Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-mwx4w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-19T01:02:08.344Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.

References

REFERENCES

Aviram, Hadar and Persinger, Annick. 2012. “Perceiving and Reporting Domestic Violence Incidents in Unconventional Settings: A Vignette Survey Study.” Hastings Women’s Law Journal 23 (2): 159–186.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary. 1968. “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach.” Journal of Political Economy 76 (2): 169–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Richard R. and Wiegand, R. Bruce. 1994. “Observations on Crime Reporting in a Developing Nation.” Criminology 32 (1): 135–148.Google Scholar
Bickman, Leonard and Helwig, Helen. 1979. “Bystander Reporting of a Crime.” Criminology 17 (3): 283–300.Google Scholar
Birkbeck, Christopher, Gabaldon, Luis G., and LaFree, Gary. 1993. “The Decision to Call the Police: A Comparative Study of the US and Venezuela.” International Criminal Justice Review 3 (1): 25–43.Google Scholar
Bouten, Esther, Goudriaan, Heike, and Nieuwbeerta, Paul. 2002. “Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries.” In Crime Victimization in Comparative Perspective. Results from the International Crime Victims Survey, 1989–2000, ed. Nieuwbeerta, Paul. The Hague: Boom Legal Publishers.Google Scholar
Bowles, Roger, Reyes, Maria Garcia, and Garoupa, Nuno. 2009. “Crime Reporting Decisions and the Cost of Crime.” European Journal of Criminal Policy Research 15 (4): 365–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2003. Reporting Crime to the Police, 1992–2000 Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.Google Scholar
Challinger, Dennis. 2004. “Crime Stopper Victoria: An Evaluation.” Technical and Background Paper No. 8. Canberra, Australia: Australian Institute of Criminology.Google Scholar
Del Frate, Alvazzi and van Kesteren, John N.. 2003. “Some Preliminary Tables from the International Crime Victim Surveys.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Dickson, Eric S., Gordon, Sanford C., and Huber, Gregory A.. 2014. “Institutional Sources of Legitimate Authority: An Experimental Investigation.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (1): 109–127.Google Scholar
Feldman, Yuval and Lobel, Orly. 2010. “The Incentives Matrix: The Comparative Effectiveness of Rewards, Liabilities, Duties and Protections for Reporting Illegality.” Texas Law Review 88: 1151–1211.Google Scholar
Gehlbach, Scott. 2008. Representation Through Taxation: Revenue, Politics, and Development in Postcommunist States. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottfredson, Michael R. and Gottfredson, Don M.. 1988. Decision Making in Criminal Justice: Toward the Rational Exercise of Discretion. 2nd ed. New York: Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Goudriaan, Heike 2006. Reporting Crime: Effects of Social Context on the Decision of Victims to Notify the Police. Veenendaal, Netherlands: University Press.Google Scholar
Goudriaan, Heike, Lynch, James P., and Nieuwbeerta, Paul. 2004. “Reporting to the Police in Western Nations: A Theoretical Analysis of the Effect of Social Context.” Justice Quarterly 21 (4): 933–970.Google Scholar
Goudriaan, Heike and Nieuwbeerta, Paul. 2007. “Contextual Determinants of Juveniles’ Willingness to Report Crimes. A Vignette Experiment.” Journal of Experimental Criminology 3 (2): 89–111.Google Scholar
Gridasov, Andrei. 2011. “MVD zaprosilo na ‘stukachei’ 280 mln rublei.” Izvestia, June 27. (http://izvestia.ru/news/493023), accessed on June 2, 2015.Google Scholar
Igorev, Aleksandr. 2012. “Pomoshch’ politsii okazhetsia ochen v kassu.” Kommersant, August 24. (http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2007246), accessed on June 2, 2015.Google Scholar
Kazoora, Cornelius, Tondo, Charles, and Kazungu, Bob. 2005. “Routes to Justice: Institutionalising Participation in Forest Law Enforcement in Uganda.” Participatory Learning and Action 53: 61–66.Google Scholar
Kelly, Catriona. 2005. Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero. London: Granta Books.Google Scholar
Kivivuori, Janne, Sirén, Reino, and Danielsson, Petri. 2012. “Gender framing effects in victim surveys.” European Journal of Criminology 9 (2): 142–158.Google Scholar
Kochel, Tammy Rinehart, Parks, Roger, and Mastrofski, Stephen D.. 2013. “Examining Police Effectiveness as a Precursor to Legitimacy and Cooperation with Police.” Justice Quarterly 30 (5): 895–925.Google Scholar
Kopczuk, Wojciech and Pop-Eleches, Christian. 2007. “Electronic Filing, Tax Preparers, and Participation in the Earned Income Tax Credit.” Journal of Public Economics 91 (7–8): 1351–1367.Google Scholar
Lasley, James R. and Palombo, Bernadette Jones. 1995. “When Crime Reporting Goes High-Tech: An Experimental Test of Computerized Citizen Response to Crime.” Journal of Criminal Justice 23 (6): 519–529.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret. 1988. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret. 1997. Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Evan. 2003. Race and Regionalism in the Politics of Taxation in Brazil and South Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Lauren A. 2014. “Local-Level Law Enforcement: Muscovites and Their Uchastkovyy.” Post-Soviet Affairs 30 (2–3): 195–225.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Lauren A. 2015. Trafficking Justice: How Russian Police Enforce New Laws, from Crime to Courtroom. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mulligan, Casey B. and Shleifer, Andrei. 2005. “The Extent of the Market and the Supply of Regulation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 120 (4): 1445–1473.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. 1981. Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Paneyakh, Ella. 2014. “Faking Performance Together: Systems of Performance Evaluation in Russian Enforcement Agencies and Production of Bias and Privilege.” Post-Soviet Affairs 30 (2–3): 115–36.Google Scholar
Pop-Eleches, Grigore and Tucker, Joshua A.. 2014. “Communist Socialization and Post-communist Economic and Political Attitudes.” Electoral Studies 33: 77–89.Google Scholar
Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C.. 1968. “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting.” American Political Science Review 62 (1): 25–42.Google Scholar
Root, Hilton L. 1994. The Fountain of Privilege: Political Foundations of Markets in Old Regime France and England. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sheu, Chuen-Jim and Chiu, Shu-Pin. 2012. “Determinants of Property Crime Victims to Report to the Police in Taiwan.” International Review of Victimology 18 (3): 251–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sidebottom, Aiden. 2015. “On the Correlates of Reporting Assault to the Police in Malawi.” British Journal of Criminology 55: 381–398.Google Scholar
Skogan, Wesley G. 1984. “Reporting Crimes to the Police: The Status of World Research.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 21 (2): 113–137.Google Scholar
Smith, A. Emerson and Maness, Dal. 1976. “The Decision to Call the Police: Reactions to Burglary.” In Criminal Justice and the Victim, ed. McDonald, William. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 57–83.Google Scholar
Soares, Rodrigo. 2004. “Crime Reporting as a Measure of Institutional Development.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 52 (4): 851–871.Google Scholar
Solomon, Peter H. Jr. 2005. “The Reform of Policing in the Russian Federation.” The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 38 (2): 230–240.Google Scholar
Tankebe, Justin. 2009. “Public Cooperation with the Police in Ghana: Does Procedural Fairness Matter?” Criminology 47 (4): 1265–1293.Google Scholar
Tankebe, Justice. 2010. “Public Confidence in the Police: Testing the Effects of Public Experiences of Police Corruption in Ghana.” British Journal of Criminology 50 (2): 296–319.Google Scholar
Tarling, Roger and Morris, Katie. 2010. “Reporting Crime to the Police.” British Journal of Criminology 50 (3): 474–490.Google Scholar
Taylor, Brian D. 2011. State Building in Putin’s Russia: Policing and Coercion After Communism. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Brian D. 2014. “Police Reform in Russia: The Policy Process in a Hybrid Regime.” Post-Soviet Affairs 30 (2–3): 226–255.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 1985. “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.” In Bringing the State Back, eds. Evans, Peter, Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 2005. Trust and Rule. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tolsma, Jochem, Blaauw, Joris, and te Grotenhuis, Manfred. 2012. “When Do People Report Crime to the Police? Results from a Factorial Survey design in the Netherlands, 2010.” Journal of Experimental Criminology 8 (2): 117–134.Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom R. 2004. “Enhancing Police Legitimacy.” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 593 (1): 84–99.Google Scholar
van Kesteren, John and van Dijk, Jan. 2010. “Key Victimological Findings from ICVS.” In International Handbook of Victimology, eds. Shoham, Shlomo Giora, Knepper, Paul, and Kett, Martin. Routledge: New York.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Lening, Messner, Steven F., and Liu, Jianhong. 2007. “An Exploration of the Determinants of Reporting Crime to the Police in the City of Tianjin, China.” Criminology 45 (4): 959–984.Google Scholar
Zvekic, Ugljea. 1996. “Policing and Attitudes Towards Police Private in Countries in Transition: Preliminary Results of the International Crime (Victim) Survey.” In Policing in Central and Eastern Europe: Comparing Firsthand Knowledge with Experience from the West, ed. Pagon, Milan. Ljubljana, Slovenia: College of Police and Security Studies.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Buckley supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Buckley supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 459 KB