Fighting Crime with a Little Help from my Friends: Political Alignment, Inter-Jurisdictional Cooperation and Crime in Mexico

Emilio Gutierrez
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ruben Durante

No 10769, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We investigate the relationship between inter-jurisdictional cooperation and law enforcement in Mexico. Exploiting a Regression Discontinuity Design in close municipal elections, we study how improved opportunities for cooperation in crime prevention among neighboring municipalities - proxied by the degree of political alignment between mayors - may result in lower rates of violent crime. We find that municipalities in which the party in power in the majority of neighboring jurisdictions barely won experience significantly lower homicide rates during the mayor's mandate than those in which it barely lost. This effect is sizeable and robust, is increasing in the share of neighboring municipalities governed by the same party, is independent of which party governs the neighboring municipalities, and does not appear to be driven by improved cooperation with either federal or state authorities.

Keywords: Crime; Inter-jurisdictional cooperation; Law enforcement; Mexico; Political parties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 H41 H7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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