Fighting Crime with a Little Help from my Friends ... - Sciences Po

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α 4 captures whether the effect of the discontinuity on the outcome of interest varies with Y is ,while α 5 and α 6 account for the possibility that the same outcome varies smoothly, but indifferent ways, for municipalities with different Y is .Table 8 summarizes the results of this section. The first column reports the results for thebaseline regression - including all controls but no interaction with Y is - which representsour benchmark. The following columns report the results with the interaction terms for theshare of neighboring municipalities governed by the same party (column 2), for the dummyfor PAN ruling most of the neighbors (3), for the dummy for the party ruling most of theneighbors also controlling the state government (column 4) and for the dummy indicating ifthe party ruling most of the neighbors is also the incumbent.In column 2 both the coefficient on political alignment with neighbors (Mwin is ) and thecoefficient on its interaction with the share of neighboring municipalities governed by thesame party are negative and large in magnitude. The sum of both coefficients is significantlydifferent from zero at the 1% level. This result is consistent with the idea that the electionof a mayor from a given party in a municipality is more likely to boost inter-jurisdictionalcooperation the more of the neighboring mayors belong to that party. In column 3, politicalalignment with neighbors displays a negative and significant coefficient similar in magnitudewith the one reported in column 1. However, the interaction between political alignment andthe dummy indicating whether the party governing most of the neighbors is the same asthe one in power at the federal level is not statistically significant. In column 4, politicalalignment with neighbors displays a negative coefficient similar in magnitude with the onereported in column 1; the interaction between political alignment and the dummy indicatingwhether the party governing most of the neighbors is the same as the one in power at thestate level is also negative, smaller in magnitude and not statistically different from zero.These findings suggest that the impact of political alignment with neighbors on crime reductionis independent from the degree of political alignment with federal or state authorities,and further support the view that the observed reduction in crime may be attributed to im-16
proved horizontal rather than vertical cooperation. Finally column 5 also rejects the hypothesisthat the reduction in homicide rates is driven by the fact that the incumbent party maybe better at combating crime, for example because more experienced.6. CONCLUSIONTo what extent should policy-making be decentralized in a federal system? And what arethe contrasting forces that should be considered when determining the optimal degree of decentralization?The academic debate around these crucial questions has been traditionallydominated by the fundamental trade-off between the necessity to adapt policies to local preferences,and the need to minimize possible inter-jurisdictional externalities (Oates, 1977).Any evaluation of the performance of a decentralized system, however, should also take intoaccount how effective inter-jurisdictional cooperation can make the local provision of publicgoods more effective and less costly. This aspect, however, has been largely disregarded inthe literature.This paper attempts to fill this gap by investigating the impact of horizontal inter-jurisdictionalcooperation in one policy area in which this aspect is especially important: law-enforcement.In particular we look at the context of Mexico and apply a Regression Discontinuity Design(RDD) to examine whether improved opportunities for cooperation in crime preventionamong neighboring municipalities - proxied by their degree of political alignment - facilitatescrime deterrence and results in lower crime rates. Our empirical strategy exploits thearguably exogenous discontinuity in the identity of the ruling party in a municipality givenby its victory in a close election. To estimate the causal effect of political alignment, wecompare the evolution of crime rates in municipalities where the party governing most of themunicipality’s neighbors won the election by a small margin to those in which it lost by asmall margin.We find that municipalities that are politically aligned with their neighbors experience sig-17
Page 1: Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d'
Page 4 and 5: «[Mexican] municipal police forces
Page 6 and 7: political alignment with state or f
Page 8 and 9: on the functioning, priorities, and
Page 10 and 11: immediate re-election; hence, they
Page 12 and 13: 4. EMPIRICS4.1. EMPIRICAL STRATEGYO
Page 14 and 15: Our empirical specification is then
Page 16 and 17: from zero. This confirms that polit
Page 20 and 21: nificantly lower homicide rates in
Page 22 and 23: Lee, D. S. (2001). The electoral ad
Page 24 and 25: Figure 2: Municipalities by Mayor
Page 26 and 27: Figure 4: RDD Graphical Analysis% o
Page 28 and 29: Table 2: Descriptive Statistics (Ov
Page 30 and 31: Table 4: Non-Parametric (local line
Page 32: Table 8: OLS Regression ResultsOLS

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