Proterrence, Rule Illegitimacy, & The Ban on Tobacco Smoke in Amsterdam’s Coffeeshops

This article examines the concept of proterrence: scaring people into doing something to stop others from doing something bad. This contrasts to deterrence, which involves threatening persons to not do something bad. The tobacco ban in Amsterdam coffeeshops and, more specifically, coffeeshop personnel’s reaction to it is used as the empirical vessel to examine proterrence. Proterrence permits examination of the interface between order maintenance and social control against a backdrop of perceived sanction illegitimacy. It also permits exploration of the process by which formal sanctions thread through informal mechanisms—where that threading is enforcement rather than consequence-based and where rule implementers face the brunt of the sanction that a third party violates. Data are based on in-depth fieldwork in Amsterdam coffeeshops. The wider applicability of proterrence is discussed.