Segmentation of Social Norms and Emergence of Social Conflicts Through COVID-19 Laws

In the name of combating COVID-19, many countries have enacted laws that restrict citizens’ freedom of movement and freedom to operate businesses. These laws attempt to use the expressive effects of law and legal sanctions to make people conform to legal norms different from pre-existing social norms. The economic theory of law and social norms predicts that when legal norms deviate significantly from social norms, they can cause people to protest or violate them, leading to a division of social norms and possible social conflicts not only between the state and its citizens but also among people with different beliefs. Using Japan’s COVID-19 laws as a case study, this paper examines under what conditions laws that aim to change social norms can fail and what the side effects are in such cases. In Japan, we have seen a fragmentation of social norms, with the emergence of citizens pejoratively called “self-restraint police,” who enforce behavioral restrictions illegally on others and rural residents who interfere with and harass urban citizens returning to their hometowns. Such informal surveillance among residents during the pandemic recalls the government’s misuse of neighborhood organizations during World War II to encourage residents to monitor each other. Also, the government’s over-hyping of the dangers of COVID-19 has led to discrimination against patients and health care workers, an alarming echo of Japan’s history of discrimination and lifelong isolation of leprosy patients.