State Building via Punitive and Restorative Justice: Evidence from a Field Experiment

这个项目试图解决国家形成的一个根本问题：在缺乏征税能力的情况下，弱小和脆弱的国家如何变得强大？我们测试了一个可能的答案：伸张正义和解决争端。尽管政策制定者和经济学家经常关注税收的权力，但历史记录表明，争端解决可能会为建设能够为公民提供商品和服务的强大国家提供有用的第一步。我们将提供实验证据，说明如何在脆弱的冲突后环境中建设国家能力和合法性，以及不同类型的争端解决办法如何有助于实现这一目标。特别是，我们审查了国家和非国家方法对司法规定的有效性。研究这些问题将促进政治经济学和发展经济学领域的知识，对福利具有关键影响。我们与地方政府和一个非政府组织的合作加强了学术界、公民社会和政府之间的伙伴关系，本身就是一个以证据为基础的决策的直接例子。为此，我们研究了由司法部和一个当地非政府组织在目标城市大规模实施的法律能力建设计划的随机推出。该计划有(1)“惩罚性”法律能力建设部门，州律师在其中担任社区法律代表，提供补贴服务；(2)“恢复性”法律能力建设部门，社区领导人在其中履行同样的职能。我们的目标是经验性地检验这一计划对财产权利安全、犯罪、暴力和公民为正式国家纳税的意愿的影响。这样做将增强我们的理解，即在公民征税能力较低的情况下，国家会变得多么强大：通过法律--而不是财政--来实现国家能力，即提供更多诉诸司法的机会，并有效和公平地解决争端。此外，试验性治疗武器植根于不同的正义观，在世界各地的许多发展中国家中，这些正义观往往并存：涉及国家胁迫性权力的惩罚性司法和涉及传统当局的恢复性司法以及围绕修补社区的根深蒂固的社区规范。这使我们能够检验正式和非正式司法机构在建设强大国家方面的潜在互补性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project seeks to address a fundamental question of state formation: How can weak and fragile states become strong in the absence of the capacity to tax? We test one possible answer: providing justice and resolving disputes. While policymakers and economists have often focused on the power to tax, the historical record suggests that dispute resolution may provide a useful first step in building strong states that are able to deliver goods and services for their citizens. We will provide experimental evidence about how to build state capacity and legitimacy in fragile post-conflict settings as well as how different types of approaches to dispute resolution contribute to this goal. In particular, we examine the effectiveness of state and non-state approaches to justice provision. Examining these issues will advance knowledge in the fields of political economy and development economics, with key implications for welfare. Our collaboration with local government and an NGO strengthen the partnership between academia, civil society, and government and is itself a direct example of evidence-based policymaking.To this end, we examine the randomized rollout of a legal capacity building program implemented at scale in the target city by the Ministry of Justice and a local NGO. This program has (1) a “punitive” legal capacity building arm in which state lawyers serve as neighborhood legal representatives with subsidized services, and (2) a “restorative” legal capacity building arm in which a neighborhood leader performs these same functions. Our goal is to empirically examine the effects of this program on property rights security, crime, violence, and citizens’ willingness to pay taxes for the formal state. Doing so will enhance our understanding of how strong states can emerge when the capacity to tax their citizens is low to begin with: by taking the legal – not fiscal – path to state capacity, i.e., providing greater access to justice and resolving disputes effectively and fairly. Furthermore, the experimental treatment arms are grounded in different notions of justice which, in the context of many developing countries around the world, often exist side by side: punitive justice involving the coercive power of the state and restorative justice involving traditional authorities and deep-seated community norms around mending the community. This allows us to examine potential complementarities between formal and informal institutions of justice in building strong states.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.