State Building via Punitive and Restorative Justice: Evidence from a Field Experiment

通过惩罚性司法和恢复性司法进行国家建设：现场实验的证据

• 批准号: 2215324
• 负责人: James Robinson
• 金额: $ 71.46万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-10-01 至 2025-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2215324&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: State; Building; via; Punitive; Restorative

This project seeks to address a fundamental question of state formation: How can weak and fragile states become strong in the absence of the capacity to tax? We test one possible answer: providing justice and resolving disputes. While policymakers and economists have often focused on the power to tax, the historical record suggests that dispute resolution may provide a useful first step in building strong states that are able to deliver goods and services for their citizens. We will provide experimental evidence about how to build state capacity and legitimacy in fragile post-conflict settings as well as how different types of approaches to dispute resolution contribute to this goal. In particular, we examine the effectiveness of state and non-state approaches to justice provision. Examining these issues will advance knowledge in the fields of political economy and development economics, with key implications for welfare. Our collaboration with local government and an NGO strengthen the partnership between academia, civil society, and government and is itself a direct example of evidence-based policymaking.To this end, we examine the randomized rollout of a legal capacity building program implemented at scale in the target city by the Ministry of Justice and a local NGO. This program has (1) a “punitive” legal capacity building arm in which state lawyers serve as neighborhood legal representatives with subsidized services, and (2) a “restorative” legal capacity building arm in which a neighborhood leader performs these same functions. Our goal is to empirically examine the effects of this program on property rights security, crime, violence, and citizens’ willingness to pay taxes for the formal state. Doing so will enhance our understanding of how strong states can emerge when the capacity to tax their citizens is low to begin with: by taking the legal – not fiscal – path to state capacity, i.e., providing greater access to justice and resolving disputes effectively and fairly. Furthermore, the experimental treatment arms are grounded in different notions of justice which, in the context of many developing countries around the world, often exist side by side: punitive justice involving the coercive power of the state and restorative justice involving traditional authorities and deep-seated community norms around mending the community. This allows us to examine potential complementarities between formal and informal institutions of justice in building strong states.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目旨在解决国家形成的基本问题：在没有征税能力的情况下，弱国家和脆弱的国家如何变得强大？我们测试一个可能的答案：提供正义并解决争议。尽管政策制定者和经济学经常专注于税收的权力，但历史记录表明，争端解决可能会为建立能够为其公民提供商品和服务的强大国家提供有用的第一步。我们将提供有关如何在脆弱的冲突后环境中建立国家能力和合法性的证据的检查，以及不同类型的争议解决方案的方法有助于这一目标。特别是，我们研究了国家和非国家方法的司法规定的有效性。研究这些问题将提高政治经济学和发展经济学领域的知识，对福利产生关键的影响。我们与地方政府和非政府组织的合作加强了学术界，公民社会和政府之间的合作伙伴关系，本身就是基于证据的决策的直接例子。为此，我们研究了司法部和当地非政府组织在目标城市大规模实施的法律能力建设计划的随机推出。该计划具有（1）“惩罚性”的法律能力建设部门，在该部门中，州律师担任带有补贴服务的邻里法律代表，以及（2）“恢复性”的法律能力建设部门，其中邻里领导者执行这些相同的职能。我们的目标是紧急研究该计划对财产权安全，犯罪，暴力和公民愿意为正规国家缴税的影响。这样做将增强我们对强大国家对公民征税的能力的理解，首先是：通过采取法律（而不是财政 - 通往国家能力的途径），即提供更大的司法访问权，并有效，公平地解决争端。此外，实验治疗武器基于不同的司法概念，在世界各地的许多发展中国家的背景下，通常并存：涉及国家强制性的司法和涉及传统当局和围绕社区深处社区规范的恢复正义的惩罚性司法。这使我们能够在建立强大国家的正式机构和非正式司法机构之间进行潜在的互补性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准，被视为通过评估来获得珍贵的支持。