Expanding the Inner Circle: How Welfarist Norms Escape In-Groups

I explore the influence of social mechanisms by which welfarist norms come to be appropriate by those outside the social group for which they were developed, and how they lead to patterned deviance from the law. Drawing on literature from law and society, law and economics, political science, social theory, and other fields, I use original research from a qualitative study of amateur baseball players to analyze the interplay between norms, groups, and deviance.Relationships with agents is widespread, despite being against both NCAA Bylaws and most players economic incentives. To explain this seemingly irrational pattern of rule-breaking, I argue that agent use arose to serve the economic interests of elite players and agents, and so became a badge of elite status. Players wishing to act as an elite appropriate this behavior despite variation in their incentives. I explain how players' narrative identities, psychological self-deception, aspirational behavior, and social roles lead them to adopt elite behavior and perpetuate a norm that does not serve their own material or economic ends.