How do international, armed, humanitarian interventions shape gang violence, and by extension, influence civilian mobility on the ground? Focusing on the U.N. Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission in Haiti (2023–present), we exploit a daily panel of commune-level data on gang violence, using data from ACLED, Haitian press reports, and mobile-phone mobility records, using estimates derived by Flowminder from Digicel call detail records, to trace the impact of five exogenous information shocks on the mission's likelihood and timing. We find that as the intervention appeared more imminent, gangs reduced inter-gang clashes and forged tactical alliances, redirected violence toward the state, and escalated remote attacks on infrastructure. These anticipatory shifts had immediate civilian consequences, as heightening violence reduced both intra- and inter-communal movement, revealing how violence shapes everyday mobility. By integrating high-frequency measures of both violence and movement, this study contributes to research on the consequences of external security governance, showing that the pre-deployment phase of intervention is a politically charged period in which armed actors and civilians adapt in ways that can entrench insecurity before the first foreign boots touch the ground. 

Does legislative representation shape the regional allocation of public funds? While prevailing evidence and legislative bargaining theory support this idea, the relationship may be more complex and vary across nations, as country-specific institutions shape legislative behavior. This paper studies the effect of representation on intergovernmental transfers in Chile, a unitary country with a strong party system and a Congress with limited budgeting power elected in multi-member districts. We first demonstrate that the strong association between political representation and fiscal transfers disappears when controlling for population size. Secondly, we exploit two quasi-natural experiments to provide causal identification. Using exogenous variations in representation, driven by Chile’s authoritarian origin of the electoral system and its recent reform, we find no significant effects on redistribution. Our findings highlight the role of electoral, fiscal, and budgeting institutions in mediating the relationship between representation and redistribution.