6 - “New Police,” Same as the Old Police

Summary

Chapter 6 elucidates why structural reform has remained off the table in São Paulo since Brazil’s transition to democracy. It focuses on three specific events since the 1980s, instances when reform seemed imminent but ultimately fell short. Two instances were selected due to being repeatedly identified in interviews as especially salient cases of egregious police violence that led to calls for reform; the third instance, meanwhile, was an ultimately failed effort by a sitting governor to enact police reform. Chapter 6 presents a comparative sequential analysis of these sets of events to demonstrate how the state’s Military Police exerted pressure to limit policy options and how fragmented preferences and the absence of political competition led political leaders to conclude that structural police reforms would not be electorally advantageous. Considering the cases as sequences of events that fail to bring about comprehensive structural reforms helps to elucidate the police’s remarkable continuity in São Paulo State. This comparative sequential analysis demonstrates how long-term institutional persistence has been driven by the absence of an electoral counterweight to the structural power of the police due to enduring fragmentation of societal preferences and weak political competition in the state.