Research

Overcoming America’s deep partisan polarization poses a unique challenge: Americans must be able to disagree on policy while nonetheless agreeing on more fundamental democratic principles. We study one model of depolarization—reciprocal group reflection—inspired by marital counseling and implemented by a non-governmental organization, “Braver Angels.” We randomly assigned undergraduate students at four universities either to participate in a Braver Angels workshop or simply to complete three rounds of surveys. The workshops significantly reduced polarization according to explicit and implicit measures. They also increased participants’ willingness to donate to programs aimed at depolarizing political conversations. These effects are consistent across partisan groups, though some dissipate over time. Using qualitative data collected during the workshops, we generate a new theory of depolarization that combines both informational and emotional components such that citizens, moved to empathize with an outgroup, become more likely to internalize new information about outgroup members.

In contexts marked by high violence and widespread impunity, how do citizens articulate and justify their preferences about crime and punishment? What kind of moral logic and reasoning do they employ when discussing punishments? Does support for punitive punishment derive from moralistic and deontological concerns that perpetrators need to be punished because it is right and proper? Or do people support punitive punishments because they feel they are effective? To address this question, we document and analyze stated preferences for punishment in response to crime from 62 in-depth qualitative interviews with individuals affected by violence in the Mexican state of Michoacán. We conduct a quantitative analysis of how different forms of moral justifications are related to preferred punishments for specific crime events, and a qualitative content analysis to investigate possible mechanisms. We find that two types of moral reasoning are more likely to be used to justify punitive violence: (1) consequentialist reasoning which involves weighing the costs and benefits of an action; (2) and reasoning that dehumanizes accused criminals. Deontological justifications about the right or just action, while extremely common, are used fairly equally across arguments for and against punitive violence. Our study sheds light on the diverse moral frames employed to justify the endorsement of punitive violence.

This chapter examines the criminal justice system in Mexico with a focus on the major constitutional reform to criminal procedure in 2008. Part 1 briefly situates the reform by providing background on Mexico’s political, legal, and security context. Part 2 discusses the reform’s de jure impact on the justice system and its de facto implementation. The reform touched every aspect of the criminal justice system, from police to prisons, and many elements of the reform promised to strengthen and democratize criminal justice with the aim of aligning institutional design and practices with principles of democratic governance and the rule of law. However, the reform’s implementation has been uneven and incomplete. Part 3 reviews the factors that helped reform implementation, and those that continue to hinder it. A group of legal practitioners, scholars and activists pushed for the reform, although, unsurprisingly, it has been challenging to advocate for due process and rights of the accused among both elites and the public amidst criminal wars. The forward and backward movement of criminal procedure reform is, we argue, an important part of the liberalizing and “illiberalizing” dynamics of democracy in Mexico. The chapter concludes with the reform’s implications for the quality of democracy in Mexico within the context of ongoing criminal wars, and suggests avenues for future research.