Cooperating with the State: Evidence from Survey Experiments on Policing

Forthcoming in Journal of Experimental Political Science

25 Pages Posted: 30 Jan 2015 Last revised: 14 Oct 2015

See all articles by Noah Buckley

Noah Buckley

Trinity College (Dublin); National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow)

Timothy Frye

Columbia University - Department of Political Science

Scott Gehlbach

University of Chicago

Lauren A. McCarthy

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Date Written: October 2015

Abstract

We examine cooperation with the state using a series of survey experiments on policing conducted in late 2011 in Moscow, Russia, where distrust of the state is high and attempts to reform the police have been ineffective. Through various vignettes that place respondents in situations in which they are the witness or victim of a crime, we experimentally manipulate crime severity, identity of the perpetrator (whether the crime is committed by a police officer), monetary rewards, appeals to civic duty, and the opportunity cost of time spent reporting. Of these factors, crime severity and identity of the perpetrator are robustly associated with a propensity to report. Our research design and results contribute to a large literature on cooperation with the state by examining variables that may be more salient or function differently in countries with weak institutions than in developed democracies.

Keywords: state, police, cooperation, survey experiments, Russia

JEL Classification: K42, P26, P48

Suggested Citation

Buckley, Noah and Frye, Timothy and Gehlbach, Scott and McCarthy, Lauren, Cooperating with the State: Evidence from Survey Experiments on Policing (October 2015). Forthcoming in Journal of Experimental Political Science, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2557078 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2557078

Noah Buckley

Trinity College (Dublin) ( email )

D2
Ireland

National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow) ( email )

Myasnitskaya street, 20
Moscow, Moscow 119017
Russia

Timothy Frye

Columbia University - Department of Political Science ( email )

MC3320
420 West 118th Street
New York, NY 10027
United States
212-854-3646 (Phone)

Scott Gehlbach (Contact Author)

University of Chicago ( email )

1101 East 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

Lauren McCarthy

University of Massachusetts Amherst ( email )

Department of Political Science
Amherst, MA 01003
United States

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