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Hirschi's concept of commitment confuses the definition and the explanation of conformity, as part of a more general confusion between conformity and legality. The result is tautology—an explanation that merely restates a definition. Commitment is properly conceived as an antecedent variable that measures the role of social structure in the origin of delinquency. As such, it explains legal actions but not conforming actions.
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Thomas J. Bernard (1987) studied this question.
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