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The Violence of Law-and-Order Politics: The Case of Law Enforcement Candidates in Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2023

LUCAS M. NOVAES Open the ORCID record for LUCAS M. NOVAES [Opens in a new window]
LUCAS M. NOVAES*
Affiliation:
Insper Institute for Education and Research, Brazil
*
Lucas M. Novaes, Assistant Professor, Insper Institute for Education and Research, Brazil, lucasmn2@insper.edu.br.
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Abstract

This article analyzes the effects on violence of electing law-and-order candidates at the local level. It argues that law-and-order politicians embedded in the police will divert resources to favor their constituency, which in violence-prone areas could generate more murders. Using ballot names of council candidates in thousands of local elections in Brazil to accurately classify law-and-order candidates, it shows that the election of police law-and-order candidates causes more homicides. Moreover, georeferenced data on police activity and homicides show neglect in areas that did not support a winning police law-and-order candidate, despite these areas being home to the majority of individuals vulnerable to violence. This favoritism, however, is not present in places where preexisting local institutions make policing more transparent. Instead of persecution directed against minorities or the incapacity to battle criminal gangs, this research shows that surges in violence can be the result of typical forms of democratic representation.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 118 , Issue 1 , February 2024 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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