term; furthermore, the cost of total refusal to comply is even higher. In practical terms, fake compliance may include some compliance behaviors such as setting up “institutions in response to EU conditionality, but these institutions remain empty shells and exist more on paper than in reality.” In this study, Noutcheva’s definition of fake compliance aligns more closely with symbolic compliance.
- 2.
The saying of “Potemkin Village” comes from a story. “The Empress Catherine the Great, who was quite near-sighted, had arranged a boat tour [of the Ukraine and Crimea] for a group of visiting European royalty. She wanted to show them the prosperous countryside with its happy peasants. Her chief advisor, Gregory Potemkin, knew that this wasn’t the reality the visitors were going to see. To avoid embarrassing the Tsarina, he ordered the construction of the facades of peasant villages along the river route. As the boat passed by, Catherine imagined she was showing her guests a pleasant pastoral scene. The visitors, however, saw only the attempt to hide the unpleasant realities of life” (Tager and Phelps 2004). So, Potemkin Village is used as an analogy in some compliance research to reflect the local culture of health and safety reactions to inspection enforcement. In this culture, legal norms are strictly complied with when there is a health and safety inspection tour. However, after the inspection tour, all kinds of violation reappear. People become accustomed to this kind of performance when inspections happen. See more in Garry Gary’s “The Regulation of Corporate Violations” (2006).
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Wu, Y. (2021). Descriptive Analysis of Compliance Behaviors. In: Compliance Ethnography. Understanding China. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2884-9_2
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