Lynching remains a common form of collective punishment for alleged wrongdoers in Latin America, Africa, and Asia today. Unlike other kinds of collective violence, lynching is usually not carried out by standing organizations. How do lynch mobs overcome the high barriers to violent collective action? I argue that they draw on local community ties to compensate for a lack of centralized organization. Lynch mobs benefit from solidarity and peer pressure, which facilitate collective action. The study focuses on Mexico, where lynching is prevalent and often amounts to the collective beating of thieves. Based on original survey data from Mexico City and a novel lynching event dataset covering the whole of Mexico, I find that individuals with more ties in their communities participate more often in lynching, and municipalities with more highly integrated communities have higher lynching rates. As community ties and lynching may be endogenously related, I also examine the posited mechanisms and the causal direction. Findings reveal that municipalities exposed to a recent major earthquake-an event that tends to increase community ties-subsequently experienced increased levels of lynching. Importantly, I find that interpersonal trust is unrelated to lynching, thus showing that different aspects of social capital have diverging consequences for collective violence, with community ties revealing a "dark side."

Keywords: Mexico; collective action; community; lynching; social capital; social ties; trust; violence.

© The Author(s) 2024.

私刑至今仍然是拉丁美洲、非洲和亚洲针对涉嫌犯错者的一种常见的集体惩罚形式。与其他类型的集体暴力不同，私刑通常不是由正式组织实施的。这些私刑团伙是如何克服暴力集体行动的高门槛的？我主张他们利用当地的社区联系来弥补缺乏集中化组织的问题。私刑团伙得益于团结精神和同伴压力，这有助于集体行动的发生。本研究重点关注墨西哥，因为在该国，私刑现象普遍且通常表现为对小偷进行集体殴打。基于来自墨西哥城的原始调查数据以及覆盖整个墨西哥的新颖私刑事件数据库，我发现，在社区联系更多的人更经常参与私刑活动，并且社区更加融合的地方，私刑发生的频率更高。由于社区联系和私刑可能存在内生关系，我还考察了所提出的机制及其因果方向。研究发现表明，那些经历最近重大地震的地区（这种事件往往会增加社区联系）随后会经历更高的私刑水平。重要的是，我发现人际信任与私刑无关，这说明不同方面的社会资本对集体暴力有不同的影响，而社区联系则显示出一种“阴暗面”。

关键词：墨西哥；集体行动；社区；私刑；社会资本；社会关系；信任；暴力。