On July 8, 2024, Eduardo Moncada, the Claire Tow Associate Professor of Political Science, was awarded a research grant by the National Science Foundation’s Law and Science Program and the Security and Preparedness Program. The grant, extending from January 2025 to December 2027, provides $230,928 in funding for his project, “Criminal Competition and Collective Political Mobilization in Comparative Perspective.” Moncada, alongside several Barnard College students, will conduct fieldwork and collect data on organized crime in Mexico City to understand how the presence of organized criminal groups impacts residents’ ability to access basic public goods.
This project seeks to understand when and how criminal organizations influence community-level political mobilization for public goods in socioeconomically marginalized areas. Moncada, alongside his student research assistants, will examine if differences in competition among criminal groups affect communities’ ability and motivation to demand public goods from the government. Using a multimethod research design, the study tests the broader applicability of initial findings from a pilot study. The researchers will gather and analyze primary and secondary quantitative data at the neighborhood level, including information from government archives and media sources; original survey data from a random sample of neighborhoods with different levels of criminal competition and political mobilization; and qualitative data gathered through fieldwork in selected communities.