Chris Blattman: belief

Transcript context

…A lot of particular states will let the groups be. I think you’re going to see a mix. You see that everywhere. You see that in any country, including the United States. Different municipal governments and different state governments agree to be conciliatory to their criminal gangs to different degrees. One of the challenges is that tends to be democratically unpopular, and that’s certainly been true in Colombia. My first read is that might be what’s true, at least nationally, in Mexico. So, as soon as you have transitions of government, I think there’s just a risk every X years of that conciliatory nature and that peace between the state and the gang falling apart. What about Wagner’s law of catch-up hypothesis, that for a country of its per capita income, the Mexican government is relatively small, and that if the share of government in GDP went up, say, four percentage points, that over time, they would just have more resources and beat the gangs, and Mexico would still be violent but, more or less, converge to where a lot of other countries are at? Is it that simple? They just need more money?…

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