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What are the political consequences of militarizing law enforcement? Across the world, law enforcement has become increasingly militarized over the last three decades, with civilian police operating more like armed forces and soldiers replacing civilian police in law enforcement tasks. Scholarly, policy, and journalistic attention has mostly focused on the first type, but has neglected the study of three main areas toward which we seek to contribute: 1) the constabularization of the military—i.e., when the armed forces take on the responsibilities of civilian law enforcement agencies, 2) the extent to which this process has taken place outside of the United States, and 3) its political consequences. Toward this end, we unpack the concept of militarized law enforcement, develop theoretical expectations about its political consequences, take stock of militarization in Latin America, and evaluate whether expectations have played out in the region. We show that the distinction between civilian and military law enforcement typical of democratic regimes has been severely blurred in the region. Further, we argue that the constabularization of the military has had important consequences for the quality of democracy in the region by undermining citizen security, human rights, police reform, and the legal order.

How does the way states finance wars affect public support for conflict? Most existing research has focused on costs as casualties rather than financial burdens, and arguments that do speak to the cost in treasure either minimize potential differences between the two main forms of war finance—debt and taxes—or imply that war taxes do not dent support for war among a populace rallying around the fiscal flag. Using original experiments conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom, we evaluate the relationship between war finance and support for war. We find that how states finance wars has an important effect on support for war and that the gap in support resulting from different modes of war finance holds across the main democracies engaging in conflict, regardless of the type of war or individuals’ party identification. The findings have important implications for theories of democratic accountability in wartime and the conduct of conflict, since borrowing shields the public from the direct costs of war and in turn reduces opposition to it, giving leaders greater latitude in how they carry out war.

Although a growing body of research suggests that the constabularization of the military for domestic policing is counterproductive, this increasingly prevalent policy has nonetheless enjoyed widespread support in the developing world. This study advances our understanding of the consequences of militarization for perceptions of law enforcement: whether visual features shape perceptions of effectiveness, respect for civil liberties, proclivity for corruption and acceptance of militarization in one's own neighborhood. Based on a nationally representative, image-based, conjoint experiment conducted in Mexico, the authors find that military weapons and uniforms enhance perceptions of effectiveness and respect for civil liberties, and that the effect of military uniform becomes greater with increased military presence. The study also finds that gender shapes perceptions of civil liberties and corruption, but detects no effect for skin color. The findings suggest that a central feature of militarization linked to greater violence – military weapons – is paradoxically a key factor explaining favorable attitudes, and that women can play a crucial role in improving perceptions of law enforcement.

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