Out of Order

International actors have championed the rule of law as a fundamental principal for national progress among developing states. But for the post-colonial democracies of the Caribbean region, the concept of the rule of law engenders questions of whether citizens and state actors have sufficient understanding and acceptance of the new institutions of justice developed to protect the basic rights of citizens functioning effectively or, as evidenced by the high levels of crime and violence in the region, are other rules more significant factors in how social order is negotiated. Do citizens in the region even expect democratic accountability on issues of safety and justice? Are there instances where incentives continue to persist in the postcolonial space for criminal justice institutions to deliver safety and justice in a prejudicial manner? And if the conventional means of promoting social order are dysfunctional, what other mechanisms might be available to support collective goals of peace and safety? This dissertation presents three essays in response to the aforementioned questions. Chapter 1 addresses the weaknesses of prior studies examining the relationship between criminal victimization and democratic accountability and provides evidence that victims of violent crime do intend to hold incumbents accountable at the polls. Violent victimization evokes anger that spurs voters to seek redress for the traumatic experience by engaging in protest voting that goes against the interests of the incumbent government. Protest voting offers expressive benefits that helps restore within victims of violent crime a sense of self-determination and autonomy by voting against the under-performing incumbent government. At the same time, the expressive value of protest voting is conditional on the degree to which the voter is politically affiliated with the incumbent government. Victims of violence who support the incumbent government are more likely to feel anger towards the incumbent government, having a sense of being betrayed by those they expect to protect their interests. Accordingly, the added sense of psychological loss will increase their use of protest voting. I test this theory with data from the 2014 wave of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) AmericasBarometer survey. Using the intended vote choices of 11,242 registered voters in five Caribbean countries and a multinomial logistic regression model I will demonstrate that, after controlling for alternative explanations for the focus relationship, partisan identity and violent victimization interact to influence prospective vote choices. Chapter 2 turns to the question of dysfunctions in law enforcement by exploring three explanations for the use of lethal force by Jamaican police. By adapting the social control framework to the postcolonial context and accounting for institutional factors that facilitate partisan policing, I show that the police’s use of lethal force extends beyond conventional considerations of reactive crime control to also include maintenance of social and political order. The presence of economic elites in a given area exerts pressure on local police officers to safeguard their lives and property, leading to the use of lethal force as a strong and clear deterrent. In addition, incumbent government actors may also receive political benefits from promoting the use of lethal force against the support bases of their political competition. I provide indicative findings that the presence of these two motivating factors can produce an interactive effect on the number of police fatal shootings that may largely be determined by the institutional incentives involved. This study uses original data produced from the official administrative database of the Jamaican police on fatal shooting incidents. Specifically, the scope of the study will include the 1,745 police fatal shootings that occurred annually from 2002 to 2010 and sorts them according to the electoral constituencies where they occurred to demonstrate the influence of political dynamics. Using a negative binomial regression model, I will show that the economic context and political affiliations of where a citizen resides influences the use of lethal force by the Jamaican police even after accounting for factors such as the level of serious crimes and state capacity for coercive and beneficent controls. Chapter 3 explores the potential for conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs to promote pro-social behavior among beneficiaries. I will show that design elements of CCT programs provide recipients with the resources and motivation to engage in collective problem solving that otherwise similar non-recipients would not possess. In so doing CCT programs reduce the cost for recipients to engage in collective action, making civic engagement such as voting in general elections more likely. At the same time, the positive effect of CCT recipient status on civic engagement is provisional- depending on the recipient’s ability to leverage the socialization experience based on other cognitive resources such as civic knowledge. Low levels of civic knowledge among recipients may even serve to diminish the civic engagement of CCT recipients while higher levels will spur on such engagement. I test my theory using aggregate- and individual-level data on Jamaica’s national CCT program, the Program for Advancement through Health and Education (PATH). Jamaica makes for a good case study as the prominence of clientelism in the country’s political culture will help offer a stern test of whether programmatic features play a role even when political partisanship is a salient matter. Jamaica also typifies the global trend of declining trends in electoral participation as shown in Figure 3.1, allowing my findings to potentially extend to a wider international context. By combining both macro- and micro-level analyses and employing dual measures of program participation, I will demonstrate that CCT programs do produce policy feedbacks that are substantive and nuanced.