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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Policing and the rule of law in weak states : evidence from Liberia

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

How can states with limited resources build citizens' trust in the police? How can they ensure the primacy of the police and courts over customary alternatives in peripheral regions long accustomed to autonomy? In urban areas plagued by high levels of crime and insecurity, how can they reduce reliance on vigilantism and extrajudicial justice? My dissertation explores these questions through a series of three essays on policing in Liberia. The first reports results from a large-scale, randomized control trial evaluation of the Liberian National Police's "Confidence Patrols" community policing program in rural Liberia.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctoral
Department dc:contributor.department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
2019

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Morse, Benjamin Sherman.
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Lily L. Tsai.

Subjects

dc:subject × 1

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.
Language dc:language.iso
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123630
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/123630

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
related terms
citation

Morse, Benjamin Sherman.. Policing and the rule of law in weak states : evidence from Liberia. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123630