GV4M7      Half Unit
Politics, Crime, and Criminal Justice in Comparative Perspective

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

Familiarity with basic research design and introductory statistics is strongly recommended but not mandatory, and students who have not had research design in the past will still be able to excel in the class.

This course examines the intersection of politics and criminal justice—focusing on both law enforcement and the judiciary—through a comparative lens. While crime and punishment have long been studied in criminology and sociology, political scientists have only recently begun to systematically engage with these issues. This course bridges that gap by analyzing how political structures shape criminal justice institutions and how these institutions, in turn, impact governance, democracy, and social equity. The course explores critical questions such as: Do judges exhibit bias based on race, caste, or gender? Can community policing improve public trust in law enforcement? How do gender or minority hiring quotas in policing affect police legitimacy and crime reporting? To what extent do electoral incentives shape policy responses to crime? The readings draw from a wide range of empirical studies in political science and economics, applying causal inference methods to evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice policies. Topics include access to justice for marginalized communities, policy interventions to deter gender-based violence, and the role of legal institutions in perpetuating or mitigating systemic inequalities. Designed to engage with diverse theoretical perspectives and global case studies, the syllabus incorporates scholarship on legal systems from various regions, including caste-based policing in India, gender-based violence mitigation mechanisms in Europe, and crime control policies in Latin America and Africa. Seminar discussions are structured to encourage critical engagement with these varied viewpoints. By introducing students to methodological advancements in social science with substantive discussions on justice and inequality, this course equips students with the analytical tools to assess real-world policy debates on crime, law enforcement, and the judiciary. Through this comparative and empirical approach, students will develop a deeper understanding of how political institutions shape criminal justice outcomes and which reforms have been most effective in creating fairer, more accountable systems.

20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Essay plan

As a formative assessment, students will be expected to produce an outline for their final essay. This will enable them to gain feedback about their research question and methodology for their final or summative assessment.

Blair, Robert A., Sabrina M. Karim, and Benjamin S. Morse. 2019. “Establishing the Rule of Law in Weak and War-Torn States: Evidence from a Field Experiment with the Liberian National Police.” American Political Science Review 113 (3): 641–57.

Abrams, David S., Marianne Bertrand, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2012. “Do Judges Vary in Their Treatment of Race?” The Journal of Legal Studies 41 (2): 347–83.

Vanden Eynde, Oliver, Patrick M. Kuhn, and Alexander Moradi. 2018. “Trickle-Down Ethnic Politics: Drunk and Absent in the Kenya Police Force (1957–1970).” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 10 (3): 388–417.

Blair, Graeme, Jeremy M. Weinstein, Fotini Christia, Eric Arias, Emile Badran, Robert A. Blair, Ali Cheema, Ahsan Farooqui, Thiemo Fetzer, and Guy Grossman. 2021. “Community Policing Does Not Build Citizen Trust in Police or Reduce Crime in the Global South.” Science 374 (6571).

McCrary, Justin. 2007. “The Effect of Court-Ordered Hiring Quotas on the Composition and Quality of Police.” American Economic Review 97 (1): 318–53.

Essay (100%)

The summative assessment comprises one final take-home essay which will be either (a) an essay on the readings or, alternatively, (b) on an original research topic following discussion with the convenor.