Shaping Implementation by Street-Level Bureaucrats

This chapter moves the argument forward by detailing two local protective mechanisms that primarily protect communities through ties to state agents: disrupting operations and reducing targets. Disrupting operations encompasses activities that make it more difficult for state agents to deploy discretionary violence. This intervention ranged in practice from relatively quiet outreach to local police officials to more contentious efforts to provide sanctuary to individuals in grave danger. Efforts at target reduction involve limiting the prevalence and salience of communities susceptible to populist violence (in this case, drug users). In the Philippines, parish-based drug rehabilitation programs, usually in partnership with local state officials, were the most common form of target reduction. After using the parish-based survey to chart the overall distribution of these activities, the authors empirically substantiate their operation through qualitative and quantitative evidence, including parish interviews, experimental evidence from a sample of plausible Philippine police personnel, and survey evidence of ordinary Filipinos.