CEDE Seminar - Natalia Pia Guerrero Trinidad

In weak-state environments, behavior depends less on formal rules and more on internalized norms, yet how such norms emerge–and whether informal institutions can cultivate them remains unclear. I provide causal evidence that accountable grassroots institutions can form, internalize, and sustain moral norms that shape long-run behavior. My empirical strategy exploits the staggered emergence of Peru’s Peasant Rounds (1976–1983)–community-run security organizations with participatory and accountable design that promoted moral norms– and combines archival, ethnographic, administrative, survey, and original fieldwork data into a new dataset.

Using a matched difference-in-differences design across cohorts and birth districts, paired with displacement induced by exogenous weather shocks, I show that exposure to the rounds before age 11 shifts rule-following from fear to empathy, fosters more impartial moral judgments, increases respect for others’ rights, and raises trust beyond the in-group. These changes in moral norms translate into meaningful behavioral outcomes: adult arrests and incarceration fall by roughly 14 percent relative to the control-group mean, and insurgent recruitment declines by about 32 percent. I also find substantial evidence that these norm changes persist when individuals relocate, diffuse into previously unexposed host communities, and extend to the next generation. A placebo comparison with self-defense groups lacking accountability shows no comparable effects. Taken together, the results are consistent with a mechanism in which accountable community institutions socialize children and raise the moral cost of wrongdoing, cultivating intrinsic prosocial motivation that travels with individuals over space and time.