Replication Data for: International Intervention and the Rule of Law: Evidence from Liberia

What are the effects of international intervention on the rule of law after civil war? Rule of law requires not only that state authorities abide by legal limits on their power, but also that citizens rely on state laws and institutions to adjudicate disputes. Using an original survey and list experiment in Liberia, I show that exposure to the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) increased citizens' reliance on state over nonstate authorities to resolve the most serious incidents of crime and violence, and increased nonstate authorities' reliance on legal over illegal mechanisms of dispute resolution. I use multiple identification strategies to support a causal interpretation of these results, including an instrumental variables strategy that leverages plausibly exogenous variation in the distribution of UNMIL personnel induced by the killing of seven peacekeepers in neighboring Cote d'Ivoire. My results are still detectable two years later, even in communities that report no further exposure to peacekeepers. I also find that exposure to UNMIL did not mitigate and may in fact have exacerbated citizens' perceptions of state corruption and bias in the short term, but that these apparently adverse effects dissipated over time. I conclude by discussing implications of these complex but overall beneficial effects.

内战结束后，国际干预对法治会产生何种影响？法治不仅要求国家机关恪守权力行使的法律边界，亦要求公民依托国家法律与制度裁决纠纷。本研究通过在利比里亚开展原创性调查与列表实验，发现接触联合国利比里亚特派团（UNMIL）的民众，更倾向于依靠国家而非非国家权威机构处置最为严重的犯罪与暴力事件；同时非国家权威机构也更倾向于采用合法而非非法的纠纷解决机制。为支撑研究结果的因果解释，本研究采用了多重识别策略，其中一项工具变量法利用了邻国科特迪瓦7名维和人员遇袭事件所引发的联合国利比里亚特派团人员部署的合理外生变动。即便在报告未进一步接触维和人员的社区中，该研究效应在两年后仍可被观测到。此外，研究还发现，短期内接触联合国利比里亚特派团并未缓解、甚至可能加剧了民众对国家腐败与执法偏见的感知，但这类看似负面的影响会随时间逐渐消退。本研究最后讨论了这些复杂但整体有益的效应所蕴含的启示。