DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17754287
title: Constitutional Enforcement from Abroad: How Diaspora Economic Leverage Can Force Property Rights Reform in Captured States

description: Description:

This dataset provides comprehensive empirical documentation of development assistance failure in Haiti, demonstrating that money without coercive credibility cannot build institutions in captured states.

The analysis examines 186 World Bank projects (2000-2025) totaling 4.26 billion dollars in commitments, with particular focus on the period 2013-2020 when Haiti's institutional quality collapsed by 66% (IPRI score: 3.40→1.17) despite 1.4 billion dollars in World Bank spending including 94 million dollars explicitly targeted at governance reform.

Key Findings:

Pure governance/institutional reform: 249.5 million dollars across 8 projects (5.9% of total commitments)

During institutional collapse period (2013-2020): 1.4 billion dollars total spending, 94 million dollars governance spending, 66% institutional degradation—empirical proof that resources without enforcement mechanisms achieve nothing

Flagship case study: "Infrastructure & Institutions Emergency Recovery" (100 million dollars, 2010-2018) operated throughout entire collapse period with zero measurable institutional improvement

Post-earthquake governance abandonment (2010-2016): Zero governance spending despite optimal reform window

Haiti ranks 134/135 globally in property rights (0.72/10); Dominican Republic scores 6× higher (4.32/10) on same island

Diaspora remittances (4.2 billion dollars) exceed government budget (2.5 billion dollars) by 168%

Game theory demonstrates 5.29 billion dollars payoff differential favoring diaspora-enforced reforms

Dataset Contents:

IPRI-2007-2025 data: International Property Rights Index panel data for 135 countries across 19 years

Project List: Complete World Bank project database with 3-tier categorization distinguishing pure governance reform from sectoral capacity building

Haiti_All_Projects_Categorized.csv: All 186 projects with categorization

Tier1_Pure_Governance_Projects.csv: The 8 pure governance projects

Haiti_Yearly_Analysis.csv: Temporal analysis with yearly breakdowns (2000-2025)

Haiti_Summary_Statistics.csv: Aggregate statistics by period

Haiti_Governance_Analysis_Complete.png: Visualization of spending patterns vs. institutional collapse

DIASPORA.ipynb and AID.ipynb: Complete analysis code (Python/Jupyter) for full replication

ReadMe.txt: Detailed replication instructions

Methodology:

The analysis uses IPRI panel data to document Haiti's property rights collapse, establishes the Dominican Republic as a natural counterfactual, categorizes all World Bank spending by governance intensity, models game-theoretic payoffs for diaspora remittance conditioning, and projects reform impacts. All visualizations are publication-quality (300 DPI). Code requires Python 3.8+ with standard data science libraries (pandas, numpy, matplotlib, seaborn). Runtime: approximately 30 seconds.

Theoretical Contribution:

This empirical foundation supports the theoretical argument that constitutional enforcement in captured states requires external leverage mechanisms—specifically, diaspora economic power—rather than traditional development assistance which lacks credible coercion capacity. The research advances "constitutional agency theory," theorizing diaspora as creditor-principals who can enforce constitutional compliance through economic leverage when domestic institutions are captured. The findings have implications for 29 remittance-dependent countries globally, affecting over 500 million people.

Citation:

LaTortue, P., & Brown, S. (2025). Constitutional Enforcement from Abroad: How Diaspora Economic Leverage Can Force Property Rights Reform in Captured States. [Manuscript submitted for publication].

Data citation: International Property Rights Alliance. (2025). International Property Rights Index 2025. Retrieved from https://internationalpropertyrightsindex.org/

Contact:

Scott Brown (Contact person) University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras scott.brown@upr.edu