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The Logic of Violence in Drug War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2020

JUAN CAMILO CASTILLO Open the ORCID record for JUAN CAMILO CASTILLO [Opens in a new window]  and
DOROTHY KRONICK Open the ORCID record for DOROTHY KRONICK [Opens in a new window]
JUAN CAMILO CASTILLO*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
DOROTHY KRONICK*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
*
Juan Camilo Castillo, Economics Department, Stanford University, jccast@stanford.edu.
Dorothy Kronick, Political Science Department, University of Pennsylvania, kronick@sas.upenn.edu.
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Abstract

Drug traffickers sometimes share profits peacefully. Other times they fight. We propose a model to investigate this variation, focusing on the role of the state. Seizing illegal goods can paradoxically increase traffickers’ profits, and higher profits fuel violence. Killing kingpins makes crime bosses short-sighted, also fueling conflict. Only by targeting the most violent traffickers can the state reduce violence without increasing supply. These results help explain empirical patterns of violence in drug war, which is less studied than are interstate or civil war but often as deadly.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 114 , Issue 3 , August 2020 , pp. 874 - 887
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association.

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Footnotes

We are especially grateful to Daniel Mejía for his guidance when conceiving this project. For comments, we thank David Bardey, Jim Fearon, Leopoldo Fergusson, Ana María Ibáñez, Krzysztof Krakowski, Marc Meredith, Emily Sellars, Hernán Vallejo, colleagues at Stanford and Penn, workshop participants at Yale, Princeton, and Bocconi, and four anonymous reviewers.

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