When crafting law enforcement policy, drug-producing — or “source” — countries must adjudicate between domestic preferences and international pressure to curb supply. What are the political consequences of prioritizing supply-reduction? I analyze illicit-crop eradication in Mexico, where the army routinely incinerates fields to ensure continued US aid. Small, marginalized crop-growing communities regard eradication as an unjust federal policy. However, the importance of aid makes the policy inelastic. Because eradication policy is never on the electoral menu, I theorize that eradication decreases trust in the government and reduces turnout instead of engendering electoral backlash. To test, I create a novel eradication measure at the electoral precinct level using data from 50,000 satellite-detected fields and NASA’s satellite-collected fire data. Using variation in location and timing, I show that eradication depresses turnout in federal elections and trust in the army. By divorcing domestic electoral politics from policy, US security aid may undermine accountability.
