Policed to Distrust: Colonial Coercion and Contemporary Attitudes toward State Security 

This paper examines how colonial-era security institutions shape contemporary attitudes toward state security providers. I argue that exposure to colonial police stations has persistent negative effects on trust in the modern state security apparatus, operating primarily through intergenerational attitudinal transmission rather than through the physical persistence of colonial infrastructure. I test this argument in Namibia, combining all geo-coded rounds of the Afrobarometer survey with newly digitized data on colonial police station locations. Using a geographic regression discontinuity design around the colonial Police Line-which separated areas under direct from indirect rule-and a complementary intensive-margin analysis of proximity to colonial police stations, I find that areas exposed to direct colonial rule exhibit systematically lower trust in the police and military today. Further tests rule out physical infrastructure persistence as the key mechanism, pointing instead to durable attitudinal legacies transmitted across generations. I also find a counterintuitive pattern among historically targeted ethnic groups (Herero and Nama): those living close to former colonial police stations exhibit relatively higher trust in the contemporary state. Lastly, I discuss and test the implications of these findings as they relate to observed security provision outcomes in the present day. These findings contribute to literatures on historical persistence, colonial policing, and the determinants of security legitimacy in states where the monopoly on violence is contested.