Going postal: State capacity and violent dispute resolution

Jeffrey L. Jensen and Adam J. Ramey

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2020, vol. 48, issue 4, 779-796

Abstract: Scholars have long tried to understand the conditions under which actors choose to use violent versus non-violent means to settle disputes, and many argue that violence is more likely in weakly-institutionalized settings. Yet, there is little evidence showing that increases in state capacity lowers the use of violent informal institutions to resolve disputes. Utilizing a novel dataset of violence—specifically, duels—across American states in the 19th century, we use the spread of federal post offices as an identification strategy to investigate the importance of state capacity for the incidence of violent dispute resolution. We find that post office density is a strong, consistent, and negative predictor of dueling behavior. Our evidence contributes to a burgeoning literature on the importance of state capacity for development outcomes.

Keywords: Dispute resolution; State capacity; Informal institutions; Violence; Political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D74 O17 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:48:y:2020:i:4:p:779-796

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2020.05.007

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