Episode 2.1: Can boosting state capacity curb social disorder? with Anna Wilke

In this episode, we are talking about the problem of maintaining social order. In particular, what happens when citizens see the police as ineffective and, in turn, decide to take the law into their own hands? And once mob justice becomes commonplace in a society, what can be done?

In places where the state is weak, citizens often have to take it upon themselves to provide basic public services, such as building schools or collecting the garbage. And, as our guest today tells us, it can also include policing. In parts of the world where the police are seen as corrupt or inept, ordinary citizens often turn to what’s known as mob vigilantism. Groups will form spontaneously to apprehend and inflict violence – sometimes extreme violence – upon those they suspect of committing crimes. In some places, mob justice is exceedingly common: in South Africa, for instance, the police registered two mob vigilante murders per day in 2018 (and that is likely an undercount). 

Mob vigilantism represents a deep breakdown in citizen trust in the state’s ability to maintain social order. Is there anything that governments or civil society can do to boost confidence in the state and, in turn, head off mob violence? Our guest, Dr. Anna Wilke, has recently completed a novel field experiment to address this question in the context of South Africa. Currently a postdoctoral fellow with Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) at the University of California, Berkeley, Anna will be joining the Department of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis as an Assistant Professor next fall.

For the experiment, Anna partnered with a local non-profit to test the effects of a simple intervention: the installation of a home-based alarm system. When a resident or intruder triggers the alarm, it directly texts the local police precinct with the geolocation of the household – in principle, allowing the police to find and respond to criminal incidents more quickly. The question Anna asks is: Does enhancing the responsiveness of local law enforcement lead citizens to see the police as more effective and to resort less to mob violence?

In addition to hearing about her findings, we have a great conversation with Anna about the practical and inferential challenges she encountered in implementing and analyzing her experiment. For instance, it turns out that some of the things that make it hard for the state to effectively manage social problems – like the lack of street addresses in informally settled neighborhoods – also make it hard to sample and survey in these places. 

Anna also had to deal with all the messiness of running an experiment in the real world, rather than in a controlled setting. This includes the possibility that she was not just treating the people she gave the alarm to, but also their neighbors, who might have also perceived themselves as having quicker access to the police. 

Finally, we bring Anna’s research into the larger conversation around policing and racial bias, and ask: what does it mean to increase police presence and public reliance on the police when there is also systemic police abuse?

Works discussed in the episode:

Jung, Danielle F., and Dara Kay Cohen. 2020. Lynching and Local Justice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2019. Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wilke, Anna M. 2021. “How Does the State Replace the Community? Experimental Evidence on Crime Control from South Africa.” Working paper.

Wilke, Anna M., and Jasper Cooper. 2021. “Gender Gaps in Support for Vigilante Violence.” Working paper.