Tolerance of noncompliance: Discretion rather than simple rules?

We argue that societies sometimes choose not to enforce the law to gain 'flexibility'. Especially developing countries face a dilemma between discretion and commitment to only partially-contingent rules. Rules are good for incentives, but discretion may be more 'flexible'. We embed this dilemma in a political model and show that citizens will not support strong enforcement institutions unless the state is able to commit to sufficiently sophisticated redistributive policies.