As governments move to consolidate territory, they increase the state’s presence in areas of limited statehood.  There are at least two ways that this presence may influence the public opinion of those living in such areas: Face-to-face interactions with bureaucrats may improve public opinion of the bureaucracy.  Additionally, interactions with bureaucrats who represent the population could improve public opinion.   I test these two mechanisms using a novel field experiment in rural Liberia. Households in remote parts of Liberia were visited by either male or female police officers, or no police officers at all.  The results from the field experiment show that face-to-face interactions with police officers improved perceptions of police restraint and police effectiveness.  Increases in women’s representation in policing did not improve nor corrode public opinion.  The short-term implication is that as governments move to increase their presence, interactions with bureaucrats shape public perceptions of the state.

Developing capacities to see through a tyrant’s stealth, deception, and lies depends on the capacity to distinguish representation from truth, which, drawing on Republic 10’s account of mimesis, my paper calls mimetic knowledge. Positioned at a third remove from the truth, mimetic representations are false, of course. On the basis of the taxonomy of lies Socrates offers in Republic 2, my paper distinguishes between the tyrant’s lies, which seek to deceive, and mimetic representations, which do not, to bring to appearance the ways in which the Republic positions mimetic knowledge as the key antidote to the lies of the deceiving tyrant. In short, my paper shows that seeing through (remaining unpersuaded by) the tyrant’s lies depends on seeing through (by way of) the falsity of mimetic representation. On this reading, the Republic turns out not to indict mimetic poetry, as is often thought, but rather to bring to light that there can be no anti-tyrannical politics without mimesis. The paper explores the repercussions of this reading for the famous “noble lie” that founds the Republic’s ideal city and the political and social policies enacted and enforced through deception in the name of justice by the ideal city’s philosopher-kings.

Adrienne Lucas is an associate professor of economics at the Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She is a development economist specializing in the economics of education and disease. Her current research focuses on the intergenerational effects of adult HIV/AIDS treatment, the importance of information in school choice decisions and the effect of teacher incentives on student achievement. She has published research on malaria, free primary education, secondary school choice, the return to school quality and early primary school literacy. Prior to joining the University of Delaware, she was an assistant professor of economics at Wellesley College. She received her Ph.D. and A.M. in economics from Brown University and her B.A. in economics from Wesleyan University.