Replication Data for: The Consequences of Militarized Policing for Human Rights: Evidence from Mexico

What are the consequences of the militarization of public safety? Governments increasingly rely on militaries for policing, but the systematic study of this phenomenon's consequences for human rights has been neglected. NGO and journalistic accounts point to widespread violations by the military, but these snapshots do not necessarily present evidence of systematic abuse. Based on unique data on military deployments and human-rights complaints in Mexico, we conduct a systematic, country-wide study of the consequences of constabularization for human rights. Following matching and difference-in-difference strategies, we find that it leads to a 150% increase in complaints against federal security forces. We also leverage deployments for disaster-relief operations and complaints against non-security institutions to show that the increase is not due to underlying conditions or higher reporting in the military’s presence. The findings have important implications for our understanding of quality of democracy and the democratic ideals of civilian policing.

公共安全军事化会带来何种后果？当前各国政府日益依赖军方承担警务职能，但针对这一现象对人权造成的影响开展的系统性研究却始终未得到足够重视。非政府组织（NGO）与新闻报道均指出军方存在广泛的侵权行为，但这类零散案例未必能作为系统性滥用职权的实证依据。本研究基于墨西哥军方部署与人权投诉的独有数据集，针对治安军事化（Constabularization）对人权的影响开展了全国性的系统性研究。通过运用匹配法与双重差分策略进行分析，我们发现此类做法会导致针对联邦安全部队的投诉量上升150%。此外，我们还利用了军方参与救灾行动的部署数据，以及针对非安全机构的投诉数据，以此验证投诉量的上升并非源于基础环境变化，或是军方介入后举报率提升所引发。该研究结果对于我们理解民主质量以及文职警务的民主理想具有重要意义。