Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Sciences: Enforcement Politics and Social Policy in Urban Latin America

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Why do governments tolerate the violation of the law and when do they enforce the law? The conventional wisdom is that weak enforcement reflects a weak state unable to implement its laws due to budget and capacity constraints. But, enforcement also has distributive and political consequences. Particularly in cases where the poor violate property laws, tolerance of legal violations can distribute substantial resources and win votes. Yet rarely are enforcement decisions incorporated into analyses of social policy or electoral politics. In contrast, this project examines how electoral incentives shape administrative law enforcement decisions. This project develops original data on legal violations and enforcement operations to test how the structure and competitiveness of local elections impacts law enforcement in three Latin American cities. It focuses on enforcement against a pair of legal violations, land invasions and unlicensed street vending, due to their consequences for the lives of the urban poor. By examining how enforcement varies across space, time, and sector, this dissertation shows that the design of electoral districts and social programs helps explain why some governments tolerate violations of the poor and others do not. The project involves the collection of two complementary pieces of data: 1) individual-level data on attitudes toward enforcement and social policy, to test the mechanisms behind the observed urban enforcement patterns, and 2) subnational data on enforcement against street vending and land invasions within Colombia, to see whether the theory developed accurately predicts the geographic and temporal distribution of enforcement outside of the cases on which the theory was developed. The intellectual merit of the project lies in its ability to advance understanding of an alternative and consequential form of distribution in low and middle-income countries. Latin America is considered the most unequal region in the world, yet the region's governments spend less effectively than advanced democracies. This dissertation proposes that tolerance of property law violations can act as a substitute form of redistribution and a way for politicians to win the poor's vote. Understanding the politics of law enforcement is critical because it helps to explain both why certain laws go unenforced and why formal government programs to aid the poor lag. This project also makes an empirical contribution through the collection and dissemination of novel survey and experimental data on class attitudes toward enforcement and social policy. The broader impact comes in understanding the weak rule of law. Policymakers often seek to improve the implementation of legal regulations. The deforestation of the tropics, the proliferation of precarious shantytowns, and artisanal mining with mercury are just a few examples where domestic and international actors hope to improve regulatory implementation. In explaining variation in enforcement, this research provides insight into the conditions that encourage subnational politicians to apply state norms, even when they conflict with distributive claims. Pinpointing the obstacles to enforcement may provide policymakers the tools and information to craft more effective social programs that substitute for informal transfers and to consider administrative reorganizations that align enforcement incentives.