Policing Insecurity

Abstract

In environments of seemingly intractable conflict, how should we understand the role of state capacity building and security-sector reform in transitions to peace? Prevailing wisdom suggests that a strong state security apparatus mitigates cyclical violence and aids in transitions to predictable, rule-governed behavior. Yet growing attention to police brutality in institutionalized democracies calls this assumption into question. Drawing on a multiyear study of war making and state making in eastern DR Congo, this article interrogates logics of police capacity building, analyzing how and why reform efforts intended to bolster the state’s monopoly on violence frequently fail to curb the unrest they seek to disrupt. I argue that enhancing the coercive capacity of the police can entrench a wartime political order that makes peace more elusive; when police deploy the image of the state toward destabilizing ends they reinforce the institutions of everyday war, undermining the stability a monopoly on violence is intended to build.

Police reform in the aftermath of armed conflict: How militarization and accountability affect police violence

“…As a result, efforts to increase effectiveness increase militarization. Studies outside of conflict have shown that increased militarization is associated with increased police violence (Hills, 2009; Reiner & Newburn, 2007; Mummolo, 2018; Gunderson et al, 2020), but evidence for conflict cases is scant (for an exception see Lake, 2022).…”

“…Post-conflict SSR has focused on strengthening capacity in order to provide the security apparatus with the ability to deter others from violence while exercising selfrestraint (Lake, 2022). This approach typically involves technical components such as increasing training and weaponry, as well as a variety of accountability mechanisms.…”

Voting with Their Guns: An Integrated Framework of How Police Politically Administer Violence

“…This paper makes two main contributions. First, my framework illustrates that, while police always embody "the state on the streets" (Hinton 2006;Lake 2022), their administration of violence does not always align with the preferences of governing politicians-i.e., the elected and appointed officials in the executive branch that oversee the police. 2 Thus, my framework highlights two scenarios relatively under-examined by the literature.…”

Notes from the Editors: Increasing Qualitative Submissions

“…However, since taking over the editorship of the journal, the biggest change has been a jump in the fraction of accepted articles that draw on qualitative methods, which has almost doubled, increasing from 11.7% of acceptances under the previous team to 21.5% under our team. We have published exemplary qualitative articles, such as the 2022 article by Danielle Gilbert (“The Logic of Kidnapping in Civil War: Evidence from Colombia”); Kerry Goettlich’s “The Colonial Origins of Modern Territoriality: Property Surveying in the Thirteen Colonies” (2021); Milli Lake’s “Policing Insecurity” (2022); and Calvin TerBeek’s “‘Clocks Must Always be Turned Back’: Brown v. Board of Education and the Racial Origins of Constitutional Originalism” (2021).…”