Daniel Zizumbo-Colunga

Welcome!

I am currently a visiting professor at the Division of Political Studies of the Center for Economic Research and Teaching and a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, where my general fields are Comparative Politics and Political Methodology with specializations in Latin American Politics, Political Behavior and Political Psychology.

My dissertation, Taking the Law into Our Hands: Trust, Social Capital and Vigilante Justice focuses on the relation between trust and the emergence of collective anti-criminal action. I propose that citizens’ perception of the trustworthiness of both, law enforcement authorities and their community interact as determinants of this phenomenon. That is, in conditions in which citizens distrust the effective intervention of authorities, as they perceive their community as more trustworthy, they are more likely to engage in collective anti-crime organization. I test this hypothesis using data from in-depth interviews, 42 nationally representative surveys in Latin America, and a combination of attitudinal and behavioral experiments. I defended my dissertation on September 2015 and will be receiving my degree on December of this year.

If you would like to receive an electronic copy of my dissertation please write to: daniel.zizumbo@cide.edu