Local democracy and state power: Immigrant inclusion or marginalization?

The recent literature on policing suggests that these goals are in fundamental tension: More policing reduces crime, but at great costs to disadvantaged communities' health and well-being. Here, we propose to explore how a greater police presence combined with greater local accountability affects social dynamics. Specifically, we will study the effects of recent expansions of municipal police departments in France using newly difitized party manifestos and administrative data. We will focus not only on crime and arrests, but also migration, educational and employment outcomes, particularly among disadvantaged members of the population. Our main overarching hypotheses are (1) that intrusive and aggressive policing leads to a broad disengagement of immigrants from society, but (2) htat not all municipal police forces represent intrusive and aggressive policing.