Article Peer-Reviewed
The Sustainability of Obedience: A Comparative Analysis of Political Behavior Between Fear and Trust
1
SMK College of Applied Sciences, 08211 Vilnius, Lithuania
2
Political Science and International Relations, Inonu University, Malatya, Türkiye
†
These authors contributed equally to this work.
*
For correspondence.
Academic Editor:
Received: 27 September 2025 Accepted: 22 December 2025 Published: 12 January 2026
Abstract
Politics in all regimes hinges on ordinary acts of obedience, yet the mechanisms that sustain it differ. This article theorizes “sustainable obedience” as obedience (i.e., rule-following and deference to collectively binding authority) that reproduces itself because the marginal costs of monitoring and sanctioning are kept low by institutional and cultural feedback. We develop a dual-channel model: a fear channel (deterrence through selective coercion and information control) and a trust channel (procedural justice, impartial enforcement, and legitimacy) that interact through path dependence and habit formation. Mixed methods combine cross-national indices (V-Dem, Freedom House, World Values Survey) with comparative discourse and document analysis (2014–2025) to trace these mechanisms in three contrasting regimes: the Netherlands (liberal democracy), Turkey (competitive authoritarianism), and Russia (closed autocracy). Findings show trust-based obedience dominates in the Netherlands and is temporarily supplemented by proportionate deterrence during crises; Turkey institutionalizes a high and persistent fear architecture, with limited compensatory appeals to performance and electoral legitimacy; Russia sustains obedience primarily through multi-layered coercion and digital control backed by ideological narratives. We derive testable propositions about substitution and complementarity between channels and show how crises can normalize exceptional measures. Normatively, democratic resilience depends on renewing the trust architecture without entrenching fear; authoritarian resilience remains cost-effective yet ultimately fragile under information shocks.
Keywords
fear; trust; obedience; authoritarianism; democracy; liberal democracy; competitive authoritarianism; closed autocracy
Copyright © 2026
Uygur et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use and distribution provided that the original work is properly cited.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Cite this Article
Uygur, M. R., Tekin, F., Sever, F., & Toye, S. A. (2026). The Sustainability of Obedience: A Comparative Analysis of Political Behavior Between Fear and Trust. Highlights of Sustainability, 5(1), 15–33. https://doi.org/10.54175/hsustain5010002
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