Policing and the Legacies of Wartime State Predation: Evidence from a Survey and Field Experiment in Liberia

• Author: Robert A. Blair,Benjamin S. Morse
• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211013096
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Date: 01 November 2021
• Subject Matter: Special Feature Articles

2021, Vol. 65(10) 1709 –1737

Policing and the

Legacies of Wartime

State Predation:

Evidence from a

Survey and Field

Experiment in Liberia

Robert A. Blair

1

and Benjamin S. Morse

2

Abstract

How does violence during civil war shape citizens’ willingness to trust and rely on

state security providers in the post-conflict period? Can post-conflict security sector

reform restore perceptions of state security forces among victims of wartime state

predation? Using a survey an d field experiment in Liberi a, we show that rebel-

perpetrated violence is strongly positively correlated with trust and reliance on

the police after conflict is over, while state-perpetrated violence is not. Victims of

wartime state predation are, however, more likely to update their priors about the

police in response to positive interactions with newly reformed police officers. We

also show that abuses committed by police officers in the post-conflict period are

negatively correlated with citizens’ perceptions of the police, potentially counter-

acting the positive effects of security sector reform. We corroborate our quanti-

tative findings with detailed qualitative observations of interactions between civilians

and police officers in the field.

1

Department of Political Science, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University,

Providence, RI, USA

2

Social Impact, Arlington, VA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Robert A. Blair, Department of Political Science, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs,

Brown University, 111 Thayer St., Providence, RI 02912, USA.

Email: robert_blair@brown.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

ªThe Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027211013096

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Special Feature Article

1710 Journal of Conflict Resolution 65(10)

Keywords

police, civil wars, state predation, field experiments, security sector reform,

peacebuilding

How does exposure to violence during civ il war shape citiz ens’ attitudes t oward

state security providers—in particular, the police? During periods of conflict, the

police and other state security institutions are often directly implicated in acts of

violence against civilian populations. Do these abuses diminish citizens’ willing-

ness to trust and rely on the police in the post-conflict period, even years after the

fighting stops? Can governments recovering from civil war mitigate the potentially

adverse effects of wartime state predation through post-conflict security sector

reform (SSR)? SSR is a centerpiece of peacebuilding and statebuilding initiatives

around the world. It aims not just to improve police performance, but also to

increase citizens’ trust and reliance on the police. Citizens who trust and rely on

the police should be more willing to obey the law, report crimes, and cooperate in

criminal investigations (Tyler 2006), which, in turn, should increase the efficacy of

post-conflict policing, even where resources are scarce (Blair, Karim, and Morse

2019). But whether SSR can overcome the legacies of wartime state predation

remains very much an open question.

Citizens’ trust and reliance is arguably especially important in post-conflict set-

tings, where the police must compete for citizens’ loyalties with a variety of local

non-state providers of security and other public goods—for example, chiefs (Bald-

win 2015), vigilante groups (Bateson 2013), and warlords (Blair and Kalmanovitz

2016). In post-conflict countries, citizens often view the police as corrupt, biased,

and predatory, and so opt to rely on non-state actors instead. Non-state security

providers can sometimes be more effective than the police (Isser 2011), and state

and non-state actors can sometimes develop symbiotic relationships (Baldwin 2015).

But their coexistence can also undermine police legitimacy, foment jurisdictional

competition, and exacerbate the risk of renewed violence (Sisk and Risley 2005).

Contestation between the police and non-state security providers has hindered

peacebuilding in a variety of settings, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Guatemala, and

Cote d’Ivoire (Isser 2011).

Existing studies reach disp arate conclusions about the impact of conflict on

state/society relations in the long term. Some find that civil war has lasting adverse

effects on citizens’ perceptions of the state (De Juan and Pierskalla 2016; Hutch-

ison and Johnson 2011; Voors and Bulte 2014). Others find the opposite (Bakke

et al. 2013; Blair 2021a; Sacks and Larizza 2012). We suggest that one way to

reconcile these divergent results is to distinguish acts of violence perpetrated by

the state from those perpetrated by rebel groups—something previous studies

generally (and surprisingly) have not done. We theorize that victims of s tate-

perpetrated violence should be less willing to trust and rely on the police in the

2Journal of Conflict Resolution XX(X)