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Vigilante justice challenges the state’s monopoly over the use of violence and as such has come to the attention of a growing body of political scholars. However, still little is known about the circumstances that foster support for citizens circumventing the state to confront crime directly. I argue that citizens’ perceptions of a trusting community, on the one hand, and an untrustworthy law enforcement, on the other, jointly influence their support for this kind of behavior. I test these hypotheses using a lab-in-the-field experiment in Mexico, a case in which the expansion of vigilante organizations has posed a serious challenge to the state. I find that participants are more supportive of a vigilante action when those considering said action are described to be inserted within a trustworthy community. Further-more, I find that this effect is moderated by the described trustworthiness of law enforcement. These results contribute to our understanding of the emergence of vigilantism, and how trust in authorities can moderate the normative expression of social capital.

For about a decade, one of the most influential forces in US anti-immigrant politics was the Minuteman Project. The armed volunteers made headlines patrolling the southern border. What drove their ethno-nationalist politics?Jennifer L. Johnson spent hundreds of hours observing and interviewing Minutemen, hoping to answer that question. She reached surprising conclusions. While the public face of border politics is hypermasculine—men in uniforms, fatigues, and suits—older women were central to the Minutemen. Women mobilized support and took part in border missions. These women compel us to look beyond ideological commitments and material benefits in seeking to understand the appeal of right-wing politics. Johnson argues that the women of the Minutemen were motivated in part by the gendered experience of aging in America. In a society that makes old women irrelevant, aging white women found their place through anti-immigrant activism, which wedded native politics to their concern for the safety of their families. Grandmothers on Guard emphasizes another side of nationalism: the yearning for inclusion. The nation the Minutemen imagined was not only a space of exclusion but also one in which these women could belong.