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？当前各国政府愈发依赖军队承担警务职能，但针对这一现象对人权造成影响的系统性研究却长期缺位。非政府组织与新闻报道均指出军队存在广泛的侵权行为，但这类零散案例未必能作为系统性虐待行为的实证依据。基于墨西哥军队部署与人权投诉的独有数据集，我们针对警务军事化（constabularization）对人权的影响开展了全国性的系统性研究。借助匹配法与双重差分法（difference-in-difference）的研究策略，我们发现该举措会使针对联邦安全部队的投诉量增长150%。我们还利用救灾行动中的军队部署数据，以及针对非安全机构的投诉数据进行佐证，证明投诉量的增长并非源于基础环境变化，亦非军队入驻后举报率提升所导致。本研究结果对于我们理解民主质量与文职警务的民主理念具有重要意义。