Gulu Police Station, Uganda 2018
The Comparative Policing (CoP) Lab is an interdisciplinary research lab examining topics of global concern such as policing, political violence, and the political economy of crime.
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
How Coethnic and Gender Biases Affect Citizen-Police Interaction in Fragile and Violent Contexts
We typically treat law and order as a public good, one provided equally, if not necessarily efficiently, to all citizens. Yet in many fragile and conflict-affected states, policing is viewed and experienced as a private good where citizens are treated unequally based on certain characteristics. We argue that co-ethnicity is one of the most important and persistent identities that shapes citizen attitudes and behavior toward police (and vice versa) in these settings. In particular, we propose to examine how coethnic bias shapes the willingness of individuals to cooperate with police in five countries (Afghanistan, Liberia, Iraq, Uganda, and the United States). We propose a common theoretical and methodological platform that draws on a shared battery of survey experiments to measure civilian attitudes, trust, and behavioral intentions indirectly. We also explore how gender and prior exposure to violence shape citizen-police interactions.
TEAM
- Travis Curtice, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Drexel University
- Jason Lyall, Associate Professor; James Wright Chair in Transnational Studies; Director, Political Violence FieldLab at Dartmouth College
- Mara Revkin, Associate Professor of Law, Duke University
- Hilary Matfess, Assistant Professor, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
FUNDING
- Folke Bernadotte Academy (DNR 20-00255)
- SEK 396,000
RELATED RESEARCH
Curtice, Travis B., and Brandon Behlendorf. “Street-level Repression: Protest, Policing, and Dissent in Uganda.” Journal of Conflict Resolution (2020).
Travis B. Curtice 