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

该项目旨在解决国家形成的一个基本问题：在没有征税能力的情况下，弱国和脆弱国家如何变得强大？我们测试一个可能的答案：提供正义和解决争端。虽然政策制定者和经济学家经常关注征税权，但历史记录表明，解决争端可能是建设强大国家的有用的第一步，这些国家能够为其公民提供商品和服务。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，以及不同类型的解决争端方法如何有助于实现这一目标。特别是，我们研究的有效性，国家和非国家的方法来提供正义。研究这些问题将推进政治经济学和发展经济学领域的知识，并对福利产生重要影响。我们与地方政府和NGO的合作，加强了学术界、民间团体和政府之间的合作关系，这本身就是一个直接的循证决策的例子。为此，我们考察了法务省和地方NGO在目标城市大规模实施的法律的能力建设项目的随机展开。该方案包括：（1）“惩罚性的”法律的能力建设部门，由州律师担任社区法律的代表，提供补贴服务;（2）“恢复性的”法律的能力建设部门，由社区领袖履行同样的职能。我们的目标是实证检验这一计划对财产权安全，犯罪，暴力和公民愿意为正式国家纳税的影响。这样做将使我们更好地理解，当对公民征税的能力较低时，国家可以如何强大地崛起，开始是：通过采取法律的--而不是财政的--途径来提高国家能力，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，试验性治疗手段基于不同的正义概念，在世界各地许多发展中国家的背景下，这些概念往往并存：涉及国家强制力的惩罚性正义和涉及传统权威和围绕修复社区的根深蒂固的社区规范的恢复性正义。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.