This article addresses the question of how states can best promote citizens' compliance with laws that regulate livelihoods. Based on ethnographic data from fishing communities in three countriesFNorway, Canada, and South AfricaFthe article compares compliance motivations that exist under different socioeconomic and political conditions. The comparisons give rise to a typology of three compliance motivations: deterrence, moral support for the law's content, and the legislator's authority. This article then identifies three governable preconditionsFenforcement, empowerment of citizens, and civic identityF that respectively explain these motivations. The article argues that the compliance discourse in a given type of state must be framed such that it includes at least the governable preconditions for compliance that have not been met in that state. Consequently, a functional compliance strategy would vary between different state types. The article thus questions the transferability of the developed world's compliance discourses to the developing world.

The article addresses the interface between law and the morality of civil society. It starts with a review of the discourse between the utilitarian approach to rationality and perspectives which include normative action. It subsequently explores the dynamics of compliance and non-compliance among a group of Norwegian fishermen. The choice of compliance was guided by an informally-enforced set of moral norms, which largely dissolved the connection between expected benefit and the likeliness of infractions. This moral system defined instances in which violations could take place without being met with informal sanctions, and thus also allowed for strategic action to some extent. The article illustrates how civil society enforces the law according to moral rather than legal standards, and it ends with a suggested concept of legitimacy of law.

A comparative qualitative study of Norwegian and Newfoundland inshore fisheries revealed that compliance with the state's fisheries regulations was governed by a set of moral distinctions which were strikingly similar in the two cases. Violations of government regulations were followed by informal sanctions only in commercial fisheries. Illegal food fishery was generally accepted. A fisherman could also break the law in commercial fisheries without being met with significant sanctions provided that it was generally perceived to be the only way to ensure a necessary outcome. The empirical findings are connected to the moral meanings of money and food, and it is suggested that the economies of natural resource harvesters include two different moral spheres. One of these spheres is linked to subsistence, small-scale operations and local exchange, and is perceived as morally safe. The other sphere is connected with money, large-scale operations, and exchange with strangers, and is seen as morally perilous.

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This article addresses the interface between law and the morality of civil society. It starts with a review of the discourse between the ulilitarian approacb to rationality and perspectives which include normative action. It subsequently explores the dynamics of compliance and noncompliance among a group of Norwegian fishermen. The choice of compliance was guided by an informally enforced set of moral norms, which largely dissolved the connection between expected benefit and the likeliness of infractions. This moral system defined instances in which violations could take place without being met with informal sanctions, and thus also allowed for strategic action to some extent. The article illustrates how civil society enforces the law according to moral rather than legal standards, and it ends with a suggested concept of legitimacy of law.