Security is on the upswing; who should get the credit?
Insights from Mexico City Residents
Jessica Zarkin (Claremont McKenna University)
Every three months, the Mexican National Statistics Institute (INEGI) publishes information on public safety perceptions for Mexico’s 96 most populated cities. About three years ago, in July 2022, right after INEGI published this data, the former Mexico City head of government and now president Claudia Sheinbaum, turned to Twitter to share some great news. She tweeted that perceptions of public safety continued to improve in the city thanks to her public safety and policing strategies. Several hours later, borough mayor Santiago Taboada made a similar claim (for context, Mexico City is divided into sixteen boroughs, each with its elected borough mayor). Taboada tweeted that residents of his borough ranked it as one of the safest in the country thanks to his policing model, which he called Blindar BJ or Protect Benito Juarez. For those familiar with Mexico City, Taboada’s tweet does not really make sense and is somewhat puzzling, given that security in the city is provided by the Mexico City police, an entity that was then accountable to Sheinbaum.
Confronted with this instance of elected officials boasting about policy results – even when there is not much to brag about in the case of Taboada – made me think about two questions related to the readers of these tweets: How do city residents decide whom to credit for good policy outcomes? And do credit claims by city officials influence how citizens perceive their performance in office?
To answer these questions, I fielded an original survey with sixteen hundred Mexico City residents to learn how they understand security governance in the city and assign credit between November and December 2023. I chose Mexico City as my study site because the city has witnessed a remarkable decrease in crime since 2019 under former head of government and MORENA party member Claudia Sheinbaum. Mexico City is also the only state in the country where boroughs, akin to municipalities, do not have their own police force. The city has sole structural authority over policing: it oversees the prevention, repression, investigation, and prosecution of crimes across all its boroughs. This means that crime reductions should be attributed to the city government. Finally, constitutional changes introduced in 2016 that converted the DF into Mexico City created the possibility for competition over who should take credit for the future improvements in public safety.
In the survey, I first wanted to understand descriptively who residents credited for the public safety improvements in their borough. I tested the effects of credit claiming on citizen perceptions by running an experiment that randomized credit-claiming statements made by a borough mayor –which, again, is the actor least deserving of credit for improving public safety in the boroughs. I showed them mock news reports where the mayor either claimed credit for reducing robberies in their borough, attributed the reduction to the joint work between the borough and the City government, or subtly credited the Mexico City government.
What did I find? It might be no surprise to anyone that Mexico City residents “are not responsibility experts.” Many respondents have limited knowledge about who is most involved in providing public safety in the city. As Cuajimalpa mayor Adrián Rubalcava noted in a press conference back in 2019, “citizens do not know that security is not the responsibility of mayors.”
Just as citizens do not fully understand who provides public safety, nor do they assign credit according to the city’s police governance structure. Despite the Mexico City government overseeing the prevention, repression, investigation, and prosecution of crimes across all its boroughs, my results show that credit attribution is split down the middle between the city and boroughs. A little over half of respondents credit the city government for improvements in public safety, while the other half credit the boroughs.
So, if credit attribution does not mirror police governance, do individual and contextual characteristics influence how credit is assigned? Figure 1 shows a clear and consistent pattern supporting my theory that partisan beliefs influence how credit for public safety is attributed to rival elected officials in Mexico City. Those who approve of then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), also from MORENA like Sheinbaum, are 29% more likely to credit the city government for perceived safety improvements. And when offered statistics on crime and public safety perception improvements, they are 23% and 27% more likely to credit the city for these improvements. These results make a strong case that even in the face of objective data, people chose to assign credit based on who they support politically.
Figure 1. Views on AMLO and credit attribution
Note: “CDMX contributes:” How much does the Mexico City government contribute to public safety in borough X?; “Borough contributes:” How much does the borough contribute to public safety in borough X?; “Outcome:” Have the government’s security strategies increased or reduced crime in borough X?; “Reduced:” Which authority should be credited for reducing crime in borough X?; “Fiscalía:” According to data from the Fiscalía, robberies in borough X decreased by 30%; who should be attributed for this fall in crime?; “INEGI:” According to data from INEGI, perceptions of public safety in borough X increased by 18%; who should be attributed for this improvement?
My descriptive results also show that the intensity of credit claims made by borough mayors like Taboada positively affects attribution. For example, residents of heavy credit-claiming boroughs are 7% more likely to say that boroughs contribute a lot to public safety. Nonetheless, most of these differences are statistically insignificant, suggesting credit claims might not be effective in improving people’s perceptions.
I confirm this finding in my experimental results. Credit claims have a limited effect on city residents’ beliefs about their elected officials. More than yielding positive returns, in contexts where rival actors can claim credit for policy success, they hinder the reputation of actors from whom credit is taken away. This means that when, for example, Taboada, the first borough mayor I mentioned, shares a tweet claiming credit, people do not think better of him, but his message is effective in reducing the credit they give to the city government. Though I did not have questions in the survey to potentially address why I observe these results, I argue it is due to the strong possibility that credit claims are fighting an uphill battle in settings of high distrust in politicians.
Overall, my analysis and findings have important policy implications and raise important questions about democratic accountability and urban governance. Sadly, they make us question whether good public safety outcomes even matter. From a city government’s perspective, it is somewhat disheartening to think that despite getting public safety right, partisanship can determine whether you can reap the rewards, electoral or otherwise, of doing so.
Jessica Zarkin is an assistant professor at Claremont McKenna College. Her research focuses on the politics of policing and urban security governance in Latin America.