A Self-defense Network against Terrorism and Crime: Evidence from Peru

Abstract

ABSTRACT According to prevailing evidence, self-enforcing agreements do not scale up. In self-governing societies, small groups are able to provide order and security when the group is small; but when groups are larger, collective action seems to be more efficient if undertaken by state-like institutions. However, an effective provision of national security may result from a bottom-up development of rules and institutions. This paper covers a case in which thousands of peasants built multicommunity partnerships that scaled up to produce public goods with no central direction. The organizational patterns of these peasant partnerships resulted in a vast rural movement that played a decisive role in defeating crime and terrorism in Peru between 1980 and 2000. The intergroup interactions reflected a polycentric order that served to discover the boundaries of the new jurisdictions.