Doing More Harm than Good?: Mexico’s Policy of Leadership Decapitation Against Drug Cartels Open Access
Shepard-Moore, Hannah (Spring 2021)
Abstract
This paper centers on the effect of the policy of leadership removal as used against drug trafficking organizations in Mexico on levels of municipal violence throughout the country. Two possible causal links between leadership decapitation and violence are explored: intra-cartel conflict spurred by competition for promotion, and inter-cartel violence sparked by turf wars against the targeted rival perceived to be asymmetrically weakened after a leadership removal. Simple regression analysis provides a positive and statistically significant correlation between leadership decapitation and drug-trafficking related homicides, but more complex regressions fail to produce such results. A two-way fixed effects regression analysis demonstrates a positive and statistically insignificant correlation, and difference-in-differences analysis shows a negative, statistically insignificant relationship. This study then concludes that there exists no statistical evidence for leadership decapitation as a ‘smoking gun’ in the rising homicides experienced by Mexico in its drug war. Nonetheless, the policy clearly fails to curtail already alarming upward trends in homicide rates. Furthermore, preliminary qualitative analysis conducted in this study suggests that a weak but positive correlation between leadership removals and drug-trafficking related homicides may be more representative of the true relationship given the possible causal paths of violence post-decapitation.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 2
Definitions and Operationalization 5
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 11
Law Enforcement’s Effect on Criminal Activity 11
Leadership Decapitation: When and Why? 13
Leadership Decapitation in Terrorist & Insurgent Groups 16
Leadership Decapitation in DTOs 21
Possible Threats to Inference 32
CHAPTER 3: THEORY AND HYPOTHESES 33
CHAPTER 4: DATA AND METHODS 38
Data Collection: Leadership Decapitations 38
Data Exploration 41
Data Collection: Drug-Related Homicides 44
Method of Analysis 45
CHAPTER 5: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 50
Ordinary Least Squares Regression 50
Two-Way Fixed Effects 53
Difference-in-Differences 55
Discussion 59
CHAPTER 6: SECONDARY HYPOTHESES AND CASE STUDY 62
Why Case Study? 62
Causal Paths for the Primary Hypothesis 66
Causal Paths for the Secondary Hypotheses 75
Discussion 89
CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION 90
REFERENCES 96
Non-Print Sources 102
APPENDICES 103
About this Honors Thesis
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Primary PDF
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Doing More Harm than Good?: Mexico’s Policy of Leadership Decapitation Against Drug Cartels () | 2021-04-14 00:23:29 -0400 |
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Supplemental Files
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Original Data: Decapitation Cases 2013-18 (Original data collected from Mexican news sources documenting cases of leadership decapitation of DTOs from 2013-2018.) | 2021-04-14 00:23:36 -0400 |
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