Citizens must often be compliant if government is to work, and they may more readily be compliant if they are confident that government actions will serve their own interests or some broader public good that they support. For example, H. L. A. Hart (1961, 201) argues that the Hobbesian vision of using coercion to motivate obedience to law or to the state depends on the background fact that most people comply willingly, perhaps for normative reasons. It is their compliance that makes it possible for the state to focus its limited resources for coercion on the potentially disobedient. This sounds like a fundamentally important claim. In fact, of course, for most of us most of the time in a benign society, the police generally work in our interest, and compliance is easily motivated. This fact leaves the police free, as Hart notes, to coerce selected others, including minority groups as well as suspected criminals.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 700