Research – Lauren E. Young

Books

Conditionality and Coercion: Electoral Clientelism in Eastern Europe With Isabela Mares. 2019. Oxford University Press.
– Winner, APSA Political Economy Section William H. Riker Book Award 2020
– Winner, APSA European Politics and Society Section Book Award 2021
– Honorable Mention, APSA Comparative Politics Section Gregory Luebbert Book Award 2020
Oxford UP | Amazon | Abstract

In many recent democracies, candidates compete for office using illegal strategies to influence voters. In Hungary and Romania, local actors including mayors and bureaucrats offer access to social policy benefits to voters who offer to support their preferred candidates, and they threaten others with the loss of a range of policy and private benefits for voting the “wrong” way. These quid pro quo exchanges are often called clientelism. How can politicians and their accomplices get away with such illegal campaigning in otherwise democratic, competitive elections? When do they rely on the worst forms of clientelism that involve threatening voters and manipulating public benefits?

This book uses multiple methods, including large-scale surveys, survey experiments, and in-depth ethnography, to understand how illegal forms of campaigning including vote buying and electoral coercion persist in two democratic countries in the European Union. It argues that we must disaggregate clientelistic strategies based on whether they use public or private resources, and whether they involve positive promises or negative threats and coercion. We document that the type of clientelistic strategies that candidates and brokers use varies systematically across localities based on their underlying social coalitions. We also show that voters assess and sanction different forms of clientelism in different ways. Voters glean information about politicians’ personal characteristics and their policy preferences from the specific clientelistic strategies these candidates deploy.

Most voters judge candidates who use clientelism harshly. So how does clientelism, including its most odious coercive forms, persist in democratic systems? This book suggests that politicians can get away with clientelism by using forms of it that are in line with the policy preferences of constituencies whose votes they need. Clientelistic and programmatic strategies are not as distinct as previous scholars have argued. The extent to which different types of voters view candidates who use forms of clientelism that are superficially in line with their policy preferences helps explain where the worst forms of clientelism based on coercion occur.

Articles

Moral reasoning and support for punitive violence: A multi-methods analysis. With Hannah Baron, Omar García-Ponce, Jorge Olmos Camarillo, and Thomas Zeitzoff. Funded by the National Science Foundation. 2025, Journal of Peace Research.
Article | Pre-Print | Appendix | Abstract

How do people who live in communities plagued by criminal violence and weak rule of law decide how to respond to crime? How and why do they support physical punishments, including extrajudicial violence and torture? Much of the recent literature has argued that retributive violence is counterproductive, and driven by deontological forms of moral reasoning that emphasize the appropriateness of an action regardless of its consequences. In this article, we draw on in-depth qualitative interviews to understand whether patterns of moral reasoning can explain why individuals support violent responses to crime. We analyze 62 semi-structured interviews with individuals living in the Mexican state of Michoacan, an area affected by criminal and vigilante violence. We use both a quantitative analysis of unique crime events discussed in the interviews to identify correlations between moral reasoning and punishment preferences, and a qualitative content analysis to investigate mechanisms and identify new hypotheses. We find that counter to prevailing theory, deontological moral reasoning is not predictive of support for harsh punishments, while consequentialist consideration of costs and benefits is. These results cast doubt on deontological theories of support for violence and illustrate some of the merits of multi-methods research.

Promoting reproducibility and replicability in political science. With Abel Brodeur, Kevin Esterling, Jörg Ankel-Peters, Natália Bueno, Scott Desposato, Anna Dreber, Federica Genovese, Donald Green, Matthew Hepplewhite, Fernando Hoces de la Guardia, Magnus Johannesson, Andreas Kotsadam, Edward Miguel, and Yamil Velez. 2024. Research and Politics.
Article (Open Access) | Abstract

This article reviews and summarizes current reproduction and replication practices in political science. We first provide definitions for reproducibility and replicability. We then review data availability policies for 28 leading political science journals and present the results from a survey of editors about their willingness to publish comments and replications. We discuss new initiatives that seek to promote and generate high-quality reproductions and replications. Finally, we make the case for standards and practices that may help increase data availability, reproducibility, and replicability in political science.

Repression and dissent in moments of uncertainty: Panel data evidence from Zimbabwe. With Adrienne LeBas. 2024. American Political Science Review.
– Honorable Mention, APSA Democracy & Autocracy Section Best Article Award 2024
Article (Open Access) | Pre-Print | Appendix | Replication Package | Abstract

State repression and protest are common in modern authoritarian and hybrid regimes, yet individual responses to these events are not well understood. This article draws on unique panel data from the months spanning Zimbabwe’s 2018 election, which we view as a moment of uncertainty for most Zimbabwean citizens. Using a difference-in-difference estimator, we assess change in individual protest intentions following exposure to repression and dissent, and we assess three individual-level mechanisms hypothesized to drive responses. We find evidence that exposure to local repression and dissent are mobilizing among opposition supporters and non-partisans. Analysis of potential mechanisms suggest that the effects of exposure to dissent may be driven by information updating, while relational and emotional mechanisms seem to drive backlash against repression, despite increased perceptions of risk. We find no evidence of counter-mobilization by ruling party supporters, and little effect of exposure to contentious events over social media.

An Experimental Test of the Effects of Fear in a Coordination Game. With Abraham Aldama, Deshawn Sambrano, and Mateo Vasquez. 2023. Journal of Experimental Political Science.
Article | Pre-Print | Appendix | Replication Materials | Pre-Analysis Plan | Abstract

Theory predicts that emotions should affect political decisions around risky collective action. However, little existing research has attempted to parse out various mechanisms by which emotions might affect collective action. We build a global game of regime change and discuss the effects that fear may have on participation through pessimism about the state of the world, other players’ willingness to participate, and risk aversion. We test the behavioral effects of fear in this game using a lab experiment where participants are randomly assigned to an emotion induction procedure. In some rounds of the game, potential mechanisms are shut down to parse their relative contribution to the overall effect of fear. We present results from 32 sessions in two different labs showing that in this context fear actually does not affect willingness to participate. This null finding highlights the importance of context, including integral versus incidental emotions and the size of the stakes, in shaping their effects.

Mobilization under threat: An experimental test of opposition party strategies in a repressive regime. 2023. Political Behavior 45(2): 445-468.
– Winner, Best Article Published in Political Behavior in 2023, APSA Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior Section
Article (Open Access) | Appendix | Pre-Analysis Plan | Replication Package | Abstract

Large numbers of people living under authoritarian governments participate in pro-opposition politics despite sometimes significant risks. Increasing amounts of this political participation are taking place and being organized online. Do emotions play a causal role in inducing pro-opposition participation in authoritarian regimes? Can emotions that mobilize participation be spread via social media? Through an experiment carried out by an opposition party in Zimbabwe, I test whether campaign appeals to opposition supporters’ emotions affect their level of political participation in online pro-opposition discussions. I find that across two different issue areas, randomly assigned anger appeals increase participation on average by 0.4 standard deviations more than enthusiasm appeals with the same informational content. In real terms, this represents between 30% and 170% more participation in the groups assigned to the anger appeals across four different measures of participation. There is little evidence that these effects are stronger in areas with less poverty or that have historically been affected by more violence, or when coupled with messages emphasizing personal power. These results suggest that anger appeals that highlight economic grievances can be an important force for mobilizing online political participation in repressive environments.

Anger and support for vigilante justice in Mexico’s drug war. With Omar García-Ponce and Thomas Zeitzoff. 2023. Journal of Peace Research 60(2): 274–290.
– Winner, JPR Best Visualization Award 2023
Article (Open Access) | Appendix | Pre-Analysis Plan | Media: PVG | Abstract

How does exposure to criminal violence shape attitudes towards justice? We argue that outrage after violence increases the demand for punitiveness, even at the expense of the rule of law. We test our theory using three observational and experimental studies based on an original face-to-face survey of 1,200 individuals in Western Mexico, a region affected by organized crime and vigilante violence. We show that individuals exposed to more violence are angrier and more supportive of punitive extrajudicial justice. Second, two experiments show that citizens are more supportive of harsh punishments, and place less value on their legality, for morally outrageous crimes. Third, the innocence of a crime’s victim has a stronger effect on anger and punitiveness than the severity of its violence. Our findings suggest that emotional reactions to criminal violence — particularly against civilians — can lead to cycles of retribution that undermine the rule of law and perpetuate violence.

From principles to practice: Methods for increasing the transparency of research ethics in violent contexts. With Hannah Baron. 2022. Political Science Research & Methods 10: 840-847.
Article (Open Access) | Pre-Print | Replication Package | Abstract

There has been a proliferation of research with human participants in violent contexts over the past 20 years. In contexts of violence, it is particularly important and difficult to adhere to commonly held ethical principles such as beneficence, justice, and respect for persons. This note argues that practices around adhering to ethical principles in violent contexts should be reported more transparently in research outputs, and should be seen as a subset of research methods. We offer practical suggestions and some preliminary empirical evidence from our research on violence in Zimbabwe and Mexico around risk assessments, mitigating the risk of distress and negative psychological outcomes, informed consent, and monitoring the incidence of potential risks.

Social Origins of Dictatorship: Elite social networks and political transitions in Haiti. With Suresh Naidu and James A. Robinson. 2021. American Political Science Review, 115(3): 900-916.
Article (Open Access) | Appendix | Replication Package | Abstract

Existing theories of democratic reversals emphasize that elites mount actions like coups when democracy is particularly threatening to their interests. However, existing theory has been largely silent on the role of elite social networks, which interact with economic incentives and may facilitate anti-democratic collective action. We develop a model where coups generate rents for elites and show that the effort an elite puts into a coup is increasing in their network centrality. We empirically explore the model using an original dataset of Haitian elite networks which we linked to firm-level data. We show that central families were more likely to be accused of participating in the 1991 coup against the democratic Aristide government. We then find that the retail prices of staple goods imported by such elites differentially increase during subsequent periods of non-democracy. Our results suggest that elite social structure is an important factor in democratic reversals.

Reactions to acts of state-sponsored election violence and other forms of repression vary greatly across individuals and over time. This article develops a theory that the psychological characteristic of self-efficacy moderates opposition supporters’ reactions to state-sponsored election violence. I use data from an original survey and in-depth qualitative interviews with opposition supporters in Zimbabwe to illustrate and test this theory. Self-efficacy is a strong predictor of intention to take action in support of the opposition after episodes of state-sponsored election violence and is related to the emotional reactions that opposition supporters have after violent events. Specifically, people who are higher in self-efficacy report that they would feel more anger relative to fear after episodes of state-sponsored election violence. The relationship between self-efficacy and persistence in pro-opposition action after violence is similar in magnitude to variables that the existing literature argues are the most important predictors of dissent in repressive environments, including strength of identification with the opposition and gender. These results provide empirical support for the assumption in many collective action theories that psychological characteristics create variation in dissent in repressive environments. Understanding how individual psychological differences can shape reactions to coercive violence may help explain why forms of repression like state-sponsored election violence have such unpredictable effects on subsequent pro-opposition mobilization.

Many authoritarian regimes use frightening acts of repression to suppress dissent. Theory from psychology suggests that emotions should affect how citizens perceive and process information about repression risk and ultimately whether or not they dissent. I test the effects of emotions on dissent in autocracy by running a lab-in-the-field experiment with 671 opposition supporters in Zimbabwe that randomly assigns some participants to an exercise that induces a mild state of fear, whereas others complete a neutral placebo. The fear treatment significantly reduces hypothetical and behavioral measures of dissent by substantively large amounts. It also increases pessimism about parameters that enter into the dissent decision as well as risk aversion. These results show that emotions interact in important ways with strategic considerations. Fear may be a powerful component of how unpopular autocrats exclude large portions of their populations from mobilizing for regime change.

Fear and citizen coordination against dictatorship. With Abraham Aldama and Mateo Vasquez. 2019. Journal of Theoretical Politics 31(1): 103-125.
Abstract

Despite numerous studies showing that emotions influence political decision making, there is scant literature giving a formal treatment to this phenomenon. This paper formalizes insights about how fear influences participation in risky collective action such as citizen revolt against an autocratic regime. To do so we build a global game and analyze the effects that fear may have on participation through increasing pessimism about the regime’s strength, increasing pessimism about the participation of others in the revolution, and increasing risk aversion. We find that although the impact of the first two effects of fear is a clear reduction in the probability that people will mobilize, the effect that an increase in risk aversion may have is that under some circumstances fear is empowering and increases the probability with which citizens will mobilize. We conclude with a discussion of the conditions in which fear is likely to have such counter-intuitive mobilizing effects.

Varieties of clientelism in Hungarian elections. With Isabela Mares. 2019. Comparative Politics 51(3): 449-480.
Article | Replication Data | Abstract

In elections around the world, candidates seek to influence voters’ choices using a variety of intermediaries and by relying on either positive electoral inducements or coercive strategies. What explains candidates’ choices among different forms of clientelism? When do candidates incentivize voters using positive inducements and when do they choose coercive strategies? This article proposes a new typology of clientelism and tests two families of explanations for why candidates would choose to use state versus non-state brokers, and inducements versus coercion, as private incentives to voters. First, existing theory predicts that political conditions such as incumbency or co-partisanship with the national party should enable the use of public over private brokers and resources. In addition, we conjecture that clientelism carries programmatic signals, such that the choice between inducements and coercion depends on local political conditions. We test our predictions using a post-electoral survey fielded in 2014 in ninety rural Hungarian communities. We find little evidence that local political conditions are related to the choice between state versus non-state brokers, but significant support for the prediction that programmatic signals explain the choice between inducements and coercion.

The core voter’s curse: Clientelistic threats and promises in Hungarian elections. With Isabela Mares. 2018. Comparative Political Studies 51(11): 1441-1471.
Pre-Print | Article | Appendix | Replication Data | Abstract

In elections around the world, voters are influenced not only by positive offers of gifts and favors, but also by the threat of negative sanctions for their individual electoral choices. Pre-electoral entitlements such as jobs, assets, and welfare create expectations of future access that brokers can use as powerful negative inducements at the moment of the vote. We argue that in conditions where ballot secrecy makes it difficult to monitor vote choices, brokers are likely to target core supporters with both pre-electoral entitlements and election-time threats. We refer to this counterintuitive logic as the “core voters’ curse.” We find evidence for this argument using an original household survey of 1,860 Hungarian citizens in 93 rural communities fielded shortly after the 2014 parliamentary election.

Cultivating cooperation with local populations is crucial to peacekeeping effectiveness. Peacekeepers must generate cooperation in order to solicit information about local political actors, social networks and violence in order to overcome the asymmetries of operating in foreign and unfamiliar theaters. Under what conditions do local populations decide to cooperate with peacekeepers? How does exposure to peacekeeping security, relief, or abuse — three of the primary ways that local communities experience peacekeepers — affect the likelihood that local populations will provide information to peacekeepers? Using an original survey of a random sample of residents living in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, Haiti, we show that exposure to security and relief activities improves public opinion and is associated with substantial increases in the willingness to cooperate with peacekeepers whereas exposure to peacekeeping abuse dramatically undermines civilian attitudes and cooperation. Interestingly, while the impact of abuse is larger than that of security and relief activities in explaining beliefs, the impact of security and relief activities outweigh the effect of abuse in explaining cooperative behavior. These findings present an opportunity and challenge for peacekeepers: if public opinion and cooperation are strongly responsive to peacekeeper programming and policy, then peacekeepers must deliver services and prevent abuse in order to solicit the cooperation that they need to achieve their mandates.

Invited Submissions

Buying, expropriating and stealing votes. With Isabela Mares. 2016. Annual Review of Political Science 19: 267-288.
Pre-Print | Article | Abstract

In elections around the world, large numbers of voters are influenced by promises or threats that are contingent on how they vote. Recently, the political science literature has made considerable progress in disaggregating clientelism along two dimensions: first, in recognizing the diversity of actors working as brokers, and second, in conceptualizing and disaggregating types of clientelism based on positive and negative inducements of different forms. In this review, we discuss recent findings explaining variation in the mix of clientelistic strategies across countries, regions, and individuals and identify a few areas for future progress, particularly in explaining variation in targeting of inducements by politicians on different types of voters.

Intergroup conflict and violence. 2025. With Yang Yang Zhou. Chapter in Handbook of Innovations in Political Psychology, pp. 70-98.
Chapter | Abstract

Why do ordinary people participate in risky and aversive acts of intergroup violence? We focus on three explanations in this chapter. First, we describe how ingroup identities, attitudes, and preferences might drive participation in intergroup violence, focusing especially on identity fusion and parochial altruism. Second, we discuss the link between dehumanization and participation in violence. Finally, we consider automatic thinking as a potential individual explanation for participation in violence. Throughout these sections, we highlight examples of four recent innovations. First, recent studies and meta-analyses have begun to bring group-level characteristics back into the political psychology literature on violence. Second, new research has begun taking selection into violence more seriously at various levels. Third, several studies have begun to move beyond post-treatment measures of psychological states and traits to better identify the causes of participation in violence. Finally, there have been advances in methods to adhere to ethical principles when studying violence.

Experiments in and on political institutions. 2024. With Enrico La Viña. Chapter in Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions, pp. 87-103.
Chapter | Abstract

Experiments are a powerful method to test for causal relationships implied by theory and assess whether policy interventions are effective. In the last 15 years, the literature on political institutions has been at the forefront of advances in experimental methods. In this chapter, we review two broad categories of experiments that have been used to study political institutions. First, we discuss experiments designed to measure institutions, including audit and survey experiments. Second, we consider experiments designed to test their effects, including nudging and recruitment experiments, experiments that subject institutions to new conditions, such as increased transparency or information, and experiments that modify institutional rules or introduce new institutions at the local level. We argue that there is currently a significant opportunity for existing experimental designs to be applied to new contexts, and for knowledge to be aggregated across experiments to better understand how the same treatments work in different conditions.

Working Papers

Women’s Group Empowerment Can Increase Political Participation: Evidence from Five Coordinated Field Experiments. With Alexander Coppock, Susan Hyde, Eddy Malesky, Mathias Poertner, and others. Under review.
Abstract

Non-electoral forms of political participation are critical for leaders to respond to citizens’ preferences, yet highly unequal between men and women. This article presents five coordinated field experiments comparing a multifaceted women’s group empowerment intervention designed to reduce group-based psychological constraints on non-electoral political participation with an information-only placebo. On the core behavioral outcomes and parallel survey measures, the meta-analytic results show that the intervention caused positive and significant increases in the level and quality of women’s participation. Behavioral measures of elite responsiveness increased in three studies, and perceptions of elite responsiveness to women’s participation increased in two studies. Effects on potential mechanisms were more varied, but efficacy beliefs, perceived injustice, preference coordination, and procedural knowledge generally increased in the three studies with the largest effects on outcomes. In short, a group-based empowerment intervention that aims to reduce psychological constraints to participation can increase non-electoral political participation by women.

Deterrent or downward spiral? Longitudinal evidence on the effects of extrajudicial violence from Mexico. With Hannah Baron, Haley Daarstad, and Sandra Ley. Under review.
Abstract

Proponents of harsh and extrajudicial violence argue that it is effective at improving safety and order. Critics, on the other hand, suggest that extrajudicial violence is ineffective to deter future harm and instead may exacerbate it. Do extrajudicial violence events improve or further undermine insecurity? We argue that extrajudicial violence exacerbates insecurity by normalizing violence to address conflicts, and only reduces targeted crimes when they are backed by a sustained organization that involves cohesive mechanisms for social control. To test this theory, we use a difference-in-difference design to estimate the effect of extrajudicial violence events on administrative and survey-based measures of crime across Mexican municipalities from 2009-2022. We find that extrajudicial violence on average does not reduce property crime outside of a small number of communities with large indigenous populations. In contrast, they are associated with subsequent increases in homicides, a crime that is not typically targeted. These results suggest that the effectiveness of extrajudicial violence as a form of social control is limited, and that in many cases it exacerbates proponents’ stated goals.

Preying on the poor: The impact of repressive violence on citizen behavior. With Rekai Rusinga.
Draft | Abstract

State repression, or the threat of violence by the state, is used in many countries by unpopular regimes to force citizens to act against their preferences. It is often assumed that repression is effective in shaping citizen behavior; however, there is enormous heterogeneity in how citizens respond both across countries and across individuals. I argue that repression is most effective against the poor, and that this effect is driven by both psychological and physical vulnerability. I test my theory using data from the case of Zimbabwe and two empirical strategies at the constituency and individual level that draw on random variation in economic scarcity and exposure to repressive violence. My results show that repression is more effective in shaping the behavior of citizens living in a state of economic scarcity. This suggests a new channel by which underdevelopment may be linked to authoritarian, non-responsive institutions.

The limits of deliberation: A field experiment on criminal justice preferences in Mexico. With Hannah Baron, Omar Garcia-Ponce, and Thomas Zeitzoff. Funded by the National Science Foundation. Under review.
Working Paper | Appendix | Abstract

Does deliberation reduce support for punitive responses to crime such as lynchings or the death penalty? We conducted a field experiment in Michoacán, Mexico, to test two versions of a deliberation intervention: (1) a standard deliberation focused on sharing information and carefully weighing costs and benefits; and (2) a deliberation where participants were also trained in emotion regulation. Neither form of deliberation reduced support for punitive crime responses — in fact, the emotion regulation-enhanced deliberation may have increased it. Our findings suggest that in high-violence, high-impunity contexts, support for harsh punishments is not driven by unwanted emotional reactions. Instead, citizens find negative emotions to be useful. While we find evidence that citizens overestimate others’ punitiveness, deliberation does not correct these misperceptions. Overall, these findings suggest that deliberation does not moderate criminal justice attitudes in contexts where citizens do not see a viable alternative to severe punishments.

Ongoing Projects

Asking About Violence. With Hannah Baron, Graeme Blair, Abdulrasheed Isah, Sofía Granados-Sotelo, Sandra Ley, Manuel Moscoso, Andres Moya, and Elayne Stecher. Funded by the National Science Foundation and Innovations for Poverty Action.
Abstract

Political violence – including civil war, organized crime, and violent extremism – is an increasingly important driver of human suffering around the world. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 100 million people, or one in every 78 people on earth, was displaced because of violent conflict in 2022.

Social and behavioral science research plays an important role in understanding political violence as well as identifying and testing policies to prevent violence and mitigate its harms. Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of research involving human participants on the topic of violence in the social and behavioral sciences. However, researchers and university ethics boards are understandably concerned that asking participants about their past experiences with violence could lead to distress or retraumatization. Participants in research should not be subjected to undue harm, and should freely consent to participate in research with a clear understanding of what participation entails. Do the costs to participants in such research, including research respondents and interviewers, outweigh the benefits? Do participants regret their decision to participate in research on violence?

The goal of this research project is to: i) generate high-quality, generalizable evidence on the harms, benefits, and regret associated with participating in violence research for both respondents and interviewers; and ii) develop new guidance for researchers across disciplines and other research stakeholders for how to make informed decisions about the potential costs and benefits of research on political violence. To do so, we first conducted a systematic review of the existing evidence on asking about violence. Second, we carried out a multi-site field experiment in Mexico, Nigeria, and Colombia that estimates the causal effects of asking about political violence on research participants. Third, we created a handbook of recommended practices related to ethics in research on violence. This project has implications for how researchers and stakeholders like ethics boards and journal editors assess and maximize beneficence for violence research in the social and behavioral sciences.

A global analysis of the targeting and effects of election violence. With Marika Miner and Mert Bayraktar. Funded by the Hellman Fellowship.
Abstract

According to NELDA data, one in five elections between 1990 and 2015 was characterized by regime use of repression, mostly perpetrated by incumbents, and one in seven elections were followed by protests or riots. As elections have spread around the world since the end of the Cold War, an increasing amount of repression is taking place in the context of elections where the incumbent is unwilling to give up power. This project uses new global data on election violence and electoral outcomes to understand how context affects where election violence occurs, and how it affects electoral outcomes. It complements the growing body of single-country case studies that have added considerably to our understanding of how electoral repression works (and often backfires) in contemporary regimes. It attempts to better accumulate knowledge across cases and add to our understanding of when and where electoral repression is likely to occur.

The causes and effects of lynchings in Mexico. With Hannah Baron, Haley Daarstad and Sandra Ley. Funded by the US MEXUS and Conacyt.
Abstract

Mob-based vigilante violence, commonly called lynchings, is frequent in Mexico and other countries where crime is prevalent and trust in the state is low. This joint research project seeks to fill a gap in our knowledge about lynchings in Mexico. The first goal is descriptive: we will produce a comprehensive, transparent, and verifiable public dataset of mob violence in Mexico between 2009 and 2019 using local media reports. We will also validate the data through in-depth case studies to assess the prevalence of 1) cases of actual lynchings that the local media misses, and 2) reported cases that include false information. The second goal of the project is analytical: we will use the new lynching data to better understand the causes and effects of mob-based vigilante violence. Do lynchings actually lead to reductions in crime at the local level? What predicts where lynchings are most likely to occur? Our fine-grained data, combined with other administrative data on violence, economic shocks, political control, and local state capacity, among other factors, will enable us to provide new insights for both an academic and policy audience.