The effects of state presence on the mental mapping of security: Evidence from an experiment in Kashmir

What is the relationship between governance and security? What impact, if any, does state presence have on civilians’ perceptions of security in militarized conflict zones? The existing literature suggests that government control over a restive region means order and security for the local population. We propose a ‘mental mapping’ framework for the relationship between state presence and security perceptions in militarized ethnic peripheries, drawing on prior research in urban planning about how attitudes are shaped by living environments. We use a survey experiment to measure the effect of the physical presence of government institutions on civilians’ sense of how safe they imagine their city to be, demonstrating a mental mapping mechanism between the physical presence of the state and perceptions of safety. We show that residents who encounter images of state institutions on a map of Srinagar – the largest city and summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India – are more likely to perceive their city as less secure than those who encounter a map without images or a placebo map. This experimental evidence implies that government security presence is not always perceived as security by the civilian population.