What are the Effects of Large-scale Violence on Social and Institutional Trust? Using the Civil War Literature to Understand the Case of Mexico, 2006–2012

Abstract

What is the relationship between drug violence and political attitudes? In this article, we test the relationship between violence and trust using both individual and municipality data for Mexico from 2006 to 12. Using multilevel analysis, we find no support for the thesis that individual experiences with criminal violence drives trust, nor do we find a relationship between levels of violence at the municipio level and trust. However, we do find that perceived threats to individual security leads to less social and institutional trust, but this is independent of personal experience and whether the individual resides in violent communities.

Notes

1. Two important exceptions are the recent work of Blanco (2013) Schedler (2015) and Ley (2015).

2. Unfortunately, the variables related to neighbourhood effects are excluded from the analysis, because these questions were not included in the LAPOP 2006 wave.