RUI: Criminal Competition and Collective Political Mobilization in Comparative Perspective

Millions of people across the developing world live and work in marginalized urban spaces with limited access to basic public goods. Often these same spaces are sites for organized criminal groups engaged in violent and illicit activities, including the sale and distribution of drugs. But relatively little is known about how the presence and operation of organized crime impact the ability of vulnerable urban populations to access critical public goods often in short supply in marginalized urban settings, including potable water, sanitation, and green space.

Existing research shows that access to public goods bears a relation to levels of economic development and the stability of democratic political institutions. Moreover, these conditions have broader implications for phenomenon of global concern, including population movement and the flows of illicit goods. This study aims to advance knowledge of the relationship between organized crime and access to public goods.

The study uses multiple methodologies and emphasizes the training of undergraduate students to gain experience collecting and analyzing different forms of data as part of carrying out social science research.

This study asks: when and how do criminal organizations impact community-level political mobilization for public goods in socioeconomically marginalized settings? The investigator evaluates whether variation in the extent of competition among criminal groups can have distinct consequences for the incentives and capacity of communities to mobilize to demand public goods from states.

The departure from the conventional scholarly focus on highly violent developing world cities promises both research and policy insights relevant for a broader range of urban settings. The study evaluates the generalizability of preliminary findings from a pilot study by deploying a multi-method research design: (a) collection and analysis of primary and secondary quantitative data at the neighborhood-level, including from government archives and media; (b) an original survey representative of a random sample of neighborhoods that vary in levels of criminal competition and collective political mobilization; and (c) fieldwork to collect qualitative data in select neighborhoods.

The resulting study promises several broader impacts, including training undergraduate students to carry out quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, generating scholarly publications, and developing briefs with recommendations to be disseminated in convenings with civil society organizations and decision makers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.