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Relational State Building in Areas of Limited Statehood: Experimental Evidence on the Attitudes of the Police

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  • KARIM, SABRINA

Abstract

Under what conditions does state expansion into limited statehood areas improve perceptions of state authority? Although previous work emphasizes identity or institutional sources of state legitimacy, I argue that relationships between state agents and citizens drive positive attitude formation, because these relationships provide information and facilitate social bonds. Moreover, when state agents and citizens share demographic characteristics, perceptional effects may improve. Finally, citizens finding procedural interactions between state agents and citizens unfair may adopt negative views about the state. I test these three propositions by randomizing household visits by male or female police officers in rural Liberia. These visits facilitated relationship building, leading to improved perceptions of police; shared demographic characteristics between police and citizens did not strengthen this effect. Perceptions of unfairness in the randomization led to negative opinions about police. The results imply that relationship building between state agents and citizens is an important part of state building.

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  • Karim, Sabrina, 2020. "Relational State Building in Areas of Limited Statehood: Experimental Evidence on the Attitudes of the Police," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 114(2), pages 536-551, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:114:y:2020:i:2:p:536-551_16
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    Cited by:

    1. Herman, Biz & Panin, Amma & Owlsley, Nicholas & , e.a., 2021. "Field Experiments in the Global South: Assessing Risks, Localizing Benefits, and Addressing Positionality," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2021025, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    2. Hu, Xinyan & Chen, Zhuo & Chen, Xiangpo & Liu, Ziyu, 2023. "The political trust impacts of land titling in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    3. Donna Harris & Oana Borcan & Danila Serra & Henry Telli & Bruno Schettini & Stefan Dercon, 2022. "Proud to belong: The impact of ethics training on police officers," CSAE Working Paper Series 2022-05, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    4. Blattman, Christopher & Duncan, Gustavo & Lessing, Benjamin & Tobon, Santiago, 2022. "State-building on the Margin: An Urban Experiment in Medellín," SocArXiv 3bncz, Center for Open Science.
    5. Nomikos, William George, 2021. "More Security, More Legitimacy? Effective Governance as a Source of State Legitimacy in Liberia," OSF Preprints hd28z, Center for Open Science.

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