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Coercion
Forcing involuntary behavior in another

Coercion involves forcing a party to act involuntarily using threats or force, violating an individual's free will through acts like extortion, blackmail, torture, or sexual assault. In common law, coercion underlies a duress crime. It can compel victims against their own interests via both bodily harm and psychological abuse, enhancing the credibility of threats. Political theorists like John Rawls and Max Weber debate whether governments are inherently coercive. In healthcare, informal coercion and physical measures may enforce treatment adherence, raising ethical concerns and moral distress. Models such as Safewards aim to reduce coercion's use in psychiatric care.

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Overview

The purpose of coercion is to substitute one's aims with weaker ones that the aggressor wants the victim to have. For this reason, many social philosophers have considered coercion as the polar opposite to freedom.15 Various forms of coercion are distinguished: first on the basis of the kind of injury threatened, second according to its aims and scope, and finally according to its effects, from which its legal, social, and ethical implications mostly depend.

Physical

Physical coercion is the most commonly considered form of coercion, where the content of the conditional threat is the use of force against a victim, their relatives or property. An often used example is "putting a gun to someone's head" (at gunpoint) or putting a "knife under the throat" (at knifepoint or cut-throat) to compel action under the threat that non-compliance may result in the attacker harming or even killing the victim. These are so common that they are also used as metaphors for other forms of coercion.

Armed forces in many countries use firing squads to maintain discipline and intimidate the masses, or opposition, into submission or silent compliance. However, there also are nonphysical forms of coercion, where the threatened injury does not immediately imply the use of force. Byman and Waxman (2000) define coercion as "the use of threatened force, including the limited use of actual force to back up the threat, to induce an adversary to behave differently than it otherwise would."16 Coercion does not in many cases amount to destruction of property or life since compliance is the goal.

Pain compliance

This section is an excerpt from Pain compliance.[edit]

Pain compliance is the use of painful stimulus to control or direct a person. The purpose of pain compliance is to direct the actions of the subject, and to this end, the pain is lessened or removed when compliance is achieved. This provides incentive to the subject to carry out the action required.17 The stimulus can be manual through brute force and placing pressure on pain-sensitive areas on the body. Painful hyperextension or hyperflexion on joints is also used.18 Tools such as a whip, a baton, an electroshock weapon, or chemicals such as tear gas or pepper spray are commonly used as well.19

See also

Notes

Look up coercion, at gunpoint, or at knifepoint in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Wikiquote has quotations related to Coercion.

References

  1. "Definition of coercion". Merriam-Webster. December 2023. the act, process, or power of coercing https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coercion ↩

  2. Schelling, Thomas C. (1966). Arms and Influence. Yale University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt5vm52s. ISBN 978-0-300-00221-8. JSTOR j.ctt5vm52s. 978-0-300-00221-8 ↩

  3. Pape, Robert A. (1996). Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (1 ed.). Cornell University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-8014-3134-0. JSTOR 10.7591/j.ctt1287f6v. 'Coercion' means efforts to change the behavior of a state by manipulating costs and benefits. 978-0-8014-3134-0 ↩

  4. Powers, Penny (12 June 2007). "Persuasion and Coercion: A Critical Review of Philosophical and Empirical Approaches". HEC Forum. 19 (2): 125–143. doi:10.1007/s10730-007-9035-4. ISSN 0956-2737. PMID 17694994. S2CID 32041658. https://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10730-007-9035-4 ↩

  5. Morris, Christopher W. (January 2012). "State Coercion and Force". Social Philosophy and Policy. 29 (1): 28–49. doi:10.1017/S0265052511000094. ISSN 0265-0525. S2CID 143472087. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0265052511000094/type/journal_article ↩

  6. Turner, Stephen; Factor, Regis (4 April 2014) [1987]. "Decisionism and Politics: Weber as Constitutional Theorist". In Whimster, Sam; Lash, Scott (eds.). Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity (reprint ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. p. 337. ISBN 9781317833369. Retrieved 28 March 2023. The state, as Ihering defined it, is an association that is distinguished as a type of association by its claim of an exclusive right to exercise certain forms of coercion. 9781317833369 ↩

  7. Weber, Max (1919) [28 January 1919]. "Politics as a Vocation" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 March 2013. Retrieved 28 March 2023. In the past, the most varied institutions – beginning with the sib – have known the use of physical force as quite normal. Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. /wiki/Max_Weber ↩

  8. Quoted in: Stanger, Allison (27 October 2009). "State Power in a Privatized World". One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy. Yale University Press. p. 45. ISBN 9780300156324. Retrieved 28 March 2023. In Max Weber's classic definition, the state is 'a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a territory.' 9780300156324 ↩

  9. Morris, Christopher W. (January 2012). "State Coercion and Force". Social Philosophy and Policy. 29 (1): 28–49. doi:10.1017/S0265052511000094. ISSN 0265-0525. S2CID 143472087. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0265052511000094/type/journal_article ↩

  10. Hotzy, Florian; Jaeger, Matthias (2016). "Clinical Relevance of Informal Coercion in Psychiatric Treatment—A Systematic Review". Frontiers in Psychiatry. 7: 197. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2016.00197. ISSN 1664-0640. PMC 5149520. PMID 28018248. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323809188 ↩

  11. Hem, Marit Helene; Molewijk, Bert; Pedersen, Reidar (4 December 2014). "Ethical challenges in connection with the use of coercion: a focus group study of health care personnel in mental health care". BMC Medical Ethics. 15: 82. doi:10.1186/1472-6939-15-82. ISSN 1472-6939. PMC 4269949. PMID 25475895. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4269949 ↩

  12. Eder, Nora; Nordenberg, Kristin; Långström, Niklas; Rozental, Alexander; Moell, Astrid (28 February 2025). "Moral distress among inpatient child and adolescent psychiatry staff: a mixed-methods study of experiences and associated factors". Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. 19 (1): 16. doi:10.1186/s13034-025-00868-7. ISSN 1753-2000. PMC 11871634. PMID 40022125. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11871634 ↩

  13. Bowers, L. (August 2014). "S afewards: a new model of conflict and containment on psychiatric wards". Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. 21 (6): 499–508. doi:10.1111/jpm.12129. ISSN 1351-0126. PMC 4237187. PMID 24548312. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4237187 ↩

  14. Fletcher, Justine; Spittal, Mathew; Brophy, Lisa; Tibble, Holly; Kinner, Stuart; Elsom, Steve; Hamilton, Bridget (October 2017). "Outcomes of the Victorian Safewards trial in 13 wards: Impact on seclusion rates and fidelity measurement". International Journal of Mental Health Nursing. 26 (5): 461–471. doi:10.1111/inm.12380. ISSN 1445-8330. PMID 28960739. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/inm.12380 ↩

  15. Bhatia, K. L. (2010). Textbook on Legal Language and Legal Writing. Universal Law Publishing. ISBN 978-81-7534-894-3. 978-81-7534-894-3 ↩

  16. Byman, Daniel L.; Waxman, Matthew C.: Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate, International Security, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring, 2000), pp. 5–38. /wiki/International_Security ↩

  17. Terrill, William; Paoline, Eugene A. (March 2013). "Examining Less Lethal Force Policy and the Force Continuum: Results From a National Use-of-Force Study". Police Quarterly. 16 (1): 38–65. doi:10.1177/1098611112451262. S2CID 154365926. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

  18. "USMC Martial Arts Gray Belt Instructor Manual". Retrieved 30 April 2015. https://books.google.com/books?id=iALDssswVjMC&q=pain+compliance&pg=PA95 ↩

  19. Simpson, Fiona (2 March 2020). "Fall in YOI staff linked to restraint increase". Children and Young People Now. 2020 (3): 14–15. doi:10.12968/cypn.2020.3.14. S2CID 253113380. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩