Governments across the developing world rely on their armed forces for domestic policing operations. Advocates of these “mano dura” (iron fist) policies view them as necessary to control crime, while detractors claim they undermine human rights. We experimentally evaluate a military policing intervention in Cali, Colombia, the country’s third largest city and among its most violent. The intervention involved recurring, intensive military patrols targeting crime hot spots, randomly assigned at the city block level. Using administrative crime and human rights data, surveys, a conjoint survey experiment, a costly behavioral measure, qualitative interviews, and firsthand observations from civilian monitors, we find some suggestive evidence that military policing reduces crime, but only on days and times when soldiers are physically present on the streets. Despite these weak or null effects, we find strong evidence of increased demand for more aggressive military involvement in policing and other aspects of governance, including increased support for military coups. We also find some suggestive evidence of increased human rights abuses committed by police officers in particular a large, significant, and lasting increase in citizens’ reports of witnessing crime, and a correspondingly large, significant, and lasting increase in their willingness to report crimes to the authorities. We interpret this as evidence of increased vigilance by citizens and increased coproduction of security not just between the military and the police, but between civilians and the authorities as well.

Register to attend: https://bit.ly/3kLlHCT

Michael Weintraub is an Associate Professor in the Escuela de Gobierno Alberto Lleras Camargo at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia; Director of the Security and Violence Area of the Center for the Study of Security and Drugs (CESED) at the same university; and Senior Researcher at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). His research agenda focuses on crime and political violence in Latin America, particularly in Colombia, Central America, and Mexico. He is also interested in historical legacies of violence and how they affect contemporary outcomes. To study these and other topics he uses a combination of experimental and quasi-experimental methods, as well as qualitative case studies. While he wrote my dissertation on Colombia, and live in Bogotá, he also studies Mexico and the three countries in the so-called "Northern Triangle" of Central America: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Prior to graduate school,heI worked for three years on human rights and development, primarily in East and Southern Africa. In May 2014 he received my Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University and has been a Predoctoral Fellow at Yale University’s Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence (2013-2014) and a Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace (2012-2013). He was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University (SUNY) from 2014-2016. His articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Terrorism and Political Violence, Research & Politics, Journal of Theoretical Politics, and Critical Review.

Robert A. Blair is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University. His research focuses on international intervention and the consolidation of state authority after civil war, with an emphasis on rule of law and security institutions. He also coordinates the Democratic Erosion consortium, which spans over 50 universities in the US, UK, Ireland, Israel, Turkey, Romania, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines. The consortium combines research, teaching, and civic and policy engagement to address threats to democracy in the US and around the world.

Rough Work: Adoree Kim, Ph.D. student, Government

Loopholes for Lawmakers: Symbolic Prohibition of Bribery

Adoree Kim writes: This chapter process-traces the enactment of the 2016 Improper Solicitation and Graft Act in the wake of the Sewol Ferry tragedy. The Improper Solicitation Act, as introduced by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC), was intended to reduce public official corruption. National Assembly lawmakers revised provisions they believed would restrict their access to political resources or increase their likelihood of becoming targets of enforcement. Stripped of restrictions on third-party petitioning, the law became a “cheap signal” with limited ability to constrain politician corruption. Indeed, the majority of those investigated and prosecuted for violating the Improper Solicitation Act are low-level public officials. This chapter uses legislative records and in-depth interviews with South Korean National Assembly members and ACRC officials to demonstrate how lawmakers discreetly shape institutions to reflect status-quo preferences.

ROUGH WORK: Discussing research in progress, hence the term, rough work. This rough work session is hosted by the East Asia Program's Graduate Student Steering Committee (GSSC).

Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development, Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures and societies that call Africa home, and explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development.

Cosponsored by Latino/a Studies Program, Latin American Studies Program, and Comparative Literature

Melissa Castillo Planas' most recent book project, with Rutgers University Press’ new Global Race and Media series, A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture, examines the creative worlds and cultural productions of Mexican migrants in New York City within the context of a system of racial capitalism that marginalizes Mexican migrants via an exploitative labor market, criminalizing immigration policy, and racialized systems of surveillance. Her second book of poetry, Chingona Rules is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press in summer 2021.

Melissa Castillo Planas is an Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College specializing in Latinx Literature and Culture. She is the author of the poetry collection Coatlicue Eats the Apple, editor of the anthology, ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets, co-editor of La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades and co-author of the novel, Pure Bronx.

http://www.melissacastilloplanas.com

Please join us March 4, 2021 at 5 pm EST for the first virtual Science on Tap! This month, we welcome Dr. Yangyang Cheng and her talk, "When Scientists Cross Water," about the ethics and governance of science, focusing on China and China-US relations.

RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYb_Cw8-bGQ_JLH3FkK58tlRFCa0M…

Speaker: Dr. Yangyang Cheng (Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center).

Topic: Pushing the Frontier: When Science Becomes Transnational.

Description:

Scientific collaboration has become one of the most contentious issues in U.S. - China relations. In a world fractured by nations, races, and governing systems, can science transcend political borders?

Particle physicist and postdoctoral fellow at Yale Law School, Dr. Yangyang Cheng, will discuss this urgent and complex subject.

The Migrations Forum is an interdisciplinary works-in-progress series for Cornell migrations scholars, bringing together graduate students and faculty across disciplines to share ongoing research.

At this session, Natasha Raheja (Anthropology) will share a rough cut of the new ethnographic film A Gregarious Species: What do bugs and borders have to do with each other? In 2019, thousands of gregarious desert locust swarms flew across the India-Pakistan border and ravaged the fields of farmers. In the same year, Indian government officials described migrants as termites and infiltrators at right-wing political rallies across the country. Farmers started to wonder if locusts were bioweapons from hostile countries to destroy crops. Scientists met at the India-Pakistan border to discuss how to manage this "transboundary pest". This experimental, found-footage video, "A Gregarious Species", contemplates borders, migration, and human-animal relations through a dizzying assembly of mobile phone videos of locusts, scientific webinars, and nationalist political rallies.

The Floating World: History, Haiku, Global Modernism

The East Asia Program invites you to join our guest, Chris Bush, (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, UCLA) Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literary Studies in this Rough Work session.

This “rough work” session shares an account of the genesis and current state of my current book project, The Floating World, along with a narrative outline of the book as a whole and some suggested points of departure for our discussion.

The first half of the book analyzes the impact of Japanese modernization on theories of history and universal civilization in a variety of places around the world. Its three chapters cover triumphalist end-of-history discourses; hopes for anti-Western and anti-colonial solidarity; and yellow-peril apocalypticism. The second half of the book explores, in this context, the rapid spread of the haiku as a literary form in the early part of the twentieth century. Its three chapters focus on World War One-era French-language haiku as a form of anti-epic historical writing; the tensions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism in the Mexican haiku movement of the 1920s; and the place of Japan in Ezra Pound’s cosmopolitan fascism.

Participants will receive a link to access texts by Chris Bush for prereading upon registration.

Bio

Christopher Bush is Associate Professor of French at Northwestern University, where he codirects the Global Avant-garde and Modernist Studies graduate cluster and coedits Modernism/modernity and its Print Plus platform His first book, Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media, was published by Oxford University Press in 2010 and he is currently completing The Floating World for Columbia University Press.

These sessions are small allowing for informal discussion and exploration as well as feedback.

ROUGH WORK: Discussing research in progress, hence the term, rough work.