Introduction: The Renewal of Authoritarian Coercion in Democracy

Summary

The chapters in this section probe what drives the institutional persistence of police forces that exercise authoritarian coercion, drawing on empirical evidence from three police forces: the Military Police of São Paulo State (Chapter 3), the Police of Buenos Aires Province (Chapter 4), and the National Police of Colombia (Chapter 5). Notably, while the police forces of Buenos Aires Province and Colombia eventually underwent comprehensive structural reform processes (see Chapter 7), reform was preceded by a prolonged period of “reform deficit” (Weyland 2008), institutional stasis in the face of widespread extrajudicial violence, rampant corruption, and politicized coercion. Considering these cases through a comparative lens thus sheds light on the mechanisms that favor the persistence of authoritarian coercive institutions in otherwise democratic states.