The Political Economy of Punishment

Publications

Pfeffer, Elizabeth Gordon (2024). “Conceptualizing and Measuring ‘Punitiveness’ in Contemporary Advanced Democracies.” Regulation & Governance 18 (2), 573-589. doi 10.1111/rego.12533 [Available Open Access.]

This article addresses a key political question regarding the relationship between states and their citizens: how harsh are judicial systems in their punishment of those who deviate from the law? Punitiveness is a fraught concept in the existing literature and robust measurement methods maximizing conceptual complexity are lacking. Here I develop a functional approach to punitiveness through a revised conceptualization and operationalization of this key variable while cautioning against the solitary use of incarceration rates to measure state intention. Punitiveness is conceptually disaggregated into three main components: (1) a commitment to punishment over rehabilitation, (2) the degree of harshness of response to crime (i.e., a longer sentence in prison), and (3) the lack of a logical progression of punishment based on the severity of crime committed or intent of the offender. These axes are further disaggregated into measurable indicators to build a novel index of punitiveness (P-Index) from the legal codes of 26 countries. Ultimately, this rules-as-data measure offers researchers purchase on the puzzling variation in punitiveness across contexts, which persists regardless of current and historical crime levels, offering particular utility for supply-side political-economic explanations.

*Replication Materials and Data for the P-Index are available at the Harvard Dataverse.

Pfeffer, Elizabeth Gordon (Winter 2022-2023). “Reading and Coding History in the Study of Crime and Punishment.” CLIO: Newsletter of Politics and History, an organized section of the American Political Science Association, 32 (1), 15-16.

 Electoral Incentives for Criminal Punishment - *Job Market Paper

Even as crime rates have fallen in recent decades, incarceration rates have not followed the same trajectory in all cases. There is substantial variation between countries as well within countries over time. Why are some countries more punitive than others in handling crime within their borders? I develop a political economy driven approach to examining the institutional structures behind different punishment equilibria. I argue that criminal justice system punitiveness is in part a function of the constraints imposed on legislators by electoral (proportional representation vs. majoritarian) institutions. These constraints present different incentives for politicians to design policies that shift or absorb the costs of crime in connection with the extent of welfare state targeting to the electorate. These decisions, all in the context of broader country-specific factors such as ethnic and racial heterogeneity, form a kind of resource trade-off between prison budgets and rehabilitative or proactive social spending. I test these theoretical claims through cross-country quantitative analysis using the Manifesto Project Dataset complemented by qualitative case studies of Finland and the United Kingdom that employ elite interviews and process tracing. The findings have crucial implications as both populist politicians campaigning on issues of "law and order" and their opponents who seek reform on levels both national and local surge in popularity with electorates worldwide.

*Available here.

 Safe and Sound? Evaluating Citizens’ Interacting Demands for Punishment and Welfare

When and why do citizens prefer the government to pursue punishment in response to crime? In this paper, I establish a preference formation mechanism for punitiveness and examine how perceptions of social phenomena such as crime, inequality and austerity catalyze this attitude. I argue that fear of crime victimization predicts punitive attitudes while fears of contact with the carceral system and income loss predict preferences for a more rehabilitative approach. These risks should intersect to make income have an increasing effect on punitiveness. Further, I expect individuals to develop their preferences based on whether they perceive being the target or beneficiary of policies such as punishment and welfare. The hypotheses are tested within the case of the United Kingdom through an original YouGov survey fielded in April 2019. Results of the analysis support many of stated hypotheses and the relevance of policy visibility to personal cost-benefit analyses. Opportunities for cross-class coalitions are found to emerge when a) the anti-welfare rich align with the poor who do not perceive state benefits reaching them to support punishment or b) the anti-punishment poor align with the rich who perceive higher positive externalities from welfare when living in high crime and inequality regions.

*Available upon request. See this Monkey Cage post for a preview of results:

• Pfeffer, Elle. (2019, December 6). “Boris Johnson wants to get tougher on crime. Voters might reward him for it.” The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/06/boris-johnson-wants-get-tougher-crime-voters-might-reward-him-it/. 

Capacity Contests for Criminal Punishment: A Framework of State Strength and Federalism in the American Political Economy

Within the context of the United States, scholars still debate the role of decentralization in the study of policy diffusion given the role of states as “laboratories of democracy”. What remains less considered, however, is how the exercise of state power intersects between the federal and state levels. This paper considers the domain of criminal punishment as a unique area within the governance of the US where multi-level contests of state capacity operate at both formal and informal levels. These include both a legal structure that defines crime as federal or state depending on certain criteria as well as the street-level bureaucracies which operate as decentralized loci of power. There are also cases to examine where a shift in domain may appear in spite of the typical operations of federalism — for example, federal consent decrees on local police departments or state prisons, or US border patrol by state police (i.e. Texas). Are either of such cases perversions of U.S. federalism in pursuit of a new kind of punitive control, or merely continuations of business as usual? This paper thus investigates the condition of US federalism through the lens of how the criminal justice functions today as a manifestation of contested state power dynamics.

Other work in progress

• “How Parties Price: The Democratic Governance of Drug Spending and Innovation” (with Edward Seol and Ian Shapiro)

• "Access to Justice in the Digital Economy"

• "Experiencing Diversion: Perceptions of Justice among Court-Involved Individuals" (with JJ Dega)

• "Three Faces of the State: Protection, Punishment and Investment" (with Jane Gingrich)