Understanding Norm-Based Vigilante Violence

• In Event: Learning about Political Violence through Observational Data

Abstract

Extralegal violence threatens human rights and public order in many societies. These threats are growing especially fast in India, where, against the backdrop of communal tensions at the national level, perceived norm transgressions are increasingly being punished by violent mobs. Since 2014, journalists and activists have documented over 150 extrajudicial murders---often labeled "lynching" by media and local officials---and far more attempted murders of minority community members, for perceived transgressions such as eating or selling beef or pursuing romantic relationships with Hindu women of a dominant caste. In this paper, we contrast this violence type with other widely-studied forms of extralegal violence driven by state weakness or insecurity. Using newly-available data and a continuous treatment Difference-in-Differences design, we show that spatial variation in lynching violence in India is strongly associated with the strength of majoritarian institutions and not, as existing literature suggests, with state weakness. We demonstrate that norm-based attacks are a unique violence phenomenon by examining the purported "causes" of and state responses to paradigmatic cases of lynching in modern India. We conclude by outlining directions for future quantitative research into the causes and prevention of extrajudicial killing, asking, what interventions can decrease support for extralegal violence?

Authors

• Aidan Milliff, Florida State University

• Blair Read