Veto players and gun violence in drug markets: Analysis based on field observations of eighty drug-selling spots on the Westside of Chicago

Purpose

The study analyzed whether the number of drug-selling spots has an impact on shooting incidents in drug markets on the Westside of Chicago.

Methods

A theory of gun violence in drug markets was developed by building on veto players theory, and tested using a series of two-way fixed-effects Poisson regressions. The main variable of interest—drug-selling spots—comes from an original dataset comprised of eighty drug-selling spots identified through covert field observations. Controls included: the average age and average number of drug spot workers at the drug-selling spots, concentrated disadvantage, population, police anti-drug operations, and drug demand.

Findings

In support of the theory, the main statistical models and robustness tests consistently found that the larger the number of drug-selling spots in a given drug market, the higher the number of shooting incidents over time. Only the control for population remained consistently statistically significant across model specifications.

Conclusion

The study contributes to the drug market literature by offering a novel theory of drug market violence, as well as a replicable way for researchers to observe drug market activity without disturbing the natural behaviors of market participants. The operationalization of drug-selling spots as sub-factions of organized criminal groups also provides a novel approach to the study of drug market violence.