Controlling Bureaucracies in Weak Institutional Contexts: The Politics of

Police Autonomy

Hernán Flom

Argentine National Ministry of Security – National University of Tres de Febrero,

Buenos Aires

Abstract: Political scientists seldom study the police and its relations with politicians,
despite the fundamental role of the police in the modern state. Police forces’ autonomy
from their political superiors should be problematized rather than assumed, especially in
contexts of weak formal institutions. Autonomy is the degree to which the police can
control their internal governance and external operations without political supervision.
While bureaucratic autonomy is generally considered positive in developed democracies,
it can result in serious malfeasance in contexts of institutional weakness, including
systematic corruption and human rights violations. Thus, political incumbents have great
incentives to reduce police autonomy, although they may do so through different means
and for various purposes. While some politicians seek to reform and professionalize
police forces in line with the rule of law, others aspire to politicize the police to
appropriate its rents from corruption. This paper argues that political competition
determines how and when elected politicians can reduce police autonomy. I show that
lack of rotation in office (low political turnover) increases politicians’ control of the
police, while levels of fragmentation influence whether politicians seek to professionalize
or politicize the force. I illustrate this theory with a subnational comparison of Rio de
Janeiro (Brazil) and Santa Fe (Argentina), relying on 80 interviews with police and
politicians. This paper seeks not only to provide a fuller understanding of police–
government relations, generally neglected by the existing literature on police reform, but
also to show how politics influences bureaucratic autonomy and performance in weakly
institutionalized democracies.

1
 Controlling Bureaucracies in Weak Institutional Contexts: The Politics of

Police Autonomy

I. Police Autonomy in Weak Institutional Contexts

Police supposedly perform the basic function of the modern state: maintaining the

monopoly on legitimate violence. However, in most democracies with weak formal

institutions,1 police routinely engage in selective, arbitrary and unequal enforcement of the

rule of law, including systematic human rights violations and pervasive corruption.2 At the

same time, while formally subordinate to governing politicians, police forces can elude,

distort or confront incumbents’ directives, sometimes even threatening the stability of the

democratic regime. Finally, politicians in transitional democracies may employ the police

for ends contrary to the rule of law, including rent extraction from criminal activities and

repression of political dissidents. Therefore, police forces’ adherence to the rule of law and

their acquiescence to governing politicians in contexts of weak formal institutions should

be problematized rather than assumed.

This paper provides a theory to explain police autonomy from elected politicians.

Autonomy refers to the degree to which police manage their internal governance and

external operations without significant political supervision or intervention.3 Many police

forces with high autonomy are prone to systematic abuse of force and corruption, in part

due to entrenched practices carried over from periods of authoritarianism. On the other

hand, extreme curtailing of police autonomy by politicians is also problematic for

democracy. Incumbents may seek to capture police rents from crime to fund their political

machines or fill their personal coffers, furthering clientelism and disrupting democratic

2
competition. 4 Politicized police forces may also repress the government’s political and

societal opponents, restricting democratic contestation.5

This paper explains when and how politicians reduce police autonomy in

developing democracies with weak formal institutions. Elected officials may reduce police

autonomy through different means and for varying purposes. While some incumbents may

attempt to professionalize the police to align them with the rule of law and promote citizen

security, others may aspire to politicize the police to appropriate its rents from criminal

activities or repress political opponents. Of course, elected politicians might fail in either

endeavor. Additionally, politicians may curtail police autonomy through formal legislation

or via informal practices, such as the selection or protection of officers who provide them

with rents from crime. Police may, in turn, resist political encroachment through formal

protests or informal measures, including the intimidation of elected officials.

Political scientists have mostly neglected the various linkages between police and

governing politicians. An exception is the literature on police reform, which offers

differing explanations for its implementation (or lack thereof) in post-transition

democracies. 6 Some scholars propose that police reforms have floundered for political
7 8
motives, including partisan turnover, disputes across government tiers, weak

commitment to reform by politicians or police,9 or politicians and bureaucrats seeking to

avoid blame for violent crimes.10 Others focus on societal factors, such as social movement

or private sector activism 11 and mobilized scandals following police malfeasance, 12

especially to explain the relatively few successful reform attempts. However, this literature

does not address the full set of police–government relations, including when and how

politicians can reduce police autonomy without reform.13 Furthermore, while the literature

3
mostly centers on changes in formal legislation, I also explore how politicians may reduce

police autonomy by informally appropriating police rents from crime.

In this paper, I propose a theory to explain the various links between police and

their political superiors. I argue that political turnover and fragmentation determine when

and how politicians reduce police autonomy in developing democracies. Political turnover

refers to the alternation between different parties or factions in executive office with each

electoral cycle. Political fragmentation refers to the dispersal of power between different

parties or factions during a given incumbent’s term, either in the cabinet or the legislature.

Low turnover reduces police autonomy because political initiatives to control the police

are more likely to persist over time. Meanwhile, fragmentation affects how politicians seek

to control the police, namely whether they set out to appropriate or restrict police

corruption.

I illustrate this theory through a within-case and cross-case comparison of the

subnational states of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Santa Fe (Argentina) since

democratization in the 1980s. These subnational governments emerged from authoritarian

regimes with similar pressing needs to reform historically autonomous, violent, corrupt

police forces. However, they subsequently followed opposing trajectories, according to the

political turnover and fragmentation their respective administrations encountered.

I rely primarily on 80 interviews with police, politicians and other state and civil

society actors, and use process tracing to examine within-case variation in both subnational

districts. This qualitative data provides crucial evidence to distinguish outcomes and reveal

mechanisms in an obscure area; the informal relations between governments and police.

4
 Scholars of comparative political economy tend to regard bureaucratic autonomy

as crucial for economic development and state capacity.14 This argument is, however, more

appropriate for some contexts than others. In developed democracies, bureaucracies are

more likely to meet Weberian standards of professionalism, such as meritocratic selection,

tenure security, and rule-based evaluation. In these contexts, bureaucracies’ reputation for

expertise and innovation enables them to forge autonomy from their political masters.15 In

contrast, bureaucracies in developing democracies often exhibit the opposite traits, police

forces being an illustrative example. Police officers seldom face rigorous selection, training

or promotion procedures.16 Additionally, officers’ meager wages and lack of equipment—

from bulletproof vests to functioning vehicles—often incite corruption, from petty bribes

for overlooking misdemeanors to hefty sums for protecting organized crime. Furthermore,

legacies matter: Police forces emerged from post-authoritarian transitions without ever

having been responsive to democratically elected politicians. Police did not need to forge

their autonomy but rather to defend it. Elected officials in developing democracies thus

have strong incentives to reduce police autonomy. Given the historical and present vices

of police, political intervention can be necessary to professionalize the force. While police

autonomy might be desirable in the long run, in the short term it can hinder democratic

consolidation.

The following section explains how political turnover and fragmentation influence

police autonomy. Section 3 outlines the research design. Section 4 illustrates this argument

through the cases of Rio de Janeiro and Santa Fe. Finally, Section 5 discusses the broader

implications for bureaucratic autonomy in developing democracies.

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 II. The Politics of Police Autonomy

Police autonomy refers to the police forces’ capacity to exercise control over their internal

governance and external operations without significant political supervision. Police, while

not entirely insulated from politicians, have potentially different interests and preferences

and relative freedom to pursue these goals.17 The main stakeholders of police autonomy

are commanders and high-ranking officers, who in addition to being in direct

communication with elected officials, define and enforce organizational norms and are

more likely to profit from police corruption. Meanwhile, their decisions are likely to impact

the behavior and perceptions of their subordinates and street-level cops.18

This paper posits that politicians may reduce police autonomy through formal or

informal means. Formal instruments include legal changes to modify police procedures

such as recruitment, training, promotion, discipline and removal, often placing them under

political supervision. 19 Politicians can also reduce police autonomy by designing and

supervising crime prevention strategies and tactics; for instance, setting performance goals

for police, selecting neighborhoods for community policing initiatives, or supervising

militarized interventions.

However, politicians may also control the police through informal means, without

changes in the law or reformist initiatives. Two key mechanisms are police selection and

protection. Politicians may resort to widespread purges or individual appointments,

promotions, transfers and displacements to remove dissidents and promote loyalists. These

changes might either promote or restrict police corruption, according to which commanders

are appointed and how they are supervised. More unequivocally, politicians may also

protect corrupt police officers from disciplinary sanctions or judicial prosecution, quashing

6
these investigations at different stages. These political decisions mold police expectations,

and structure police behavior in subsequent interactions.

These two avenues highlight the different motivations politicians may have to

reduce police autonomy. While some incumbents promote democratic reform, and seek to

professionalize the police, others eschew reform and politicize the force. In either case,

police autonomy with respect to the government is curtailed, but the implications for citizen

security and democracy are clearly different. Given that the police aim to preserve or

increase their autonomy, police commanders and officers will comply with political

incumbents only under specific conditions, which, I argue, relate to political turnover and

fragmentation.

Politicians and Police: Motivations and Preferences

Given politicians’ main motivation to win elections to keep or attain higher office,

police forces can contribute to incumbents’ electoral ambitions in at least two ways. First,

when police manage to reduce crime, the incumbent can claim credit for law and order in

her jurisdiction. Second, police can supply rents from numerous rackets, ranging from

illegal gambling to drug trafficking, to finance politicians’ electoral machines or enrich

their personal fortunes. This practice is common in weak institutional contexts—e.g.

several Latin American countries, Russia, South Africa, and India20, where political parties

rely heavily on informal and illicit sources of finance.21

Meanwhile, police, especially commanders and high-ranking officers, are primarily

driven by tenure security and career advancement. In weak institutional contexts, indicators

of police performance such as clearance rates and citizen satisfaction are less relevant for

officers’ career prospects than political favors, often traded for material goods. Police

7
commanders thus have an incentive to supply rents to political patrons to keep their

positions or get promotions. These rents typically flow up the chain of command: mid-

level officers and street cops deliver illicitly obtained revenues to their superiors to obtain

a desired transfer, paid leave, or lighter disciplinary sanctions for misconduct, while also

supplementing their meager salaries and obsolete equipment.

These incentives may place police commanders at odds with political incumbents.

On the one hand, reformist politicians may curtail police commanders’ capacity to manage

internal procedures; for instance, empowering other actors to decide on police promotions

or shutting down commanders’ rackets. On the other hand, rent-seeking politicians can

strive to appropriate a share of illicit revenues that commanders would rather keep for

themselves. Police commanders are more likely to give up a larger share of rents when

politicians can influence their career trajectories and protect them from investigation and,

conversely, withhold rents from incumbents deemed as non-credible protectors.

As with bureaucracies in general, politicians thus face a dilemma as to whether and

how to restrain police autonomy. 22 Some incumbents may seek to professionalize the

police through democratizing reforms to reduce crime or improve citizen confidence in the

police. However, while these initiatives entail uncertain, long-term benefits, they carry

certain, short-term costs. Police can resist reforms by dragging their feet, threatening

politicians or exploiting their underworld connections to increase crime and spur a public

outcry for tougher security policies.

Alternatively, politicians might sideline reform, politicize the police and informally

appropriate its rents from crime. This poses a different dilemma. On the one hand, these

rents might bolster politicians’ electoral machines, supplying an advantage in upcoming

8
contests. On the other hand, police may withhold their contribution, renege to control crime

or be exposed in corruption scandals, which may provoke protests or congressional or

23
judicial inquiries against the incumbent and threaten her electoral prospects.

Furthermore, politicians from the opposition may also seek police rents, yet they have little

incentive to ensure order and safety in the incumbent’s district. Therefore, while several

actors might reap the benefits of police corruption, only the incumbent incurs the cost of

higher crime. Under such circumstances, incumbents might opt to restrict police autonomy

to reduce agency losses and preserve their electoral chances. In short, politicians may seek

to reduce police autonomy through formal and informal means, according to their

motivations, with different degrees of success, according to the political competition they

face.

Turnover, Fragmentation and Police Autonomy

I argue that political competition, both over time (turnover) and between parties or

factions (fragmentation), shapes police autonomy. While low turnover is necessary for

politicians to control the police, high fragmentation is also required to professionalize the

force and restrict police corruption. Meanwhile, the combination of low turnover and low

fragmentation allows incumbents to politicize the police and capture its rents from crime.

Finally, high turnover increases police autonomy, regardless of political fragmentation (see

Table 1).

Table 1. The impact of turnover and fragmentation on police autonomy in weak

institutional contexts

Turnover Fragmentation

9
 High Low

High High police autonomy Temporary reduction of

autonomy

Low Low police autonomy Low police autonomy

(Professionalization) (Politicization)

Source: Author.

Political turnover refers to whether the same party or faction remains in power at

the executive level from one electoral term to the next. 24 High turnover; i.e. electoral

rotation, increases police autonomy via two mechanisms. First, it undermines policy

stability. When a new party takes power, incumbents are likely to change security policies,

staff and police commanders to increase their control over the force, signal their differences

from the preceding administration and satisfy their electorate and activists. These changes

generate tensions between commanders with different political allegiances and foster

dissent within the force, leading officers to resist the incumbent’s encroachment on their

autonomy.

Second, electoral alternation carries transition costs. When a new administration

arrives, relationships between governments and the police start afresh, and coordination is

harder than with entrenched incumbents, obstructing policy implementation.25 Before new

incumbents can acquire the expertise necessary to manage the police, there might be

changes in staff, leadership or policy orientation. Given the expectation that current

incumbents will soon be out of office, police commanders have weaker incentives to

10
comply with the government. Thus, under high turnover, politicians are mostly unable to

reduce police autonomy.

Political fragmentation refers to the dispersal of power during a given term.

Fragmentation may manifest in the executive or legislative arenas. In the former,

fragmentation increases when cabinets are made up of various parties or factions. In the

latter, fragmentation is greater in cases of divided government or weak party discipline.

Heterogeneous cabinets often lack policy coherence, which erodes police incentives to

cooperate with gubernatorial decisions. Meanwhile, higher legislative fragmentation can

obstruct the enactment and implementation of reforms because it gives the police more

potential allies to resist such initiatives. Finally, high fragmentation may motivate the

police to supply rents to the incumbent’s rivals, who may have greater future influence on

their career trajectories.

In a context of high turnover, low fragmentation is insufficient to reduce police

autonomy. While incumbents may benefit from legislative majorities to advance reform or

exploit their concentrated power to appropriate police rents, these initiatives are unlikely

to persist. When incumbents switch, a different party or faction is likely to erode or reverse

their predecessors’ reforms. Commanders may also renegotiate informal agreements with

the new administration and renege on their initial contribution. High turnover thus

increases police autonomy, regardless of fragmentation.

In contrast, low turnover decreases police autonomy through two mechanisms.

First, it increases policy stability. Police reforms are more likely to stick since incumbents

are less likely to change policies implemented by themselves or their own party. Second,

police commanders are more inclined to perceive entrenched incumbents as “the only game

11
in town” and comply with their decisions. When commanders expect that the incumbent—

or her party or faction—will remain in power, they will seek to gain favor with her to ensure

their job security or advancement. In short, low turnover determines when politicians to

reduce police autonomy, while political fragmentation influences how they do so.

With low turnover and high fragmentation, governing politicians are more likely to

professionalize the police and restrict its rent extraction. This can occur for one of two

reasons, depending on the inclination of the opposition. First, stronger rent-seeking

political rivals might want to appropriate these illicit revenues for themselves. Incumbents

may perceive this as a threat not only to their own rent capture but also to their capacity to

maintain order, as dispersed protection pacts undermine peacekeeping agreements with

criminal actors and exacerbate conflict. 26 Second, a stronger reformist opposition can

expose corruption schemes that jeopardize the administration. Opposition politicians may

denounce the incumbent in the legislature, the media or the courts, and weaken her chances

in the next election. A stronger opposition might also exercise greater ex ante control of

police corruption through congressional committees, oversight offices or other institutions.

In other words, incumbents are unable to ensure their police allies protection from

prosecution. Greater fragmentation implies de-concentrated power (as well as a credible

threat of losing it); this tends to preclude incumbents from monopolizing patronage,27 graft

or, in this case, police rents from crime.

By contrast, entrenched parties with low fragmentation have greater incentives and

opportunities to politicize the police and appropriate its rents from crime. First, political

incumbents are subject to weaker horizontal accountability. Legislative proposals from

opposition parties to keep police and incumbents in check are less likely to pass.

12
Accountability offices—if there are any—might be in the hands of party activists and exist

only in name. Second, police commanders have fewer incentives to make deals with

politicians of rival parties or factions, as these cannot grant credible protection to officers

involved in rent extraction or influence officers’ career prospects. Overall, parties with low

turnover and low fragmentation can “politicize the state, capture resources, […] and

privilege themselves unchallenged,” including in terms of how they control the police.28

To summarize, low turnover is necessary to reduce police autonomy in weak

institutional contexts, where changes in administration typically lead to serial policy

replacement. 29 Meanwhile, under low turnover, high fragmentation motivates political

incumbents to restrict police rent extraction while low fragmentation provides an

opportunity to appropriate such rents.

III. Research Design

I illustrate this theory through a within-case analysis of the variation in police autonomy in

two subnational states in Argentina and Brazil: Santa Fe and Rio de Janeiro. Using

interviews and other qualitative data, I conducted process tracing to examine the within-

case variation in each subnational unit.30 At the same time, performing this analysis in more

than one case provides “analytically general insights,” as similar mechanisms apply in

different contexts.31

The cases of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Santa Fe (Argentina) are representative of

the variation in police–government relations in the weakly institutionalized democracies of

Latin America. While both countries have federal and state-level police forces, I restrict

my analysis to the latter, which formally report to the governor and are responsible for the

lion’s share of street patrolling and criminal investigations that can potentially lead to

13
situations of corruption or use of lethal force against supposed criminals. Police forces in

both subnational districts entered democracy marred by pervasive involvement in

organized criminal activities and human rights abuses during the preceding authoritarian

regimes.32 Over time, however, these cases exhibited substantial within-case variation and

opposite trajectories in terms of police autonomy. Rio de Janeiro’s governments were

initially unable to either reform the police or centrally appropriate its rents due to high

turnover and fragmentation. However, with decreasing turnover since 2006, incumbents

managed to implement substantive formal policy changes in the police, while high

fragmentation compelled them to restrict police rent extraction. In Santa Fe, in contrast,

low turnover and fragmentation enabled successive Peronist administrations to sideline

reform and centralize police rents during the initial decades following democratization,

while increasing competition since the late 1990s spawned reform cycles, derailed

covenants between police and politicians, and increased police autonomy (see Table 2).

Table 2. Within and cross-case variation on independent and dependent variables

Turnover Fragmentation Police autonomy
Rio de Janeiro I (1982– High High High
2006)
Rio de Janeiro II (2006– Low High Low
2015) (Professionalization)
Santa Fe I (1983–1997) Low Low Low (Politicization)
Santa Fe II (1997–2015) High High High
Source: Author.

My findings are primarily based on 40 semi-structured interviews in each

subnational district.33 I interviewed former and current appointed government officials in

the security department, elected state and municipal legislators from different parties and

14
high-ranking police officers. I targeted current and former security secretaries or ministers

from different administrations, as well as legislators from the main opposition parties who

participated in the public security commission. Since police officers are generally banned

from speaking with outsiders without authorization from their superiors, I obtained initial

access through previous contacts—politicians, scholars or members of NGOs—and then

used a snowball method to contact subsequent interviewees. I also contacted police union

representatives who then introduced me to other officers. To increase representativeness

and control for respondent bias, I reached out to police commanders from different

territorial precincts, unions or political alignments. I triangulated these interviews with

qualitative evidence on police–government relations and quantitative data on police lethal

violence obtained from newspaper archives, government reports, NGO briefs, and

secondary literature. Using this data, I conducted process tracing to establish how police

autonomy varies over time and to showcase the mechanisms that connect its variation to

changes in political competition.

IV. Police Autonomy in Rio de Janeiro and Santa Fe

Rio de Janeiro I: Fleeting Administrations, Untouchable Police (1982–2006)

In Rio de Janeiro, several state governments attempted to reform the state military police

(PM), particularly to restrict its use of lethal force. 34 However, high turnover and high

fragmentation prevented most administrations from implementing such changes. Between

1982 and 2006, no party managed to remain in power from one term to the next (see table

3). 35 Additionally, these governments lacked legislative majorities: since 1982, no

incumbent party obtained more than thirty-five percent of seats in the state legislature (see

Figure 1 in Appendix).36 Therefore, they often included coalitions of strange bedfellows,

15
which generated policy incoherence or immobility. Consequently, most reform attempts

perished before the end of the administration that promoted them.

Table 3. State executive elections in Rio de Janeiro (1982-2014)

Election Governor Governor’s Governor’s vote share
Year Party (Margin of victory, %)
1982 Leonel Brizola PDT 34.2 (3.6)
1986 Wellington Moreira Franco PMDB 49.4 (13.5)
1990 Leonel Brizola PDT 61 (43.2)
1994 Marcello Alencar PSDB 37.2 (12.2)
1998 Anthony Garotinho/ PDT 46.9 (16)
Benedita da Silva
2002 Rosinha Garotinho PSB 51.3 (26.9)
2006 Sergio Cabral PMDB 41.4 (3.7)
2010 Sergio Cabral/ Luiz Pezão* PMDB 66.1 (45.4)
2014 Luiz Pezão PMDB 40 (11)
Source: Author, from Supreme Electoral Tribunal (Tribunal Supremo Eleitoral, TSE).

Marking the end of authoritarianism, populist candidate Leonel Brizola (PDT,

Democratic Workers’ Party) won the 1982 gubernatorial election and promised to create a

police force respectful of human rights, especially of the poor. 37 Brizola, along with

reformist Military Police commander Colonel Magno Nazareth Cerqueira, removed the

Military Police from control of the army and instituted a new training module regulating

police use of force.38 The governor also eliminated promotions based on bravura (bravery),

which rewarded police for confirmed kills, and restricted police from entering favelas

(slums) to hunt down criminals.

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 However, both Brizola and Cerqueira faced intense opposition from politicians and

the police. Brizola lacked a legislative majority and needed to form a governing coalition

with state deputies from conservative parties, who then criticized the government’s “soft

on crime” approach, challenged the reform and supported police when they protested

against the administration.39

Meanwhile, dissent within the Military Police hindered Cerqueira from

implementing his community policing approach. According to a former Captain of the

Military Police elite squad (BOPE), “Cerqueira had a visionary proposal but […] it was a

vision outside what the police wanted: there was a lot of resistance.”40 Police officers even

fought reform by allowing crimes to occur or intentionally engaging in lethal violence to

destabilize the government.41 Ultimately, electoral turnover terminated Brizola’s reform.

His successor as governor, Wellington Moreira Franco (PMDB, 1986–1990), promised to

“end criminal violence within six months” in his campaign, and once in office, reversed

Brizola’s policies and “let the police loose to reclaim the favelas”, which increased lethal

interventions by the police.42

After a new reform attempt by Brizola during his second gubernatorial period

(1990–1994), turnover in the 1994 election triggered another major shift in security policy.

The new governor, Marcello Alencar of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira

(PSDB, Brazilian Social Democratic Party)43, instituted a policy known as Faroeste—Wild

West—which provided a bonus for “fearless” police actions, including killing individuals

during confrontation.44 Police killings increased by sixty-two percent during Alencar’s first

year in office and accounted for nearly one of every ten homicides in the city of Rio.45

17
 The election of Anthony Garotinho, a charismatic politician from the PDT, in 1998

sparked the third police reform cycle of this period.46 During his first months in office,

Garotinho’s undersecretary of security, anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares, transformed

Civil Police stations to make them accessible to all citizens and installed a community

policing program in three favelas in the Southern Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro.47

However, the reform did not endure due to high political fragmentation within the

administration. The Security cabinet was split between progressive intellectuals like

Soares—backed by the PT (Workers’ Party)—and hardliners who defended the status quo

of police autonomy. Soares claimed that the police allowed and even carried out homicides

to destabilize the administration and accused Garotinho of halting the reform so as not to

endanger his bid for the presidency.48 Garotinho fired Soares and broke his alliance with

the PT shortly after, before resigning to run for president in April 2001. While Garotinho’s

vice-governor, PT politician Benedita da Silva, promoted various reformist initiatives,

these ended abruptly with the election of Rossangela ‘Rosinha’ Barros Matheus de

Oliveira, Garotinho’s wife, in 2002, and Garotinho’s takeover as Secretary of Security a

year later.

High turnover and fragmentation not only derailed police reforms but also

obstructed governing politicians’ informal attempts to capture police rents from crime.

During this period, police corruption was massive: in 1994, an Army report and Rio’s own

Security Secretary stated that between 70 and 90 percent of the Military and Civil Police

were corrupt.49 Several politicians, especially the Garotinhos,50 attempted to capture police

rents to finance their political machines, but failed due to high political fragmentation.51

Illustrating these fragmented linkages between politicians and the police, a former Military

18
Police commander stressed that governors Garotinho and Rosinha brokered police

appointments with state legislators and local mayors, which partnered the police with

multiple principals with whom to conduct illicit rackets.52 In short, after multiple botched

attempts at reform, Rio de Janeiro’s police still displayed high atomistic corruption, extra-

legal violence and inefficacy in controlling crime, as evidenced by the high homicide rates

in the state during this period, which peaked at sixty per 100,000 in the early 1990s.

Rio de Janeiro II: Party Entrenchment, High Fragmentation, and Police

Professionalization (2007–2015)

Just as high turnover and high fragmentation increased police autonomy during this

first period, low turnover decreased it afterwards. Starting in 2006, the PMDB won three

consecutive gubernatorial elections. This partisan entrenchment enabled the

implementation of Police Pacification Units (UPPs), police-led occupations to displace

drug trafficking gangs in several favelas in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, in

preparation for the 2014 Soccer World Cup and 2016 Olympics to be held in the city.

The UPP program increased political control of the police force’s external

operations and internal governance in at least three ways. First, it changed how the police

intervened in favelas. While police units previously invaded these neighborhoods without

political authorization, Governor Cabral and his Secretary of Security, former Federal

Police officer José Beltrame, planned and directed UPP occupations, announcing them

beforehand and allowing drug traffickers to leave the favela to avoid unnecessary

bloodshed. 53

Second, the program modified police training and appointment procedures. All PM

recruits were trained in community policing, conflict mediation, and human rights. They

19
were also assigned first to UPPs before being transferred to standard Military Police

battalions, “to avoid contamination from corrupt officers in these police stations”.54

Third, the government changed the incentives for police officers to use lethal force.

Contra Alencar’s Faroeste policy, the administration rewarded police for achieving fewer

civilian casualties and monitored police officers’ actions through body and vehicle

cameras. As a municipal guard told me: “Before, the police had a certain liberty because

nothing was recorded. Today, when they enter a community, they are more careful in

respecting the residents’ human rights in case they make a complaint and you end up with

an administrative process.”55 An indication of the UPP’s initial success was the dramatic

decrease in lethal police interventions, from 1330 in 2007 to 400 in 2013.56

Just as partisan turnover impeded the implementation of several previous reforms,

partisan continuity since 2006 ensured policy stability. While the government had installed

twelve UPPs by the end of Cabral’s first term (December 2010), this number had grown to

thirty-eight by the end of 2014. Whereas Brizola and Garotinho’s community policing

projects had dwindled with the end of their administrations—or even before—the UPP

program has persisted for almost a decade.

The PMDB’s entrenchment also preserved Cabral’s security staff. José Mariano

Beltrame, the Secretary of Public Security, remained in his post for ten years (2006–2016),

while the average tenure of his ten predecessors between 1995 and 2006 was less than

fifteen months. Moreover, Beltrame outlasted five different Military Police commanders

and four Civil Police chiefs and even survived a protest by several PM colonels who

demanded his resignation in December 2007. Following this crisis, there were no more

major police rebellions. As the leader of the 2007 protest told me: “After us, no one in the

20
Military Police said ‘no’ to the government.”57 Another Military Police colonel told me:

“The police are an organ of the executive. When the governor decides he will concentrate

all the staff in the UPP, what is the PM Commander going to do? He has to obey; if not,

he’s out.”58 The contrast between these statements and the police insubordination during

Brizola’s two terms shows that police have stronger incentives to comply when facing

stronger, entrenched incumbents.

While decreasing turnover enabled police autonomy to be reduced during the

PMDB administration, the persistence of high fragmentation in Rio de Janeiro motivated

the government to sever the financial linkages between police and other politicians. For

example, a former PM Commander stated in our interview that Cabral did not get involved

in police appointments, unlike Garotinho, who bargained for appointments with state

deputies and mayors from the urban periphery. 59 While police corruption undoubtedly

remains high, the government has arrested and dismissed several officials caught in

corruption schemes, including PM Commanders and PC Chiefs, the top officers in their

respective forces. 60 Despite the PMDB’s involvement in major corruption scandals,

including the Lava Jato, their top state politicians have not been denounced in connection

with police corruption or militia protection rackets.

Although the UPP is not a comprehensive police reform, it represents the most

important and effective effort to date by state governments in Rio de Janeiro to reduce

police autonomy and professionalize the police. This outcome would not have been

possible without the policy stability and police compliance wrought by the PMDB’s

entrenchment in power since 2006. At the same time, the highly fragmented political

21
scenario motivated the government to restrict corrupt police linkages with other politicians

and prevented it from politicizing the police for its own private benefit.

This within-case analysis allows controlling for different alternative explanations,

among them partisanship, individual leadership, federal assistance, and global events.

Governors from both progressive (Brizola; Garotinho, at first) and conservative (Moreira

Franco, Alencar, Rosinha) administrations failed to reduce police autonomy. Individual

leadership is not sufficient either. Brizola, Cerqueira and Soares, among others, were as

committed to police reform as Beltrame and Cabral, if not more. Nonetheless, they

encountered greater political competition during their terms and their policies were

radically reversed when they left office (if not before). While federal government

resources, such as monetary transfers and army troops, undoubtedly aided the

implementation of the Pacification program since 2008, the federal government had also

intervened in Rio during the mid-1990s, at the end of Brizola’s second term, without any

meaningful effect. Finally, the fact that Rio de Janeiro hosted major international events—

the World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympics—certainly motivated the government to

implement a new security program to reduce criminal violence in the city. Nonetheless,

other administrations also had a political and social mandate to curtail violence and

invested vast resources in efforts to control the police yet failed to do so. It also does not

explain why the government implemented changes that affected the entire police

organization rather than just those units assigned to favelas with UPPs or the gradual

increase in police compliance. Without the political conditions necessary to implement the

UPPs, this initiative could hardly have had the impact it did, at least in the short term.

Santa Fe I: Peronist Hegemony and Police Politicization, 1983–1997

22
 Santa Fe displays the opposite trajectory to that of Rio de Janeiro. Following

democratization, the Partido Justicialista (PJ, or Peronist Party) sustained control of the

province—low turnover and low fragmentation—enabling it to reduce police autonomy

through politicization, centralizing police rents from corruption. However, increasing

turnover and fragmentation since the late 1990s, first among Peronist factions and then

with a new political coalition in power (the Progressive Front, headed by the Socialist

Party), hindered the implementation of reforms, destabilized informal agreements between

the government and the police, and increased police autonomy.

Between 1983 and 2007, the PJ governed the province and held a practically

uninterrupted majority in both legislative chambers (see Table 4 below and Figure 2 in

Appendix).61

Table 4. State executive elections in Santa Fe, 1983–2015

Election Governor Party/ Governor’s vote share Election under
Year Coalition (Margin of victory, %) Ley de Lemas
1983 José M. Vernet PJ 41.4 (1.1) No
1987 Víctor Reviglio PJ 44.1 (16.1) No
1991 Carlos Reutemann PJ 46.8 (6.3) Yes**
1995 Jorge Obeid PJ 50.7 (3.4) Yes**
1999 Carlos PJ 57.6 (16.2) Yes
Reutemann*
2003 Jorge Obeid* PJ 51 (5.8) Yes**
2007 Hermes Binner* PS-FPCS 52.7 (10.7) No
2011 Antonio Bonfatti PS-FPCS 39.7 (3.6) No
Source: Author, based on Andy Tow Election Blog.
*: new governor is from a different party or faction than predecessor; i.e. turnover.
**: indicates that the elected governor was not the most voted candidate but won due to
the aggregation of votes of his party, because of the Ley de Lemas (DSV).

23
(a) PJ: Partido Justicialista, also Peronist Party
(b) PS-FPCS: Partido Socialista–Frente Progresista Cívico y Social (Socialist Party –
Civic and Social Progressive Front)

During the first part of this period, the same Peronist faction remained in power.

José María Vernet, the candidate of the orthodox Peronist faction who won the

governorship in 1983, preserved party unity by distributing patronage jobs and political

posts among different party leaders. Among them, Víctor Reviglio, Vernet’s Minister of

Health, emerged as the chosen successor for the 1987 election, which he won by sixteen

points. To avoid a party split that could cost the 1991 election, party leaders installed a

double simultaneous vote system (DSV, Ley de Lemas) and chose a political outsider—

former high-speed car racing champion Carlos Reutemann—as the gubernatorial

candidate. Finally, in 1995, Reutemann designated the former mayor of the capital of Santa

Fe, Jorge Obeid, as his successor.

Until 1997, Peronist governments did not attempt to reform the police they inherited

from previous authoritarian regimes. Governor Vernet (1983–87) maintained the police

structure from the dictatorship, as well as several officers who had committed human rights

abuses. He also enacted a Provincial Personnel Law that obstructed the removal of police

officers suspected of corruption or other misconduct. Gradually, Peronist governors

cemented a positive relationship with the police. Governor Reutemann (1991–95) also

sidelined reform. When I asked the provincial police chief during this term to evaluate

Reutemann’s security policy, he said, “[It was] perfect because he trusted us and gave us

the resources we needed.”62

Various interviewees and other secondary sources conveyed that Peronist

governments during this period appropriated police rents from crime, particularly gambling
24
and prostitution, and used them to buttress their political machines or line their own

pockets. A former police officer and current union delegate told me: “There was always

direct connivance with politicians in power. There was a chief of police who said, I think,

in 1986, ‘How many campaigns have been paid for with money from clandestine

gambling?’” 63 In the final months of Reutemann’s first administration (1991–1995), a

group of officers released a communiqué stating that the incumbent Undersecretary of

Public Security had implemented a rent collection scheme that auctioned police precincts

off to the highest bidders.64 In 1998 a former precinct boss also testified that “the Provincial

Chief of Police, the Police Chief in Santa Fe [the capital city], and the Minister of

Government collected the money from illegal gambling.”65 These are but a few examples

of a system based on police provision of rents and political protection: no high-ranking

officer, much less any governing politician, was thoroughly investigated for these

wrongdoings.

Santa Fe II: High Turnover and Fragmentation Increase Police Autonomy

The PJ’s continuous rule obscures the alternation and fragmentation between two

different factions between 1997 and 2007. While Reutemann had handpicked Jorge Obeid

as his successor (1995–99), they would eventually lead different Peronist factions.

Reutemann headed the center-right sector of the party and incorporated several individuals

who had served in the dictatorship as members of his cabinet. Obeid, in contrast,

represented the center-left faction: he had been a member of the Peronist youth movement

in the 1970s, detained by the dictatorship and forced into exile.

In contrast with Reutemann’s arrangement with the police, Obeid (1995–1999)

proposed a broad reform to reduce police autonomy. He sponsored a law that dismissed

25
officers involved in the dictatorship, 66 modified the force’s recruitment and training

system, and created the first Office of Internal Affairs to oversee the police.67

However, increased fragmentation in the Peronist Party impeded enforcement of

the reform. Although the Peronists had a majority in the legislature, several deputies and

senators were from Reutemann’s faction and did not answer to Obeid.68 Fernando Rosúa,

a high-ranking member of the administration, explained the difficulty of getting the reform

through the state legislature: “We sent a reform project to the legislature in 1997–98, but it

got stuck in the chamber; neither the pro-government nor opposition legislators promoted

it because it directly eliminated the provincial police and centralized control in political

[i.e. the Executive’s] hands.”69

Police commanders also exploited this fragmentation to find political allies to resist

the reform. For example, the police chief challenged the government’s policies in the

provincial Senate, controlled by the rival Peronist faction. This chief, who had praised

Reutemann effusively, expressed his disgust for Obeid’s government: “The other

[governors] understood us perfectly well and trusted what we said. That’s why we had a

good police force. But Obeid was really a person who was on a different path. He was

terrible.”70

This political fragmentation allowed the police to drag their feet and undermine the

reform, counting on its termination by a more favorable administration. Rosúa provided an

example of this tactic:

During Obeid’s first government, we made an agreement with the European Union,

in which they would contribute to police technical training. We signed the deal, but

at the time of implementing it, Obeid was no longer in government and Reutemann

26
 was in office. All that was needed was a law to approve the agreement. Reutemann

sent it to the legislature, which voted for it, but Reutemann vetoed it, and it was a

major blow to the reform process.71

Reutemann’s electoral victory in 1999 signaled a factional turnover that reversed

the budding reform. A few days after Reutemann’s inauguration, his new Government and

Justice Minister proclaimed, “The previous reform project is buried.”72 Furthermore, the

administration encouraged police violence through its discourse and actions. The Secretary

of Public Security publicly stated, “We are not here to protect the rights of criminals,”73

and rewarded an officer involved in two fatal shootings. This enabling discourse

contributed to a doubling in the number of casualties from police intervention within the

first year of Reutemann’s administration: from 1999 to 2000, the number of deaths from

police intervention rose from twenty-six to forty-eight.74

In a new instance of factional turnover, Obeid replaced Reutemann again in 2003,

and attempted another, albeit more moderate, police reform. He established the office of

the Secretary of Security and created the Institute of Public Security (ISEP), in which

civilians would supervise police training.75 In 2006, the administration managed to get the

legislature to approve a new Police Personnel law,76 which determined that civilian boards

with political and civil society representatives would decide on police promotions,

depriving police commanders of their prerogative. A member of the Socialist

administration told me of the police corruption involved in this process: “Before, selection

committees were like this: you were an underofficer that wanted to become an officer; they

told you: ‘OK, this will be 10,000 pesos; you can pay it in two, three months. If you can’t

pay it now, when you get promoted and have a new division, it gets deducted,’”77

27
 However, Obeid’s government was again unable to enforce these changes. The

ISEP ended up combining civilian and police training staff and loosened educational

requirements to recruit more personnel. Furthermore, neither the exiting Peronist

government nor the succeeding Socialist administrations implemented the civilian boards

regulating police promotions. Consequently, police autonomy increased, especially

following the end of Peronist rule in 2007.

On December 10, 2007, a non-Peronist party took power in the province of Santa

Fe for the first time since 1983. Hermes Binner, the Socialist mayor of Rosario—the

province’s most important city—won the first election conducted without the DSV, which

undoubtedly aided his victory. His administration encountered heavy transition costs when

moving into office. Binner created a new Ministry of Security and set up a Secretary of

Control of the Police. However, according to Daniel Cuenca, the first security minister, in

“setting up a ministry from scratch, I inherited a chaotic administrative situation: debts,

lack of signed promotions, no staff, not even a desk […] I wasted a lot of time on

administrative issues such as [approving] promotions, transfers, prisoner custody, etc., and

had less time for daily operations.”78 Cuenca rapidly encountered police resistance. He

found notes in his office saying, “get out, usurper” and eventually decided to bring in his

own meals for fear that officers might put something in the cafeteria food.79 He resigned

in December 2009, after a near heart attack.

Meanwhile, high fragmentation in the coalitional cabinet generated policy

incoherence, which also increased police autonomy. For example, the appointment of

Cuenca’s successor as Security Minister, Alvaro Gaviola, invoked conflict with the

Socialists’ coalition partners, who wanted a different candidate.80 Furthermore, Gaviola

28
appointed a former police commander as secretary of security but had to reverse his

decision as several progressive cabinet members threatened to resign. 81 Both political

rivals and police officers pointed to the administration’s “lack of coherent messages” to the

force. For example, a police union delegate stated, “There are no precise orders. It’s all

improvised. Today there is [one security secretary] but tomorrow you come along with

other ideas and modify everything.”82

While they remained in power in 2011, the Socialists’ political capital decreased.

Their vote share in the gubernatorial election fell from fifty-two percent in 2007 to forty

percent in 2011. Furthermore, they lost their majority in the lower chamber and remained

a minority in the Provincial senate, controlled by Peronists. The police exploited this high

political fragmentation to resist encroachments on their autonomy. The government

complained that the police “operated with legislators to change the course of policies, to

prevent the [implementation of the] new selection and promotion mechanisms,” and that

the opposition summoned the Minister of Security and his cabinet to the legislature to

“muddy the field” and undermine the administration.83

The government’s high internal fragmentation continued during Bonfatti’s term

(2011–2015). The administration’s most reform-oriented security ministers—Cuenca and

Bonfatti’s first security minister, Leandro Corti—were not politicians from the Socialist

party, and thus lacked political support to enforce their initiatives. As Corti told me, to

control the force, “first, you need to not take money from the police, even if it sounds

elementary. Second, you need to have a lot of political support, because you will not be

making too many friends. Hitting these guys in the head implies having a pretty big dick,

so to speak.”84 Corti resigned after only six months, after Governor Bonfatti ignored his

29
decision to suspend a soccer match in Santa Fe for security reasons, which signaled that he

would not get much political support to pursue deeper police reforms.85

Unlike the Peronists, who had informally controlled the police by appropriating its

rents from crime, the Socialists failed to govern police corruption, which became anarchic.

The clearest example was the arrest by Federal forces of the Provincial Police Chief for

complicity with two wholesale drug traffickers. This case was not exceptional. Multiple

police units protected drug retail sales that occurred in “bunkers”—enclosed fortifications

in poor neighborhoods—which operated in broad daylight. According to a federal judge,

“drug trafficking in Rosario became scandalous because police protection, which had

always existed but was contained, became decentralized, so every precinct ran three or four

bunkers.”86 Former security minister Corti described this decentralized corruption more

graphically: “Today, even Corporal Cacho asks you for money.”87

Interviewees from the political opposition did not accuse the Socialists of being

involved in police corruption, in contrast with accusations against Peronists. However,

most agreed that the Peronists were effective in informally controlling police rent

extraction while the Socialists neither restricted nor appropriated the proceeds from police

corruption. A federal prosecutor emphasized: “The police structure did not change during

Peronist administrations, but the PJ always had a particular relationship with the police. I

think they were always conscious about placing strict limits, establishing very concretely

what could and could not be done.”88

In short, increased political turnover and fragmentation, first between Peronist

factions and then with the election of Socialist Party in 2007, augmented the autonomy of

the provincial police force. While earlier Peronist administrations had been able to reduce

30
police autonomy through politicization to appropriate police rents from crime, later

Peronist governments and Socialist administrations failed to either reform the police or

control its rent extraction.

As in Rio de Janeiro, we can rule out certain alternative explanations to the changes

in police autonomy over time. Partisanship is not a determining factor: while the Socialists

suffered the greatest levels of police autonomy, the reformist administrations of Peronist

governor Obeid also faced problems in controlling the force. Similarly, individual political

leadership and societal mobilization account for the onset rather than the persistence of

reform. For instance, a scandal involving the Robbery and Burglaries division triggered the

1997 reform, but fragmentation and turnover eroded these changes. Finally, one could also

argue that the increase in drug trafficking in the province augmented police corruption

beyond control. However, not only were police involved in corruption rackets, but this

corruption was neither curbed nor appropriated by the ruling party, which indicated that

their autonomy had substantially increased.

V. Conclusion

In democracies with weak formal institutions, police autonomy depends on the political

stability and strength of the incumbent. Shifts between administrations led by different

parties or factions obstruct the implementation of police reforms while entrenched

incumbents prove more capable of controlling the police. However, the dangerous

antagonist of police autarchy is politicization, which occurs when entrenched governments

face little opposition and capture rents from police corruption. Along with low turnover,

high fragmentation is therefore necessary to reduce police autonomy through

professionalization, rendering the police more accountable to the rule of law. Decreased

31
political turnover is not the answer, as it heightens the risks against democratic

contestation. Rather, weakly institutionalized contexts require a compromise between

different parties and state agencies during a period of high fragmentation, which can have

a greater chance of surviving through different administrations.

In developed democracies, where formal institutions persist despite partisan

change, bureaucratic autonomy is generally considered a prerequisite for efficient

government agencies and economic development, while political interference is perceived

as eroding bureaucrats’ effectiveness and legitimacy. In contrast, in weak institutional

contexts, high autonomy often enables a state agency to pursue its own interests without

regard to, or in detriment of, society’s benefit. In these contexts, greater autonomy of police

forces—or other state bureaucracies—can carry dangerous consequences for democracy

and the rule of law. One should therefore pay greater attention to political dynamics to

explain the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats, as well as the consequences

for citizens and democracy.

1
The reference to weak formal institutions alludes to low levels of stability and

enforcement of written rules that are supposed to govern political and societal behavior.

This paper is concerned with processes within democracies; i.e. political regimes with

relatively free and fair elections and basic rights that guarantee political opposition. On

informal institutions, see Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, “Informal Institutions and

Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 04 (December

2004), 725-740. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592704040472.

32
2
Mercedes S Hinton and Tim Newburn, Policing Developing Democracies (London:

Routledge, 2009); Guillermo O’Donnell, “On the State, Democratization and Some

Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist

Countries,” World Development 21, no. 8 (August 1993): 1355–69.

3
Alfred C. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton,

N.J: Princeton University Press, 1988), 93.

4
Herbert Kitschelt and Steven Wilkinson, eds., Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of

Democratic Accountability and Political Competition (Cambridge, UK; New York, NY:

Cambridge University Press, 2007).

5
Steven Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India

(Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge

University Press, 2006).

6
I conceptualize reform as “changes in police structure, organization, and functions

undertaken in post-transition democracies to make the police more accountable to the rule

of law and responsive to all citizens.” David H. Bayley, Changing the Guard: Developing

Democratic Police Abroad (Studies in Crime and Public Policy, New York, NY: Oxford

University Press, 2006), 23.

7
Diane E. Davis, “Undermining the Rule of Law: Democratization and the Dark Side of

Police Reform in Mexico,” Latin American Politics and Society 48, no. 1 (April 2006): 55–

86.
8
Kent Eaton, “Paradoxes of Police Reform: Federalism, Parties, and Civil Society in

Argentina’s Public Security Crisis,” Latin American Research Review 43, no. 3 (2008): 5–

33
32; Mercedes S. Hinton, The State on the Streets: Police and Politics in Argentina and

Brazil (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006).

9
Enrique D. Arias and Mark Ungar, “Community Policing and Latin America’s Citizen

Security Crisis,” Comparative Politics 41, no. 4 (July 2009): 409–429.

10
Hernan Flom and Alison E. Post, “Blame Avoidance and Policy Stability in Developing

Democracies: The Politics of Public Security in Buenos Aires,” Comparative Politics 49,

no. 1 (October 2016): 23–42.

11
Claudio Fuentes, Contesting the Iron Fist: Advocacy Networks and Police Violence in

Democratic Argentina and Chile (Latin American Studies: Social Sciences and Law, New

York, NY: Routledge, 2005); Eduardo Moncada, “Toward Democratic Policing in

Colombia? Institutional Accountability through Lateral Reform,” Comparative Politics 41,

no. 4 (July 2009): 431–49.

12
Yanilda González, “State Building on the Ground: Police Reform and Participatory

Security in Latin America” (Ph.D. Dissertation in Political Science, Princeton University,

2014).
13
See as an exception Mariana Mota Prado, Michael Trebilcock, and Patrick Hartford,

“Police Reform in Violent Democracies in Latin America,” Hague Journal on the Rule of

Law 4, no. 02 (September 2012): 252–85, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1876404512000164.

14
Gary J. Miller and Andrew B. Whitford, Above Politics: Bureaucratic Discretion and

Credible Commitment (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions, New York, NY:

Cambridge University Press, 2016); Peter B. Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and

Industrial Transformation (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1995).

34
15
Daniel P. Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks,

and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton

University Press, 2001).

16
Hinton and Newburn, Policing Developing Democracies.
17
Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State

Back In (Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1985); James Q Wilson,

Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New York, NY: Basic

Books, 1989).
18
In this sense, this paper focuses on the macro dimension of police autonomy. See Fabien

Jobard, “Police Autonomy,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political

Movements, ed. David E. Snow. (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2013).

19
Hugo Frühling, “Recent Police Reform in Latin America,” in Policing Insecurity: Police

Reform, Security, and Human Rights in Latin America (Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 21–46.

20
Hinton and Newburn, Policing Developing Democracies; Kempe Ronald Hope, ed.,

Police Corruption and Police Reforms in Developing Societies (Boca Raton, FL: CRC

Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016); Theodore P. Gerber and Sarah E. Mendelson,

“Public Experiences of Police Violence and Corruption in Contemporary Russia: A Case

of Predatory Policing?,” Law & Society Review 42, no. 1 (March 2008): 1–44; R.K.

Raghavan, “The India Police: Expectations of a Democratic Polity,” in Transforming

India: Social and Political Dynamics of a Democracy, eds. Francine R. Frankel, Zoya

Hasan, Rajeev Bhargava, Balveer Arora, (Delhi; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),

288–313.

35
21
Flavia Freidenberg and Steven Levitsky, “Informal Institutions and Party Organization

in Latin America,” in Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, eds., Informal Institutions

and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

2006), 178–200.
22
Barbara Geddes, Politician’s Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 18.

23
Lawrence W. Sherman, Scandal and Reform: Controlling Police Corruption (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1978); González, “State Building on the Ground: Police

Reform and Participatory Security in Latin America.”

24
Anna Grzymala-Busse, “Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East

Central Europe,” Comparative Political Studies 36, no. 10 (2003): 1123–47; María

Victoria Murillo and Cecilia Martínez-Gallardo, “Political Competition and Policy

Adoption: Market Reforms in Latin American Public Utilities,” American Journal of

Political Science 51, no. 1 (2007): 120–139.

25
Alison E. Post, Foreign and Domestic Investment in Argentina: The Politics of

Privatized Infrastructure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 33.

26
Richard Snyder and Angélica Durán-Martínez, “Does Illegality Breed Violence? Drug

Trafficking and State-Sponsored Protection Rackets,” Crime, Law and Social Change 52,

no. 3 (2009): 253–73.

27
Geddes, Politician’s Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America; Grzymala-

Busse, “Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe.”
28
Grzymala-Busse, “Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East

Central Europe,” 1130–31.

36
29
Steven Levitsky and Maria Victoria Murillo, “Building Institutions on Weak

Foundations,” Journal of Democracy 24, no. 2 (2013): 93–107.

30
Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel, eds., Process Tracing: From Metaphor to

Analytic Tool (Strategies for Social Inquiry, Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge

University Press, 2015); Henry E Brady and David Collier, eds., Rethinking Social Inquiry

Diverse Tools, Shared Standards (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010).
31
Bennett and Checkel, Process Tracing.
32
On Rio de Janeiro Janice E. Perlman, Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in

Rio de Janeiro (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010); Bryan McCann, Hard

Times in the Marvelous City: From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de

Janeiro (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). On the Santa Fe police, see Gustavo

González, “Reforma Policial y Política: Un Complejo Entramado de Compromisos,

Resistencias y Condiciones de Posibilidad,” Urvio: Revista Latinoamericana de Seguridad

Ciudadana, no. 2 (2007): 154–63.

33
Interviews were conducted in Portuguese and Spanish. All translations to English are

mine.
34
In Brazil, state-level governments have separate Military Police (PM) and Civil Police

(PC) forces. This account refers primarily to the Military Police, which has been the focus

of most reform efforts by the state governments of Rio de Janeiro.

35
The Constitution banned immediate reelection until 1997. The first state executive to run

for reelection was PMDB governor Sérgio Cabral in 2010.

36
The unicameral legislature is renewed entirely every four years concurrently with

executive elections.

37
37
McCann, Hard Times in the Marvelous City.
38
Cristina Buarque de Hollanda, Polícia e Direitos Humanos: Política de Segurança

Pública No Primeiro Governo Brizola (Rio de Janeiro, 1983-1986) (Rio de Janeiro, RJ:

Editora Revan, 2005), 81–82.

39
João Trajano Sento Sé, Brizolismo: Estetização Da Política e Carisma (Rio de Janeiro,

RJ: Espaço e Tempo: Editora FGV, 1999), 289.

40
Author interview with former BOPE officer, Rio de Janeiro, September 1, 2014.
41
Hollanda, Polícia e Direitos Humanos, 132–35.
42
Author interview with current Military Police Colonel, Rio de Janeiro, September 1,

2014.
43
Alencar had been a human rights lawyer during the dictatorship and served as mayor of

Rio for the PDT two times, both coinciding with Brizola’s terms as governor (1982–1986

and 1989–1993). He then left the party in 1993 after falling out with Brizola.
44
James Cavallaro and Anne Manuel, Police Brutality in Urban Brazil (New York, NY:

Human Rights Watch, 1997), 34–38.

45
Ignacio Cano, Letalidade Da Ação Policial No Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, RJ: ISER,

1997).
46
Anthony Garotinho and Luiz Eduardo Soares, Violência e Criminalidade No Estado Do

Rio de Janeiro: Diagnóstico e Propostas Para Uma Política Democrática de Segurança

Pública, (Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Editora Hama, 1998), 145–49.

47
Vicente Riccio et al., “Community Policing in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro,” Police

Practice and Research 14, no. 4 (August 2013): 308–18,

https://doi.org/10.1080/15614263.2013.816494.

38
48
Luiz Eduardo Soares, Meu Casaco de General: 500 Dias no Front da Segurança Pública

do Rio de Janeiro (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000).

49
Juliana Resende, Operação Rio (História Imediata, São Paulo, Brazil: Scritta, 1995), 75–

79.
50
Enrique D. Arias, “The Impacts of Differential Armed Dominance of Politics in Rio de

Janeiro, Brazil,” Studies in Comparative International Development 48, no. 3 (August

2013): 270.
51
Elizabeth Leeds, “Cocaine and Parallel Polities in the Brazilian Urban Periphery:

Constraints on Local-Level Democratization,” Latin American Research Review 31, no. 3

(January 1996): 47–83; Enrique D. Arias, “The Dynamics of Criminal Governance:

Networks and Social Order in Rio de Janeiro,” Journal of Latin American Studies 38, no.

02 (April 2006): 428–29.

52
Author interview with Colonel Ubiratan, former Commander General of the Rio de

Janeiro Military Police (PMERJ), Rio de Janeiro, September 4, 2014.

53
Maria Helena Moreira Alves and Philip Evanson, Living in the Crossfire: Favela

Residents, Drug Dealers, and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro (Philadelphia, PA: Temple

University Press, 2011), 209.

54
Author interview with mid-ranking official of the Secretariat of Security of the State of

Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, September 19, 2014.

55
Author interview with municipal guard, Rio de Janeiro, September 3, 2014.
56
Beatriz Magaloni, Vanessa Melo, and Edgar Franco, “Killing in the Slums: An Impact

Evaluation of Police Reform in Rio de Janeiro”, Center on Democracy, Development and

the Rule of Law, Stanford University, December 2015,

39
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/publication/killing-slums-impact-evaluation-police-reform-

rio-de-janeiro.
57
Author interview with former Military Police high-ranking officer, Colonel Paúl, Rio de

Janeiro, August 25, 2014.

58
Author interview with (retired) Military Police Colonel Jorge da Silva, Nitéroi (state of

Rio de Janeiro), September 19, 2014.

59
Author interview with Colonel Ubiratan.
60
Tinar Sinar, “38 Arrested for Police Corruption in Rio”, The Rio Times, Feb. 15, 2011;

Felipe Freire, “Beltrame nega crise em UPPs e promete expulsar corruptos”, O Dia, Sept.

12, 2011.
61
As in Rio de Janeiro, Santa Fe governors and provincial legislators are elected

concurrently every four years. Unlike in Rio, there is a bicameral legislature and governors

are elected via simple plurality, with no run-off.

62
Author interview with former Chief of the Santa Fe Police during the administrations of

Governors Reutemann and Obeid, Mariano Savia, Rosario, November 11, 2013.
63
Author interview with former police officer and current police union delegate #1,

Rosario, November 7, 2013.

64
Carlos Del Frade, Ciudad Blanca, Crónica Negra. Historia Política Del Narcotráfico

En El Gran Rosario (Rosario, Santa Fe: Ediciones Letra Libre, 2000), 128.
65
Carlos Del Frade, Ciudad Blanca, Crónica Negra.
66
Law 11.511 (November 6, 1997).

40
67
Decree 1359 (August 22, 1997). Later, the government enacted a new decree (626/98)

that placed the Internal Affairs Division directly under the Secretary of Security, i.e. under

political supervision.
68
González, “Reforma Policial y Política: Un Complejo Entramado de Compromisos,

Resistencias y Condiciones de Posibilidad,” 159; Alejandro Damianovich, A Caballo Del

Tigre: Memorias de La Casa Gris: El Gobierno de Jorge Obeid En Santa Fe, 1995-1999

(Rosario, Santa Fe: Homo Sapiens Ediciones, 2001).

69
Author interview with former Undersecretary for Prison Affairs during Obeid’s

administration, Fernando Rosúa, Rosario, November 7, 2014.

70
Author interview with Mariano Savia.
71
Author interview with Fernando Rosúa.
72
Máximo Sozzo, Policía, Violencia, Democracia: Ensayos Sociológicos (Ciencia y

Técnica, Santa Fe: Ediciones UNL, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, 2005), 51.
73
“No estamos aquí para proteger delincuentes”, El Litoral, Jan. 17, 2000.
74
Sozzo, Policía, Violencia, Democracia, 29.
75
Law 12.333 (September 2, 2004)
76
Law 12.521 (April 6, 2006)
77
Author interview with former Undersecretary of Public Security during Bonfatti’s

administration, Diego Poretti, Santa Fe, November 14, 2013.

78
Author interview with former Minister of Security of the province of Santa Fe during

Binner’s administration, Daniel Cuenca, Rosario, November 20, 2013.

79
Author interview with Daniel Cuenca.
80
“El mal humor de los radicales”, Pagina12, Dec. 4, 2009.

41
81
“Superti subió a Giacometti y lo debió bajar por la rebelión de los secretarios”, La

Capital, Dec. 4, 2009.

82
Author interview with current police union delegate #2, Santa Fe, November 15, 2013.

This delegate belongs to a different union that delegate #1.

83
Author interviews with state deputy for the Progressive Front, Alicia Gutiérrez (Rosario,

November 12, 2013) and with the Undersecretary for Complex Crimes during Governor

Bonfatti’s administration, Ana Viglione (Santa Fe, November 15, 2013).

84
Author interview with former Minister of Security during Bonfatti’s administration,

Leandro Corti, Santa Fe, November 14, 2013. My emphasis.

85
“Por el partido de Central renunció al Ministerio de Seguridad Leandro Corti”, La

Capital, June 6, 2012.

86
Author interview with federal judge Carlos Vera Barros, Rosario, June 24, 2014.
87
Author interview with Leandro Corti.
88
Author interview with federal prosecutor, Juan Murray, Rosario, November 12, 2013.

42
 Appendix

Methodological appendix

This document summarizes the sources for the data used for this paper, which relied

primarily on 81 in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in the Brazilian state of Rio

de Janeiro and the Argentine province Santa Fe. Interviews in Rio took place mostly

between September and December 2014, while those in Santa Fe were conducted primarily

during November 2013, with a second round between June and July 2014.

All interviewees were informed of the intent and scope of the project and asked for their

consent to record the interview and cite them accordingly in ensuing publications. Most of

the interviews took place in a public location, or in the individual’s home or work office,

and lasted from 20 minutes to more than 3 hours. To protect the anonymity of low-ranking

police officers, who could face reprimands for speaking without formal authorization from

their superiors, their names and other potential identifiers have been excluded, as have

those of social activists and other private citizens who do not occupy a high-level political

position—or where subjects requested this condition.

The subjects of interest of my research were state officials in charge of public

security in each province, both from the government and the police. Therefore, I targeted

the provincial security ministers and their immediate subordinate officials during the period

under study (2007–2015), as well as for prior years, for greater contextual information. In

addition to politicians in the executive branch, I also included legislators who participated

in their respective chambers’ committee on public security. With respect to police officers,

I opted to include high-ranking officials from various administrations as well as low-

ranking officers (or under-officers) to ensure greater representativeness within the force

43
and see how the leaders’ decisions were implemented on the ground. The formal

restrictions on officers’ statements to outsiders made it very difficult to secure interviews

with police officers without first going through political authorities.

Politics in Argentina and Brazil operates primarily through networks of personal

connections. After securing a given interview, I asked the interviewee for referrals,

typically within his or her political group. Aware of the potential biases this might cause,

from the beginning I reached out to individuals with different political or partisan

affiliations. Finally, I complemented this information with interviews with other state and

civil society actors, mainly judges and prosecutors (from both the state and federal

judiciary), as well as journalists and social movement activists with deep knowledge or

direct involvement with the issues of police, drug trafficking, and criminal violence.

Interviews began with an exploration of the current situation vis-à-vis security, policing,

or drug trafficking in the district, and then, as the conversation evolved, delved into the

more sensitive subject of the politics behind these topics.

I then triangulated this information with other sources, such as national and local

newspapers, government and NGO reports, and specialized literature on this subject (see

list below).

Rio de Janeiro

Interviews88

RJ01- Coronel Paulo Ricardo Paúl, Former Military Police (PM) Coronel, Internal

Reviewer, August 25, 2014.

RJ02- Andréa Pachá, Civil Judge, State of Rio de Janeiro, August 28, 2014.

44
RJ03-4 –Two social movement activists from NGO#1 working with favela youth, August

28, 2014.

RJ05 – Flavio Bolsonaro, State Deputy, Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro (ALERJ),

August 29, 2014.

RJ06 – Current PM Coronel, PMERJ Headquarters, September 1, 2014.

RJ07 – Ignácio Cano, Professor & researcher, State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ),

September 1, 2014.

RJ08 – Former BOPE Officer (rank of Captain), September 1, 2014.

RJ09 – Current Municipal Guard official, September 3, 2014.

RJ10 – Michel Misse, Professor & research, Urban Violence Study Nucleus-Federal

University of Rio de Janeiro, September 3, 2014. NECVU/UFRJ

RJ11/12 – Capitão (Captain) Sandro Costa and Coronel Ubiratan D’Angelo – Former

military police high officials, current members of Viva Rio NGO. September 4,

2014.

RJ13 – Reimont, City councilman, Partido Trabalhista (PT, Workers Party). September 4,

2014.

RJ14 – Member of Commissão Estadual da Verdade (State Truth Commission), September

4, 2014.

RJ15 – Director of NGO#2 (favela youth), municipality located in the periphery of Rio de

Janeiro. September 5, 2014. (Name of location also preserved for confidentiality

purposes)

RJ16 – Marcus Ianoni, Professor of Federal Fluminense University. September 7, 2014.

45
RJ17 – Rodrigo Pimentel, Former BOPE Captain and current reporter for Globo TV.

September 8, 2014.

RJ18 – Former Delegate Civil Police. September 8, 2014.

RJ19 – Luciane Boiteux, Penitentiary Council of Rio de Janeiro. September 9, 2014.

RJ20 – Rubens Casara, Criminal Court Judge, State Judicial System, September 9, 2014.

RJ21 – Joao Trajano Sento Sé, Professor and Researcher, Universidade Estadual do Rio de

Janeiro, September 9, 2014.

RJ22 – Journalist from Jornal do Brasil – September 10, 2014.

RJ23 – Jorge Manaia, City Councilman, Partido Verde (PV, Green Party), September 11,

2014.

RJ24 – State Penitentiary Administration Secretary, high official, September 12, 2014.

RJ25 – Former PM Coronel, September 16, 2014.

RJ26/27 – NGO #3 activists (one former drug trafficker – Former Trafficker I), September

16, 2014.

RJ28 – NGO #4 director (Favelas), September 17, 2014.

RJ29 – Former high-ranking Civil Police delegate, September 17, 2014.

RJ30-RJ32 – 3 Former drug traffickers II, III and IV, working with NGO#3. September

18, 2014.

RJ33 – Former militia member working with NGO #3, September 18, 2014.

RJ34 – Leila do Flamengo, City councilwoman (PMDB), September 18, 2014.

RJ35 – Secretary of Security mid-level official, September 19, 2014.

RJ36 – Jorge da Silva, former Military Police Coronel, Niteroi, September 19, 2014.

RJ37-42 – Rocinha local representatives, December 1-2, 2014.

46
RJ43 – UPP Commander, Rocinha, December 2, 2014.

RJ44 – Civil Police delegate, Rocinha, December 4, 2014.

Other sources

ISP-RJ (SESEG);

Newspapers

National:

O Globo

Jornal do Brasil

Veja

Isto É

Folha de São Paulo

International

Rio Times

Los Angeles Times

The Economist

Government agencies

Instituto de Segurança Pública-Rio de Janeiro (Secretaria de Segurança Pública)

Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora – www.upprj.com

Non-governmental organizations

Núcleo de Estudos da Violência – Universidade de São Paulo (NEV-USP, Center

for the Study of Violence – University of São Paulo)

Viva Rio

47
Santa Fe

Interviews

SF01 Fernando "Chino" Rosúa, former high-ranking official in both of Governor Obeid’s

administrations, November 7, 2013, Rosario.

SF02 Police union delegate #1, November 7, 2013, Rosario.

SF03 Social Movement activists in based in poor Rosario neighborhood, November 7,

2013, Rosario.

SF04 Maximiliano Pullaro, state deputy (Frente Progresista Cívico y Social or FPCyS),

November 8, 2013, Rosario.

SF05 Oscar Urruty, state deputy (Frente para la Victoria – Partido Justicialista, FPV-PJ),

November 8, 2013, Rosario.

SF06 Alberto Cortés, councilmember in Rosario (Socialist), November 8, 2013, Rosario.

SF07 Former high-ranking police officer, November 8, 2013, Rosario.

SF08 Gonzalo Del Cerro, councilmember in Rosario (Unión Cívica Radical, UCR),

November 11, 2013, Rosario.

SF09 Mariano Savia, former state police chief during Reutemann and Obeid’s

administrations, November 11, 2013, Rosario.

SF10 Lisandro Enrico, state senator (UCR-FPCyS), November 11, 2013, Rosario.

SF11 Alicia Gutiérrez, state deputy (FPCyS), November 12, 2013, Rosario.

SF12 Eduardo Toniolli, state deputy (FPV), November 12, 2013, Rosario.

SF13 Former high-ranking police officer, Rosario unit, November 12, 2013, Rosario.

SF14 Juan Murray, federal prosecutor in the Rosario office, November 12, 2013, Rosario.

48
SF15 Roberto Bruera, councilmember in Rosario (Partido Demócrata Progresista, PDP-

FPCyS), November 13, 2013, Rosario.

SF16 Gabriel Ganon, lead public defender of the province of Santa Fe, November 13,

2013, City of Santa Fe.

SF17 Diego Poretti, undersecretary of security (Bonfatti administration), November 14,

2013, City of Santa Fe.

SF18 Leandro Corti, former security minister (Bonfatti administration), November 14,

2013, City of Santa Fe.

SF19 Matías Drivet, secretary of public security (Bonfatti administration), November 15,

2013, City of Santa Fe.

SF20 Ana Viglione, undersecretary for Complex Crimes (Bonfatti administration),

November 15, 2013, City of Santa Fe.

SF21 Police union delegate #2, November 15, 2013, City of Santa Fe.

SF22 Luis Acuña, state deputy (FPV-PJ), November 18, 2013, City of Santa Fe.

SF23 Máximo Sozzo, university professor, expert in criminology and police reform,

November 18, 2013, City of Santa Fe.

SF24 Pablo Cococcioni, undersecretary of penitentiary affairs, November 18, 2013, City

of Santa Fe.

SF25 Raúl Lamberto, state security minister during Bonfatti’s administration, November

19, 2013, City of Santa Fe.

SF26 Paula Ballesteros, analyst at Center for Municipal and Provincial Studies

(CEMUPRO), November 19, 2013, Rosario.

SF27 Luis Caterina, state judge, November 19, 2013, Rosario.

49
SF28 Jorge Barraguirre, lead prosecutor before the State Supreme Court, November 19,

2013, Rosario.

SF29 Jorge Pérez de Urrechu, state judge, November 20, 2013, Rosario.

SF30 Daniel Cuenca, former state security minister (Binner administration), November

20, 2013, Rosario.

SF31 Francisco Broglia, former member of Secretary of Community Prevention (Binner

administration), November 20, 2013, Rosario.

SF32 Guillermo Camporini, state lead prosecutor in the case against the Canteros (Los

Monos), June 24, 2014, Rosario.

SF33 Héctor Vera Barros, federal judge, June 24, 2014, Rosario.

SF34 Hernán Lascano, journalist for La Capital newspaper, June 24, Rosario.

SF35 Three members of Red Antimafia (AntiMafia network), June 24, 2014, Rosario.

SF36 Juan Carlos Vienna, state judge in charge of the case against the Canteros (Los

Monos), June 25, 2014, Rosario.

SF37 Fernando Asegurado, secretary of government, Municipal Government of Rosario,

June 25, 2014, Rosario.

Other sources

Newspapers

National:

La Nación

Clarín

Pagina12

50
 La Política Online

State:

La Capital

El Litoral

El Ciudadano

Periódico Pausa

Rosario3

Government agencies

Ministerio de Seguridad de la Provincia de Santa Fe

Tribunales provinciales de Santa Fe

Sistema Nacional de Información Criminal (SNIC, National Criminal Information

System)

Nongovernmental organizations

Red Antimafia

Universidad Nacional del Rosario – Proyecto Calles

Figures

Figure Error! Main Document Only.. Proportion of legislators from the incumbent
party, Rio de Janeiro, 1982-2014

51
Source: Author, from Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE)

Figure 2. Share of provincial deputies and senators belonging to Governor’s party, Santa
Fe (1983-2011)

Incumbent's share of legislators

90
80
70
% of legislators

60 Share of
50 state
40 deputies
30 Share of
20 state
10 senators
0
1983 1987 1991 1995 1999 2003 2007 2011
Year

Source: Author, from Andy Tow’s Election Blog and Santa Fe Electoral Court

52