Anger and Support for Punitive Justice in Mexico’s Drug War Omar García-Ponce∗ Lauren Youngy Thomas Zeitzoffz§ August 27, 2018 Abstract Why do civilians affected by violence support vigilante groups? We argue that outrage after violence increases the demand for punitiveness, even at the expense of the rule of law. We test our theory using three observational and experimental studies using data from an original survey of 1,200 individuals in Western Mexico, a region affected by narcotrafficking and vigilante violence. We find first that individuals exposed to more violence are angrier and more supportive of punitive criminal justice, including policies that enable vigilantes. Second, both experiments show that citizens are more supportive of harsh punishments, and place less value on their legality, for morally outrageous crimes. Third, the innocence of a crime’s victim has a stronger effect on anger and punitiveness than the severity of its violence. The findings suggest that emotional reactions to violence can lead to cycles of retribution that undermine the rule of law. ∗Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis.
[email protected] yAssistant Professor, University of California, Davis.
[email protected] zAssistant Professor, American University.
[email protected] §Our deepest thanks to Vincent Bauer, Ashley Fabrizio, Saad Gulzar, Daniel Hirschel-Burns, Haemin Jee, Stathis Kalyvas, Beatriz Magaloni, David Shirk, and seminar participants at Stanford, Essex, USC, UC Davis, MIT, Uppsala, NYU, Yale, and UCSD, for feedback at various stages of this project. We also thank Buendía & Laredo for managing the data collection. Isabel Mejía Fontanot and Julio Solís Arce provided excellent research assistance.