The Comparative Politics of the Police

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Police officers can disproportionately influence the everyday lives of citizens, yet political scientists have only recently begun to study these “street level bureaucrats.” Our panel contributes to this growing interest by bringing together experimental research on the politics of policing drawn from a variety of diverse comparative settings including Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Post-conflict and democratizing societies often struggle to expand state capacity and implement the rule of law. Through field experiments in Liberia, Karim’s paper identifies the conditions under which police officers inform citizens of these changes. At the same time, considerable local discretion and legacies of authoritarian rule both open the door to police predation and likely increase citizen reluctance to criticize the institution. Grewal uses a large-scale survey experiment of Tunisians to identify both when citizens support the police, and why they might falsify those preferences. Police abuse of human rights can be driven by popular demand for “tough on crime” policies, even when those policies are ineffective or even counterproductive. Through paired experiments in Mexico and Brazil, Córdova and Tiscornia identify why citizens support such policies. Particularly when adopted by populist politicians, these policies can lead to considerable police violence against citizens. Using a series of experiments in the Philippines, where a police-led ``Drug War’’ has killed tens of thousands of citizens, Brooke and Buckley examine if local religious institutions such as the Catholic Church can dissuade officers from discretionary violence. Together, these papers promise important insights into the comparative politics of the police, with broader implications for accountability, human rights, and democratic governance.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Chair

• Ellen M. Lust University of Gothenburg

Discussant

• Graeme Blair UCLA

Individual Presentations

• How Local Religious Institutions Influence Police Violence Against Civilians - David T. Buckley, University of Louisville; Steven Brooke, University of Wisconsin- Madison

• Do Messengers Matter for Increasing Knowledge about the Law? - Sabrina Karim, Cornell University

• Preferences for Policing Practices and Attitudes Towards the Police - Abby B. Cordova, University of Notre Dame; Lucia Tiscornia, Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas

• Torture, Terrorism, and the Police - Sharan Grewal, College of William & Mary