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

Fighting Crime with a Little Help from my Friends:Party Affiliation, Inter-jurisdictional Cooperationand Crime in Mexico *Ruben Durante † Emilio Gutierrez ‡October 19, 2013ABSTRACTWe investigate the relationship between inter-jurisdictional cooperation and lawenforcement in Mexico. Exploiting a Regression Discontinuity Design in closemunicipal elections, we study how improved opportunities for cooperation incrime prevention among neighboring municipalities - proxied by their degreeof political alignment - may result in lower rates of violent crime. We findthat municipalities in which the party in power in the majority of neighboringjurisdictions barely won experience significantly lower homicide rates duringthe mayor’s mandate than those in which it barely lost. This effect is sizeableand independent of which party is in power in the neighboring municipalities.*We thank Pedro Dal Bó, Roberto Galbiati, Emeric Henry, Brian Knight, Jens Ludwig, Cesar Martinelliand Daniel Mejía for helpful comments, and seminar participants at Universidad de Los Andes and ITAM aswell as participants at the 2013 meeting of the LACEA America Latina Crime and Policy Network for helpfuldiscussion. We are grateful to Patrick Signoret, Carlos Farah, and Etienne Fize for excellent research assistance.Ruben Durante is grateful to the Interdisciplinary Center for Public Policy Evaluation (LIEPP) at Sciences Pofor financial support.† Sciences Po and Yale University. Contact: Ruben.Durante@sciences-po.org.‡ ITAM-CIE. Contact: Emilio.Gutierrez@itam.mx.1