  Bride kidnapping is a form of forced marriage in which a woman is taken
against her will and coerced into accepting marriage with her captor.
Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan has seen a large increase in the prominence of this
practice alongside a revitalization of traditional values and culture. As part
of this resurgence of Kyrgyz identity and culture, the central government has
formalized the authority of councils of elders called aksakals as an arbitrator
for local dispute resolution -- guided by informal principles of tradition and
cultural norm adherence. Bride kidnapping falls within the domain of aksakal
authority. In this study, I leverage data from a nationally representative
survey and specify a latent class nested logit model of mens' marriage modality
choice to analyze the impacts that aksakal governance has on the decision to
kidnap. Based on value assessment questions on the survey, men are assigned to
a probability distribution over latent class membership. Utility function
parameters for each potential marriage modality are estimated for each latent
class of men. Results suggest that living under aksakal governance makes men 9%
more likely to obtain a wife through bride capture, with men substituting
kidnapping for choice marriage modalities such as elopement and standard love
marriages.
