If you have issues viewing or accessing this file, please contact us at NCJRS.gov. i ~a37t, National Institute of Justice and U.S. State Department Policing in Emerging Democracies Workshop k Prepared Papers and Participant Biographies l i C.O 03 P', I~ COCO f~f~ 1 r~3~ December 14-15, 1995 W.=- W-= Washington, DC DATABASE DOCUMENT SCREENING Document Checking (DUPE Checkiag) ............. TMP#_ Screening Decision:(in~ OUT (Circle) BRS Rec'd Date: Publication Date: ~"~CO.~.C~ Page Numbers: [ "'" l~ '/ BJS ~ AIDS (AID) FUNDING/GRANTS (FND) _.~'NIJ ~ COMPUTERS/I"ECHNOLQGY (TEC) __ GANGS (GNG) OJJDP ~ CORRECTIONS (cOt) JUVENILES (JUV) ONOcP ~ cRIME PrEvEntIon (coP) OVC ~ CRIMINOLOGY(C JR) __ STATISTICS (STA) BJA (grants only) ~ COURTS (CTS) VICTIMS (VRC) ~. DRUGS (DAC) GRANT# I .N~r.RNATIONAL International SPONSORINGAGENCY: IDE Foreign Document "['itlc/'rranslation ( 10 page minimum/publication date no later than 3 yearsI INTl.,.ATIVES BJS INTER'L STATISTICS DRUGS & CRIME STATISTICS YOUTII. GUNS & VIOLENCE SPF-C!AL SERVICES MEMO: NIJ Catalog Recommendations: YES REFERENCE SCREENING: Screener's Initials -- Dale Screened 9/93 David H. Bayley Dean and Professor School of Criminal Justice 1 University at Albany State University of New York 4 October 1995 Conference: Policing in Emerging Democracies WHO ARE WE KIDDING? or DEVELOPING DEMOCRACY THROUGH POLICE REFORM My thoughts are the topic are organized into three parts: Principles, by which I mean unavoidable impediments in achieving democracy through police reform. Possibilities, referring to opportunities through police reform that may be exploited. Policies, which will be specific recommendations for getting the job done. PRINCIPLES If the objective of American policy is to encourage and facilitate the reform of police forces abroad so as to smooth transitions to democracy, policy-makers must recognize three unavoidable constraints on their efforts. I. FIRST PRINCIPLE: unless a regime is dedicated to becoming democratic, there is little that reform of the police can accomplish on its own to bring about democracy. Although the police can affect politics in important ways, their autonomy is slight. The most important effects police might have on democracy depend on the policies of regimes. COROLLARY: the police can undermine democracy and they can reinforce it, but they cannot create it. Argument: ways in which police impact political life (i) Direct effects (a) On persons who want to act politically~ Dy arrest, de-tention, ~ exile. ~ (b) On the conduct of political processes, such as elections, public meetings, freedom of speech, protecting dissent, and providing physical and logistic support to political campaigns. 2 (c) On the safety of regimes: by defending or not defending them against violence. (d) On the content of policy: by participating in councils of government, by having privileged access to leaders, by threatening to give or withhold support to government, and by political mobilization (election blocs). (2) Indirect effects (a) Socialization of the public: as teachers of civic virtues. (b) Legitimation of government: in use of force, openness, defence of rights, corruption, lack of favoritism, etc. (c) Demonstration-effect: police can serve as a model for other sectors of society with respect to diversity vs exclusion, merit vs ascription, honesty vs venality, equality vs inequality before the law, science vs tradition. (d) Participation in development: physical and logistical support for economic development (communications) and creation of .......... demand--for modern--technologyand ............ infrastructure (roads, computers). (Bayley, 1985, Chap. 8). POINT: for the most part, these activities are matters of government initiative or at least approval by government. Police are not free-standinq bureaucratic actors. Their autonomy is probably greater with respect to their indirect effects, which might be where foreign assistance should con concentrate. COROLLARY: it is misguided to believe that a foreign government can cultivate democracy abroad through involvement in police reform if the regime is not already committed to democracy and willing to practice it. 2. SECOND PRINCIPLE: the connection between democracy and the forms of policing is weak. Democracy is compatible with many forms of policing; policing may be organized and conducted similarly in both democratic and non-democratic countries. The character of government and the character of the police do not neatly coincide. 3 Argument: police attributes and their relation to democracy (I) National organization of policing - centralization/decentralization: many contemporary democratic countries have centralized regimes (Sweden, France, Israel); decentralized systems of policing are compatible with repression (Germany prior to World War I, the United States in the South prior to the 1960s) (2) Accountability - civilian oversight: close political oversight is not necessarily democratic (former Soviet Union, Cuba); oversight primarily by bureaucrats is compatible with democracy (France, Japan); the balance between political control and political insulation is rarely stable; it must be adjusted constantly as it veers toward one extreme or the other (Colombia, India, the United States). (3) Organization/management: democracy is not strongly correlated with whether recruitment is stratified by rank or occurs only at the bottom (Japan vs Britain), whether criminal investigation is part of the uniformed police or separate from it (United States vs France), and whether police are armed or unarmed (United States vs New Zealand). (4) Strategies/programs: community-oriented policing can be used for grassroots ownership of policing or for enhanced government control through penetration, intimidation, and cooptation (U.S. and Canada vs. Singapore, China, and Cuba). (5) Technology: enhancement of the technical capacity of the police is ambiguous in its effects: it may serve the interests of governments or of the public depending on the nature of the government. POINT: Police reform is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creating democratic government. Reforms focusinq exclusively on the police are insufficient to create democratic qovernment. Indeed, most reforms are neutral in their political effects. Moreover, almost any police practice can be exploited by 9 determined regim e for its own purposes. Michael Oakshott:-It is "one of the most insidious current misundertandings" that "institutions and procedures appear as pieces of machinery designed to achieve a purpose settled in advance, instead of as manners of behavior which are meaningless when separated from their context." (RATIONALISM IN POLITICS AND OTHER ESSAYS, 1962, p. 130) FIRST COROLLARY: American police practices do not necessarily encourage democracy. We must be careful not to over-generalize from our own national experience. SECOND COROLLARY: Americans engaged in police reform abroad must listen as well as teach so that they can better appreciate what is essentially democratic in American practice. 3. THIRD PRINCIPLE: during transitions to democracy, democratic reform of the police is likely to be less important to emerging democratic governmments than security. Argument: the emphasis on security arises in policing arises from two sources. A. Political interest of emerging democratic regimes: (i) democracy requires stability and order, yet transitions to it are often accompanied by violence and disorder; (2) threats to regimes always take priority .... over--threats-to-thedisaggregate_public. (subversion over crime) (Bayley, 1985); (3) at the same time, the legitimacy of government requires providing internal order for the population. B. National interests of foreign donors: (i) access to police abroad will only be allowed if the security needs of the emerging democratic regimes are acknowledged and provided for; enhancement of the security capacity of the police in an emerging democracy is likely to be the sine qua non of access for foreign government involvement; One might call this the involvement dilemma: we will want to remain involved so as to have leverage, but remaining involved exposes us to compromise with reformist principles. It is awkward both to leave and to stay. (2) because donor countries often have their own law enforcement interests in foreign 5 countries (drugs, terrorism, fugitives, organized crime), responsibility for which is concentrated in national governments, foreign providers are likely to be interested in police abroad not only to facilitate political reform but to achieve their own domestic law enforcement objectives. POINT: in providing assistance to foreign police, democratic reform is likely to take second place to the development of enforcement capacity. POSSIBILITIES Granting that there are limits to the contribution police reform can make to democratic development, there are nonetheless possibilities for leverage. Recommendations with respect to the sort of involvement the United States should have with foreign police forces are given under point 3. I. Foreign assistance to police forces is not a new or unprecedented undertaking. It has a long history and is being conducted currently on a considerable scale. Foreign assistance is occurring presently through: (a) institutional connections between countries based on historical patterns of association and conquest (Britain-Malaysia, U.S.-Philippines, U.S.- Japan, Belgium-Zaire, Britain-Australia, France-North Africa); (b) commercial firms developing international