Limits of Legitimacy, Essay Example

While obedience and conformity are two among the most important forms of response from the community, especially when it comes to determining the ways by which an administrational team is able to direct the whole community especially in creating a more effective form of direction for the society to follow. While obedience is a more defined process of responding willingly to the assumptive form of direction that comes from the administrators; conformity is a more enforced form of response. In the desire of making a definitive impact on the community’s form of development, the administrators hope to provide the most constructive definition on how the people are to be guided as to how they are to respond to rules created by the government.

Noticeably, people who are obedient are able to gain as much benefit from all the regulations that were created by the government. This benefit comes from the idea of being fully provided with by the government and being properly guided for their own sake; such recognition gives them a better motivation of taking into account the need to be fully given the proper provision by the government based on these rules. Those who simply conform to the rules are often burdened instead of benefited from following. Simply following the rules because they must be followed, is something that often makes the procedures burdensome especially for the individuals who do not see the importance of these regulations.

Jackson’s town could then be understood to have a sense of conformity to most of the rules that the administration implies upon the community. The fact that they need they have to follow the regulations is what motivates them to stick within the borders of the guidelines. Although they know that they are to be benefited by the said rules, there are some aspects or clauses of the law that they simply follow through although they likely might not respond at the same pattern of regulations in the same situation [given the direction of other administrators whom they might not feel strongly connected to].

Works Cited

Skitka, L.; Bauman, C.; Lytle, B. (2009). “Limits of legitimacy: Moral and religious convictions as constraints on deference to authority”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97 (4): 567–578.