The literature suggests that compliance with law is unlikely in areas of state weakness absent additional state capacity. Utilizing three novel data sets collected in adjacent districts in India and Nepal, this article demonstrates that weak states can significantly increase compliance by fostering accurate legal knowledge—something the literature often assumes is widespread. This assumption is problematic because principal–agent problems prevent many weak states from behaving consistently; target populations often lack education and competent legal advice and struggle to learn about the law via observation. States that employ regulatory pragmatism, however, may overcome this challenge; they do so by designing implementation strategies for on‐the‐ground realities. I investigate two such efforts—delegated enforcement and information dissemination through local leaders. The data indicate that strategies consistent with regulatory pragmatism, in contrast to those that are legally doctrinaire or deterrence based significantly increase legal knowledge and compliance, even where the state is locally weak.

中文翻译：

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国家薄弱领域的监管实用主义，法律知识和法律合规

文献表明，在缺乏额外国家能力的国家弱点地区，不太可能遵守法律。本文利用在印度和尼泊尔相邻地区收集的三个新颖的数据集，证明弱国可以通过培养准确的法律知识来显着提高合规性，而文献通常认为这是广泛存在的。这个假设是有问题的，因为委托-代理问题阻止了许多弱状态始终如一的行为。目标人群经常缺乏教育和有力的法律咨询，并且难以通过观察来了解法律。但是，采用监管实用主义的国家可以克服这一挑战。他们通过针对实际情况设计实施策略来做到这一点。我调查了两种此类工作-授权的执法和通过当地领导人进行的信息传播。数据表明，与基于法规的实用主义相一致的策略，与那些基于法律原则或威慑力的策略相比，即使在国家薄弱的地方也能显着提高法律知识和合规性。