Evaluating the impact of state-building efforts on illegal behavior: The case of Colombia

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Developing evidence-based lessons for how to address the stabilization challenge in conflict-affected state requires consistently measuring outcomes aero a range of locations, ome of which receive a given program and ome which do not. Traditional approaches rely upon admini trative data on conflict events, which offer limited insights into many important outcome or upon extremely expensiv household survey . We demonstrate a novel approach to assessing relevant outcomes in the context of a largescale policy initiative in Colombia, the Politica acional de Con olidaci6n y Reconstruccion Territorial (The National Policy for Territorial Consolidation and Reconstruction -P RT), which aimed to "con olidate" (or build) state presence in region of the country where it has not had full control. While we fiud no strong evideuce Lhal PNCRT hatlsignificaol positive impacts on ke y outcomes, we were able to validate the data collections approach and developed a number of important le son learned for future effort.

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