The Political Consequences of "Source Country" Operations: Evidence from Crop Eradication in Mexico
[Paper] [Supplementary materials]
Abstract. When crafting law enforcement policy, drug-producing - or ''source''- countries must adjudicate between domestic security priorities and international pressure to curb drug supply. What are the political consequences of prioritizing supply reduction? I analyze the case of illicit crop eradication in Mexico, where the army destroys thousands of fields yearly. While fundamental for ensuring conditional US aid, residents of crop-growing communities understand eradication as an unjust federal policy. I argue that residents negatively update on the trustworthiness of law enforcement after eradication and are discouraged from attempting to change federal policy through electoral means, decreasing turnout. To test, I construct a novel eradication measure using the universe of satellite-detected illicit fields. Using exogenous variation in location and timing, I show eradication depresses turnout in federal elections and trust in the army. Supply reduction might come at the cost of eroding trust in law enforcement and undermining domestic accountability in source countries.
Class and the Development of Trust in Police in Latin America (with Tara Slough)
[Draft available upon request]
Abstract. In the United States, trust in police is positively correlated with socio-economic status. We show that this is not the case in Latin America. In 147 surveys spanning 20 Latin American countries, we find that trust in police is weakly negatively correlated with socio-economic status—a fact that neither regional experts nor subject-matter experts anticipated. By way of explanation, we propose that rich people everywhere are more likely to interpret everyday experiences as signals about the police. Because bad experiences like crime victimization and bribe solicitation are more common in Latin America than in the US, rich people’s tendency to interpret poor security outcomes as signals of police (un)trustworthiness should lead to a lower trust–SES gradient in Latin America relative to the US. In our account, cross-country differences in the trust–SES gradient are driven not by cross-country differences in how people update but rather by cross-country differences in policing outcomes, together with universal class-based differences in people’s readiness to see the world around them as a signal about police.
Causal Inference with Heterogeneous Probabilities of Treatment: Applications to Crime Victimization
Abstract. Causal identification-oriented research often tests whether a cause can affect an outcome by targetting average treatment effects (ATEs). Yet, ATEs might speak little to how a cause affects an outcome in real-world settings. I show that when the probability of treatment is heterogeneous, ATEs and the average treatment effect on the treated (ATTs) can greatly diverge and even take opposing signs. I revisit canonical findings on the consequences of criminal victimization in Latin America. Work targeting the ATE shows that victims become more politically engaged. However, criminological research suggests that vulnerability to crime covaries in individuals' politics. I use a principal-strata framework, incorporating stratum-specific treatment probabilities, to characterize the set of ATEs and ATTs consistent with survey data measuring political participation and personal victimization. Results show individuals who participate less after victimization are at a greater risk of becoming victims, leading to less victimization-spurred participation in the continent. Findings emphasize the importance of the probability of receiving treatment as a quantity of interest for researchers.