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Cooperating with the State: Evidence from Survey Experiments on Policing*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2016

Noah Buckley ,
Timothy Frye ,
Scott Gehlbach  and
Lauren A. McCarthy
Noah Buckley
Affiliation:
Columbia University and the International Center for the Study of Institutionsand Development at the Higher School of Economics
Timothy Frye
Affiliation:
Columbia University and the International Center for the Study of Institutionsand Development at the Higher School of Economics
Scott Gehlbach*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison and the International Center for the Study of Institutionsand Development at the Higher School of Economics
Lauren A. McCarthy
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts Amherstand the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics
*
Corresponding author email: gehlbach@polisci.wisc.edu
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Abstract

We examine cooperation with the state using a series of survey experiments on policing conducted in late 2011 in Moscow, Russia, where distrust of the state is high and attempts to reform the police have been ineffective. Through various vignettes that place respondents in situations in which they are the witness or victim of a crime, we experimentally manipulate crime severity, identity of the perpetrator (whether the crime is committed by a police officer), monetary rewards, appeals to civic duty, and the opportunity cost of time spent reporting. Of these factors, crime severity and identity of the perpetrator are robustly associated with a propensity to report. Our research design and results contribute to a large literature on cooperation with the state by examining variables that may be more salient or function differently in countries with weak institutions than in developed democracies.

Keywords

Cooperationpolicepost-Communismautocracysurvey experiments
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Winter 2016 , pp. 124 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2016 

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Footnotes

*

We gratefully acknowledge financial support for this project from the Basic Research Program of the National Research University–Higher School of Economics. The funders took no part in the design or execution of the research. Additional materials are available in an online appendix.

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