Bride Kidnapping and Informal Governance Institutions

Abstract

Bride kidnapping is a form of forced marriage in which a woman is taken against her will and coerced into accepting marriage with her captor. Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan has seen a large increase in the prominence of this practice alongside a revitalization of traditional values and culture. As part of this resurgence of Kyrgyz identity and culture, the central government has formalized the authority of councils of elders called aksakals as an arbitrator for local dispute resolution -- guided by informal principles of tradition and cultural norm adherence. Bride kidnapping falls within the domain of aksakal authority. In this study, I leverage data from a nationally representative survey and specify a latent class nested logit model of mens' marriage modality choice to analyze the impacts that aksakal governance has on the decision to kidnap. Based on value assessment questions on the survey, men are assigned to a probability distribution over latent class membership. Utility function parameters for each potential marriage modality are estimated for each latent class of men. Results suggest that living under aksakal governance makes men 9% more likely to obtain a wife through bride capture, with men substituting kidnapping for choice marriage modalities such as elopement and standard love marriages.