Who Thinks They’re Above the Law?: A Selection from Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World (2020)

“Representing 149 countries, diplomats to the United Nations in New York City were immune from having to pay parking tickets until November 2002. With diplomatic immunity, they could park anywhere, double-park, and even block driveways, business entrances, and narrow Manhattan streets without having to pay fines. The effect of this immunity was big: between November 1997 and the end of 2002, UN diplomatic missions accumulated over 150,000 unpaid parking tickets totaling about $18 million in fines.

While bad for New Yorkers, this situation created a natural experiment for two economists, Ted Miguel and Ray Fisman. Because nearly 90 percent of UN missions are within one mile of the UN complex, most diplomats faced the same crowded streets, rainy days, and snowy weather. This allowed Ted and Ray to compare the accumulation of parking tickets for diplomats from different countries.

The differences were big. During the five years leading up to the end of immunity in 2002, diplomats from the UK, Sweden, Canada, Australia, and a few other countries got a total of zero tickets. Meanwhile, diplomats from Egypt, Chad, and Bulgaria, among other countries, got the most tickets, accumulating over 100 for each member of their respective diplomatic delegations. Looking across nations, the higher the international corruption index for a delegation’s home country, the more tickets those delegations accumulated. The relationship between corruption back home and parking behavior in Manhattan holds independent of the size of a country’s UN mission, the income of its diplomats, the type of violation (e.g., double-parking), and the time of day.

In 2002, diplomatic immunity for parking violations ended and the New York Police Department clamped down, stripping the diplomatic license plates from vehicles that had accumulated more than three parking violations. The rate of violations among diplomats plummeted. Nevertheless, despite the new enforcement and overall much lower violation rates, the diplomats from the most corrupt countries still got the most parking tickets.

Based on real-world data, this study suggests that the delegations from diverse countries brought certain psychological tendencies or motivations with them from home that manifested in their parking behavior, especially when there was no threat of external sanctions.”—Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (2020)