CAREER: The Domestic and International Politics of Global Police

Whether in the form of protest violence, gender-based violence, torture, extrajudicial killing, or daily abuse, excessive and/or illegitimate police violence presents a challenge in every country of the world. The negative impacts of excessive and/or illegitimate police violence on societies are numerous and consequential: it exacerbates health outcomes, diminishes the quality of governance, and increases the probability of civil conflict.

Moreover, donor countries and organizations, including the United States and United Nations, provide billions of dollars to police assistance abroad, thereby potentially affecting recipient country police forces’ ability to use force. Yet, despite the global nature of the problem, most of the work on police violence has largely focused on case studies in the US, UK, and Latin American countries.

These single cases do not permit the development of an overarching theory for understanding the domestic and international political conditions under which the police in different countries engage in excessive and/or illegitimate violence. There is also a dearth of cross-national data on global police violence, police institutions, police assistance, and police personnel.

This CAREER research and teaching agenda will achieve the following objectives: 1) develop an original political framework and theory on global police violence; 2) gather essential cross-national data on police violence, police autonomy, and international police assistance; 3) collect the largest, original survey data of police personnel around the world; and 4) implement a multi-faceted educational program that will train undergraduate students and masters students in evidence-based strategies for mitigating police violence. This project provides two unique innovations from the current research on police violence.

First, it uses a political science framework to understand the complex dynamics of policing and police violence and uses multiple, original data sources to test these theories. Treating the police as political actors uncovers the ways in which institutional and interest-based explanations affect the likelihood of police engaging in different forms of violence.

The extensive cross-national, time series data collection of police violence, police institutions, and police assistance enables comparative analysis about the conditions under which different forms of violence is more likely. Moreover, the survey data of police personnel, collected through the already-established Gender and Security Sector Lab, allows the PI to explore how individual interests and beliefs, and unit cohesion affect the propensity of individual officers and groups of officers to abuse their authority.

Importantly, the project allows for the synthesis of evidence-based research with education through the development of an undergraduate “Politics of Policing” course and a master’s-level Civilian-Police (Civ-Pol) Certificate program for domestic and international police leadership and bureaucrats who oversee policing decisions. By integrating evidence-based research and research methods into these courses, the project trains the next generation of undergraduates to become public citizens by helping them develop original research, critical thought, and community-based solutions to police violence locally and it puts evidence-based research into the hands of those making decisions about policing globally.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.