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How Do Violent Politicians Govern? The Case of Paramilitary-Tied Mayors in Colombia.
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- Author(s): Daly, Sarah Zukerman1 (AUTHOR)
- Source:
British Journal of Political Science. Oct2022, Vol. 52 Issue 4, p1852-1875. 24p.
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- Abstract:
How do politicians with coercive linkages govern? This article relies on original data on militia-linked mayors in Colombia from 1988 to 2015 derived from 42,000 pages of Colombian Supreme Court sentencing documents. Using a regression discontinuity design, it examines the governance records of militia-tied mayors who won the elections by a narrow margin. It finds that being ruled by a militia-linked mayor significantly reduces levels of insecurity and crime, but has pernicious effects on the provision of other public goods, especially education. I theorize that these politicians' (perverse) comparative advantage on security, combined with their crowding out of social spending, engenders these outcomes. I evaluate these mechanisms with data on the nature of paramilitary–mayor alliances, police reinforcements, municipal budgets, politicians' Twitter feeds, and in-depth interviews with paramilitary commanders and politicians. The article has implications for understanding the effects of voting for politicians with coercive ties on the quality of governance and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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