Race, Coercion, and Liberation in American Political Development

Why do coercive institutions rise and fall? While this question receives vast attention in the comparative politics literature, Americanists have been slower to take up this question. This is surprising since the United States has had some of the most coercive institutions throughout history such as chattel slavery, apartheid, and the police. This dissertation, inspired by the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, uses a race and class analysis to understand the political development and destruction of coercive institutions in three key moments of U.S history. The first chapter critically analyzes the Reconstruction period as a critical juncture in the rise of the initial policing apparatus known as convict lease that locked up African Americans and sold their labor to white entrepreneurs. I argue that the federal government's attempted, but ultimately unsuccessful efforts at transitioning the South from a slave society to a free society interacted with both the underlying economic structure that required coerced labor and the racial history of the region that made coercion relatively easy against African Americans to produce a highly coercive state apparatus of police and prisons. Using newly collected data on the universe of all prisoners in the Georgia state penitentiary system, I find evidence suggesting that the attempted military transition of Southern society led to an increase in the growth of policing and incarceration in Georgia. Given the importance of coerced labor to the Southern economy following Reconstruction and into the Jim Crow era, the second chapter (co-authored with James Feigenbaum and Cory Smith) asks whether race-class subjugation responds to shocks to economic structures. Using a unique natural experiment from the quasi-random spread of the Boll Weevil, which destroyed a large fraction of cotton crops in the South from 1890-1920, we find evidence that negative shocks to coercive societies can actually lead to less coercion. Additional analyses suggest that this might happen because African Americans ``voted with their feet\" by migrating away coercive regions. Finally, I move to the period of the Civil Rights Movement and ask whether the political destruction of coercive institutions can happen from ``below.\" The third chapter (published in the AJPS) provides evidence that whites in areas exposed to Civil Rights protests in the 1960s seemed to have become modestly more racially liberal in response to Black-led Civil Rights protests suggesting that the ideological basis of race-class subjugation responds to the push and pull of social movements.强制型机构（coercive institutions）为何兴衰？这一问题在比较政治学研究文献中广受关注，但美国政治研究专家对该议题的探讨却相对滞后。这一现象颇令人意外，因为美国历史上曾存在诸多极具代表性的强制型机构，例如动产奴隶制（chattel slavery）、种族隔离制度与警察体系。本文受W.E.B.杜波依斯（W.E.B. Du Bois）的研究启发，采用阶级与种族分析框架，解析美国历史上三个关键节点中强制型机构的政治演进与消亡。第一章以批判视角分析美国重建时期（Reconstruction）——这一作为首批警务体系兴起的关键转折点——的历史，该体系即罪犯租赁制度（convict lease），将非裔美国人定罪监禁，并将其劳工出售给白人企业家。我认为，联邦政府试图将南方从奴隶社会转型为自由社会，但最终以失败告终；这一尝试与两大因素相互作用：一是南方本就依赖强制劳工的底层经济结构，二是该地区针对非裔美国人实施强制统治的种族历史传统，最终催生了规模庞大的警察与监狱国家强制机器。本文借助佐治亚州监狱系统全部在押人员的全新汇编数据集，发现证据表明：南方社会的军事转型尝试推动了佐治亚州警务与监禁规模的扩张。鉴于重建时期直至吉姆·克劳（Jim Crow）种族隔离时代，强制劳工对南方经济的核心支撑作用，第二章（与詹姆斯·费根鲍姆（James Feigenbaum）、科里·史密斯（Cory Smith）合著）探讨阶级-种族压迫是否会对经济结构冲击做出响应。本章借助1890至1920年间棉铃象鼻虫（Boll Weevil）准随机扩散这一独特自然实验——该虫害摧毁了南方大量棉花作物——发现：强制型社会遭遇负面冲击时，反而可能减少强制统治的强度。补充分析显示，这一现象的成因可能是非裔美国人通过逃离强制统治区域"用脚投票"。最后，本文转向美国民权运动时期，探讨强制型机构的政治消亡是否可能自下而上发生。第三章（发表于《美国政治科学评论（AJPS）》）提供的证据表明：1960年代接触过民权抗议活动的地区的白人，在黑人主导的民权抗议推动下，种族立场温和地趋于自由化；这意味着阶级-种族压迫的意识形态基础会随社会运动的张弛发生变化。