What is the relationship between governance and security? What impact, if any, does state presence have on civilians’ perceptions of security in militarized conflict zones? The existing literature suggests that government control over a restive region means order and security for the local population. We propose a ‘mental mapping’ framework for the relationship between state presence and security perceptions in militarized ethnic peripheries, drawing on prior research in urban planning about how attitudes are shaped by living environments. We use a survey experiment to measure the effect of the physical presence of government institutions on civilians’ sense of how safe they imagine their city to be, demonstrating a mental mapping mechanism between the physical presence of the state and perceptions of safety. We show that residents who encounter images of state institutions on a map of Srinagar – the largest city and summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India – are more likely to perceive their city as less secure than those who encounter a map without images or a placebo map. This experimental evidence implies that government security presence is not always perceived as security by the civilian population.

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国家存在对安全心理映射的影响：来自克什米尔实验的证据

治理与安全之间的关系是什么？国家存在对军事冲突地区平民的安全感有何影响（如果有的话）？现有文献表明，政府对动荡地区的控制意味着当地居民的秩序和安全。我们借鉴了城市规划中关于生活环境如何塑造态度的先前研究，提出了一个关于国家存在与军事化民族边缘地区安全观念之间关系的“心理绘图”框架。我们使用一项调查实验来衡量政府机构的实际存在对平民对其城市安全感的影响，展示了国家的实际存在与安全感知之间的心理映射机制。我们发现，与那些遇到没有图像或安慰剂的地图的居民相比，在斯利那加（印度查谟和克什米尔最大的城市和夏季首都）地图上看到国家机构图像的居民更有可能认为他们的城市不太安全地图。这一实验证据表明，政府的安全存在并不总是被平民视为安全。