Do Messengers Matter for Increasing Knowledge about the Law?

• In Event: The Comparative Politics of the Police

Abstract

Large political upheavals, such as civil war, could create confusion about the laws that govern a state. To re-educate the populace, the state may attempt to provide information about the law to its citizens. While there are a number of ways to educate citizens, I argue that messengers with source credibility are most likely to be effective in teaching people about the law. Specifically, I argue that links to the state and the sex of the messenger affect source credibility, and therefore affect individual's understanding of the law. I test these propositions using a field experiment in which I randomized household visits in rural Liberia by male and female police officers. During the visits, the police officers informed the household about four laws. I also conducted a separate survey experiment in rural Liberia in which civilian enumerators provided respondents the same information about the four laws as the police officers. The experimental results suggest that police officers increase knowledge of some laws. I also find modest evidence that police officers' sex affects citizen's knowledge about the law. The survey experiment shows that rural Liberians are less likely to gain knowledge about the law when civilian enumerators provide the information. The results have strong implications for how governments in post-conflict countries educate their citizens about laws.

Author

• Sabrina Karim, Cornell University