The Politics of Police Violence in Democratic Brazil Ahnen, Ronald E. Latin American Politics & Society, Volume 49, Number 1, Spring 2007, pp. 141-164 (Article) Published by University of Miami DOI: 10.1353/lap.2007.0000 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lap/summary/v049/49.1ahnen.html Access Provided by Saint Marys College of California at 10/27/11 1:04AM GMT The Politics of Police Violence in Democratic Brazil Ronald E. Ahnen ABSTRACT More than a decade after Latin America’s most recent turn to democracy, unchecked police violence and torture continue and in some cases have increased. This study examines police killings in 19 Brazilian states from 1994 to 2001 and finds that democracy has not substantially reduced these types of human rights violations, for two reasons. First, underlying social conflict has continued to exert a significant impact on the lethal use of force by police officers. Second, pro-order political coalitions, generally represented by right-wing politicians, have blocked effective measures to control police violence and have implemented public safety measures that stress the use of force. The analysis emphasizes the nonteleological nature of democratization processes and demonstrates the strength of political forces working to maintain “illiberal democracy.” S ince the fall of the Brazilian military dictatorship and the return to democracy in 1985, human rights conditions in that country can best be described as very grave and, in some places, degenerating. Of course, the human rights agenda no longer focuses on the rights of politicians to criticize the state openly, but instead on the torture, disappearance, and assassination of common citizens by the military and civil police forces or other state agents. Studies indicate that since the return to democracy, the rate at which Brazilian police officers kill or torture their fellow citizens has not only risen substantially in some locales, but clearly constitutes excessive use of force and therefore abuse of basic rights (Caldeira 2000; Chevigny 1995; Méndez et al. 1999; NEV 1993). For example, in 1992, according to official statistics, São Paulo police were responsible for 1,470 civilian killings, or roughly 16 percent of all homicides in that state (Holston and Caldeira 1998). Both conventional wisdom and several cross-national studies suggest, however, that democratic governance is significantly associated with less human rights abuse, especially in terms of the violation of a person’s physical integrity by state agents (Davenport 1995, 1999; Fein 1995; Henderson 1991; Poe et al.1999; Poe and Tate 1994). At the heart of this democratic proposition lies a simple logic: when given a choice, voters will turn out of office leaders who do not rein in police abuse against common citizens like them. In addition, democratic institutions underscore negotiation, dialogue, and nonviolent resolu141 142 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 tion of conflict, which should also lessen human rights violations (hereafter HRVs). Brazil therefore presents a particularly puzzling case, because HRVs have increased since redemocratization. This study demonstrates that Brazil’s fluctuations in police violence occurred not in spite of its transition to democracy but partly because of it. Democracy gives citizens the opportunity to elect leaders who offer a heavy hand (mão forte) in dealing with the problem of crime and violence. When such candidates take office, they often institute changes in public safety policy that repress crime in ways that violate citizens’ basic rights. This study examines the rate of police killings in 19 Brazilian states from 1994 to 2001 in light of partisan electoral politics. The two major police forces in each state are the military and the civil police. Each has a different role. The military police are responsible for day-to-day policing of the streets, both preventing and repressing crime. The civil police are also known as the investigative or judiciary police, for their role is limited to criminal investigations. Because the police forces in Brazil are organized administratively at the state level of government, this study focuses on the political, ideological, and partisan identification of state governors. It posits that the partisanship of government leaders is a key explanatory variable in determining the rate that police officers employ deadly force. The study’s findings show that the rate of police killings is significantly lower in Brazilian states that are led by an executive from the left or center left as opposed to the center, center-right, or right. This study begins with a review of the literature on cross-national studies of human rights violations in general, and studies of human rights and police violence in Brazil in particular. It proposes a basic model of police violence in Brazil that takes electoral incentives into account. The model is tested using two estimates of the number and rate (per one hundred thousand residents) of police killings, and an estimate of the percentage of all reported homicides attributed to the police. The study finds that partisanship remains a robust determinant of the rate of killings by both the military and civil police forces. RESEARCH ON HUMAN RIGHTS In examining the literature on human rights abuse, the discussion here is limited to violations of physical integrity of the person; that is, freedom from torture, disappearance, and extrajudicial killings. This literature can best be divided, according to methodology, into two camps: cross-national analyses and case studies. In the past two decades, scholars conducting cross-national research on human rights abuse have made significant improvements both in methodology and in greater coverage of countries and time periods (Davenport 1995, 1999; Fein 1995; AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL 143 Henderson 1991; Poe et al. 1999; Poe and Tate 1994). As Davenport points out, these studies are grounded in rational choice theory, and conceptualize political repression as a strategic choice that governments make among a number of options in an attempt to bring about and maintain political quiescence. Governments are expected to employ repressive behavior when the value of quiescence and the probability of success are high and costs are low. Governments are less likely to violate human rights, however, when the value of quiescence and the probability of success are low and costs are high. (Davenport 1999, 95) A key finding of these studies is that democratic governance has an independent and significant impact on reducing human rights violations. It is interesting, however, that these studies differ substantially regarding the theoretical relationship between these variables. At least six different explanations have been offered to account for this positive association. Democratic leaders are more responsive to citizen demands, thus attenuating social conflict and eliminating the need for repression (Henderson 1991). Democracy provides nonviolent channels to settle disputes when they arise (Henderson 1991). Democracy allows for the removal of leaders who would be ready to use repression against the citizenry (Poe and Tate 1994). The civil liberties necessary for democracy allow for widespread revelations by the media of the activities of human rights abusers, thus bringing the weight of national and international opinion to bear on government leaders and lowering the propensity to abuse basic rights (Poe and Tate 1994). Citizens in democracies are socialized, and operate in a political culture that values nonviolence in dispute settlements (Mitchell and McCormick 1988). Finally, civil society in democracies is freer and better able to create mechanisms of control over the state’s monopoly of the legitimate use of force (Chevigny 1995). This literature suffers from two serious problems. First, as noted above, the relationship between democracy and human rights violations is overdetermined. The difficulty is that even when a statistically significant association between the variables is found, the researcher is still ignorant as to which of the six causal mechanisms (or which combination of the six) is responsible for generating the results. To resolve the problem, researchers must utilize alternative indicators that more closely approximate the specific theorized cause linked to democracy. The second problem is that the opposite direction of the hypothesis is rarely entertained in the literature on human rights, at least not theoretically; that is, that human rights conditions may deteriorate with the onset of democracy. Nevertheless, several studies include theoretical notions that support such a finding. One exception is Fein’s 1995 study 144 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 of human rights abuse and regime transitions. She finds that human rights violations are greater under nascent democratic regimes than under either established authoritarian or democratic regimes. Fein explains that the transition to democracy opens new avenues (both legal and political) for the excluded masses to rebel against the propertied class. Repression increases as the latter fears the victory of a populist government, potentially directly threatening their interests. In addition, several recent studies of democracy in Latin America demonstrate how democratic governance in the region does not function adequately to ensure the protection of basic freedoms enjoyed more widely in the postindustrial democracies (Collier and Munck 2001; Collier and Levitsky 1997; Diamond 1996, 1999; Dimenstein 1996; O’Donnell 1993, 1998, 1999). Democracy may be associated with an increase of HRVs for several reasons. As Fein theorizes, democracy may provide the opportunity for the marginalized classes to gain a populist victory, thus creating incentives for the middle and upper strata to employ repression in efforts to prevent it (Fein 1995). In a climate of growing crime and violence, citizens in newer democracies may vote for candidates who promise to reestablish order through greater use of repression. Another reason is that civil society in newer democracies is often more fragile because of a lack of resources and leadership experience, and therefore less likely to fulfill its role of holding abusive state agents accountable for their actions. The deteriorating economic and social conditions that helped usher in the transition to democracy can foster popular discontent and the concomitant use of repression by the elite to maintain public order. Furthermore, state institutions designed to protect individual rights (e.g., the judicial system) are often weak or only unevenly available to citizens, thereby allowing state agents to engage in repression with impunity and encouraging such action in the future. Given these several reasons that democracy should help to improve human rights conditions and another several to explain why it might not, I argue that the impact of democracy on respect for basic rights is indeterminate a priori, and depends on the social, political, and economic context in which it operates. This study seeks to make a significant contribution to the debate on the causal mechanisms by which democracy affects human rights conditions by focusing on partisanship and electoral politics with respect to public safety policies while controlling for important social and economic conditions. By employing variables that are more closely linked to the theorized propositions, we can surmount the problem of overdetermination and deepen our understanding of the specific links between democracy and human rights violations. In addition to regime type, several structural variables have received wide support in the literature on HRVs because they alter the costs and AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL 145 benefits of repression in the eyes of government leaders. Lower levels of economic development, for example, are associated with greater repression because scarcity is higher, and therefore conflict between the haves and have-nots is more acute (Poe and Tate 1994). Rapid rates of economic development generally increase repression because such growth is often uneven, generating swift economic dislocation and greater conflict among citizens (Olson 1963). Both poverty and inequality exacerbate the poor’s jealousy of the rich, prompting the former to rise up against the latter and generating incentives for greater repression (Henderson 1991). Cano and Santos (2001) employ urbanization as a key determinant of the general homicide rate in Brazilian states. It can be argued, however, that higher levels of urbanization are expected to be associated with greater police violence because the highly dense urban areas are where most of the drug-trafficking networks and other criminal activity that the police repress are found. Turning to case studies, scholars focusing on police violence under democracy in Brazil have, to date, put forth only broad sociopolitical explanations of human rights abuse. Chevigny (1995), for example, offers the pacification thesis. Here, police violence is viewed as the product of the natural progression from a traditional society to a more modern one. During an initial stage, citizens use force individually to provide their own security. At a subsequent stage, these citizens become horrified at the levels of violence in their society and decide to restrict their ability to use force against one another (e.g., by adopting strict gun laws), thereby granting a greater monopoly on the use of force to agents of the state. Chevigny argues that citizens accept these restrictions only in exchange for greater control over their police forces. Pereira (2000) argues that Brazil’s bifurcated society has led to a type of hybrid regime type he calls “elitist liberalism.” In his view, democracy (and its concomitant respect for individual rights) is firmly in place for the upper and middle classes of Brazil, but is only weak and fragile for the poor masses. With highly limited access to the state institutions designed to protect their rights, the poor bear the brunt of police violence, which the elite employ to obtain the poor’s quiescence in Brazil’s extremely unequal society. Pereira’s argument suggests that human rights conditions will improve only when elitist liberalism is overthrown and the principles of democracy are extended to protect all citizens. Neither of these theories, however, sheds light on how positive transformations toward greater protection of rights might occur. Most important, as phenomena of society as a whole, such theories cannot account for the ample variation in police violence observed in Brazil. Other case studies of police violence in Brazil emphasize how institutional and policy factors play a significant role in reducing such violence. These factors include improved police training, higher salaries, 146 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 stricter use of force guidelines, and reduced levels of impunity (Bicudo 1994; Cano 1997; de Amorin Ratton 1996; Mesquita Neto 1999; O’Donnell 1999; Pinheiro 1996). While these factors probably do shape the propensity of police officers to use deadly force, reliable and comparable data on these variables across the Brazilian states are not available. More fundamentally, however, these policy prescriptions are probably tied to the political project of government leaders according to their ideological leanings. PUBLIC SECURITY, ELECTORAL INCENTIVES, AND PARTISANSHIP Issues of crime, public safety, and the arbitrary use of (often lethal) violence are pressing electoral issues that one can reasonably expect voters to consider when casting their vote. Indeed, then presidential candidate José Serra declared public security the most important issue of the 2002 presidential campaign (Jornal do Brasil 2002). The key theoretical contribution of the present analysis is that it does not assume a strong homogeneous concern across all citizens for greater protection of rights, as the logic laid out by Davenport above suggests. Instead, the public safety issue is problematized, conceptualized as a political partisan issue that boils down to stressing one of two major goals. The first goal is greater control of crime and increased public safety. Often, leaders confronted with rising crime reach toward a simple solution: increased (and often more violent) police action. Concern for individual rights (especially the rights of those being pursed by the police) can weaken in such a context, even to the point of being nonexistent. Politicians who take this stance are often labeled law and order candidates, though their policy prescriptions are most often heavy on order and very light on law. This position can be called the public order position. Governor Luís Antonio Fleury of São Paulo (1990–94) promulgated this view. [t]he fact that this year there were more deaths caused by the [military police] means that they are more active. The more police in the streets, the more chances of confrontations between criminals and policemen. . . . From my point of view, what the population wants is that the police act boldly. (Quoted in Holston and Caldeira 1998, 272) The opposing viewpoint is that the problems of crime and violence must not be solved by trampling the very rights that engendered the struggle for democracy and against the military dictatorship. Candidates who profess this view emphasize rooting out police corruption, retraining police officers, creating an ombudsman to hear civilian complaints AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL 147 against the police, and so on as major public safety platforms. More broadly, these candidates argue that social and economic reforms, especially more resources for education, health, and employment generation, hold the greatest promise for solving the crime problem. This can be called the individual rights position. More sophisticated versions of this latter position marry the twin goals of police restraint and reduced crime, claiming that crime will be reduced only when the police forces consist of honest individuals acting in a professional manner, equipped with more sophisticated tools than just a handgun. For example, in his book on public safety, which helped launch his successful gubernatorial bid in Rio de Janeiro in 1998, Anthony Garotinho declared, “We propose a broad coalition and democracy against barbarity: 1) the law is the limit of authority, 2) with respect to public safety, the trade-off between efficiency and civil rights is false” (Garotinho et al. 1998). Whether such a trade-off actually exists or whether it is possible to marry the two goals is irrelevant to the present analysis. The trade-off often appears real to candidates and voters alike in considering their preferred positions and making appeals or in making voting decisions. The key hypothesis in this study is that governors on the right or center-right favor the public order position and that therefore their states exhibit higher rates of police killings, while politicians on the left or center-left favor the individual rights position, and their states have lower rates of police killings. The reasoning behind this hypothesis is found in the historical roots of contemporary conservative and liberal philosophies. Heywood (2003) notes, for example, that traditional conservative views stress that human nature is “imperfect” and that individuals are generally motivated to act based on their “fear [of] isolation and instability” (75–76). Thus, conservatives emphasize the need for maintaining social order through a rigorous application of the law, even at the expense of some liberty. Liberal philosophy, on the other hand, posits the primacy of the individual to act as he or she sees fit. Left to themselves, individuals will behave well, and the government would do best to control the actions of individuals as little as possible (Heywood 2003, 28–30). Thus, the leftist approach to public safety policy emphasizes protecting the rights of individuals apprehended by the police and the need to reduce and punish possible excess use of force against citizens by police officers. It is interesting that these views do not overlap neatly with economic class. As Mainwaring et al. (2000) show, support for the left parties often comes from the middle class, while the conservative parties have a strong base in the more underdeveloped areas of the country (68–71). This finding echoes poll research indicating that the acceptance of violence as a means of social control among the citizenry is stronger 148 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 in underdeveloped areas in Brazil. In 2002, for example, 29.4 percent of Brazilian respondents overall indicated that it is either right or usually right for a police officer to kill a suspect after being apprehended, but the respective average for the north and northeastern regions of the country was 36.4 percent and for the remaining regions 26.0 percent. Likewise, when asked about whether the police could physically beat a suspect in order to obtain a confession, 35.9 percent of all Brazilians felt that this was right or usually right, but the percentage rose to an astonishing 45.1 percent in the northern and northeastern states and fell to 35.5 percent in the other states (PESB 2002). CONTROL VARIABLES Previous analyses have found support for a number of factors as significant determinants of human rights abuse, including lower levels of economic development, rapid rates of economic expansion, higher rates of poverty and inequality, the presence of civil or international war, and greater population density. This study uses five control variables: • • • • • Number of nonpolice homicides in the state Illiteracy rate Infant mortality rate Level of inequality Population density Police violence is expected to increase in the face of higher homicide rates as governors feel the heat from voters to provide adequate public security. The remaining four variables control for social conditions that the literature has widely suggested exhibit a positive association with police violence. High rates of illiteracy and infant mortality are chosen as indicators of lower levels of economic development. We would expect the use of deadly force by police officers to increase where illiteracy and infant mortality are higher because social conflict among classes is sharper at lower levels of development. In addition, a less formally educated citizenry will be less capable of organizing itself to serve as an oversight body of the police forces. More police killings are also expected where inequality is higher because the poor become jealous of the rich and rebel against the social system that has left them materially behind. In response, the rich attempt to thwart their efforts via repression. With respect to population density, two hypotheses are possible. First, we might expect more police killings in the less densely populated areas of the country, where politicians often act in collaboration with local judges and law enforcement to control what is essentially a small AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL 149 fiefdom. On the other hand, we might expect more police killings in the more densely populated areas as a reaction to a greater intensity of violent criminal activity. Thus the expected direction of the relationship between population density and police violence remains undetermined. DATA AND METHODOLOGY The most consistent and reliable figures on police killings in Brazil come from the Database on Criminal Violence (Banco de dados sobre violência, BDV) maintained by the National Human Rights Movement (Movimento Nacional de Direitos Humanos, MNDH), in Brasília. The BDV consists of data about all homicides reported in several newspapers in each state to ensure the most complete and comprehensive account of homicides possible. Data collection is carried out by local human rights organizations affiliated with the MNDH. Collection began in 1992 with only 5 of 27 states participating that year and the next. Participation has waxed and waned to the present, with some states joining the project while others have dropped out. The original database contained information on 107,984 homicides, including 8,035 attributed to police officers and municipal guards from 1994 through 2004. Since the inclusion of states and years is unbalanced, this study attempts to minimize bias by including only those states that reported data for at least four years. The resulting dataset contains information on 99,724 homicides, including 7,834 alleged killings by police officers reported in newspapers in 19 states between 1994 and 2001. The analysis uses a pooled time series regression analysis with panel corrected standard errors on a dataset of 127 cases. Previous research has demonstrated convincingly that official data on police killings in Brazil are incomplete and unreliable. The federal government has only recently begun to compile public security statistics nationally (Ministry of Justice 2002). Unfortunately, even these federal government tallies take for granted the reliability of the statistics reported by states. While the federal government does maintain relatively reliable data on general homicides for all states, these figures are not sorted by alleged perpetrator. In his very careful study of military police violence in Rio de Janeiro, Cano (1997) shows that the methodology employed to record police killings is quite unreliable, especially due to duplicate paperwork filed for many cases (15–18). Cano painstakingly corrected the accounting errors regarding homicides by the military police from 1993 to 1996 by reviewing each case of the use of force. His research provides the most meticulously corrected and accurate data available on police killings for Rio de Janeiro to date. Unfortunately, however, his data cover only killings by the military police from 1993 to the first half of 150 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 1996, and data from the BDV overlap with his dataset for only three years (1994–96). Nevertheless, the coefficient of correlation between Cano’s data and the BDV is .972, further suggesting that the BDV data are both accurate and reliable.1 The BDV dataset comprises more than 40 separate categories of police officers, disaggregating, for example, instances in which a military or civil police officer is on or off duty, and cases in which the officer is acting with others, such as criminals, death squads, and private security guards. Information about which police force (military or civil) the alleged perpetrator belongs to is often unavailable. The current analysis collapsed the BDV categories into only three classifications: military police (including any category that includes the military police per se, whether on or off duty or acting with other agents), civil police (including all categories that include civil police except those that combine military and civil police, which are included in the former), and other police (where no indication of force is given). The analysis is separated into three parts: killings by the military police, the civil police, and all police (includes military, civil, and the residual police categories summed together). The use of data gathered from newspapers has the danger of introducing a bias among the more populous states and thereby the question of reliability. Specifically, newspapers in such states report a far lower percentage of homicides than those in the less populous states. The explanation for this is clear: because newspapers in populous states have so many homicides to cover, they limit their reporting to the more newsworthy ones. Of course, one could argue that killings by police officers are exactly the type of homicide that would not go unreported, thus reducing if not eliminating this bias. Yet with rates of underreporting of homicides as high as two-thirds or more in some states, this seems unlikely.2 A comparison of the official homicide statistics as reported by the Ministry of Health with the BDV demonstrates that the bias is statistically significant (see table 1). This study uses a simple and straightforward correction to this possible bias and runs the analysis on both the raw and corrected data. The correction is based on the assumption that the number of police killings reported in newspapers is indeed underreported, but that because police killings are more interesting to the public, the underreporting rate is probably not as high as the general underreporting rate. Therefore I split the difference and estimate the number of police killings left unreported to be 50 percent as high as the general underreporting rate. For example, if newspapers in a particular state and year report 40 homicides by police and exhibit an overall reporting rate of homicides of 80 percent (underreporting rate of 20 percent), we may estimate 5 additional homicides, for a total estimate of 45 police killings.3 In addition AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL 151 Table 1. Average Annual Rate of Homicides as Reported in Newspapers, 19 Brazilian States, 1994–2001 Roraima Acre Tocantins Sergipe Amazonas Federal District Rio Grande do Norte Alagoas Piauí Espírito Santo Paraíba Goiás Pará Ceará Pernambuco Rio Grande do Sul Bahia Rio de Janeiro São Paulo Pearson Correlation Reported Rate (%) Population 122 130 78 59 82 52 50 78 151 116 140 52 84 92 50 33 102 30 31 197,919 343,837 1,114,498 1,691,489 1,897,778 1,934,875 2,630,959 2,693,274 2,718,521 2,905,256 3,357,516 4,769,428 5,768,451 6,939,375 7,534,110 9,889,365 12,881,865 13,703,318 35,398,542 –0.47 p = .02 Note: States are listed from least to most populous. Sources: MNDH, BDV; IBGE estimates for 1998 population based on 1996 and estimated growth rates. to the actual number, this analysis also calculates the rate of police killings per one hundred thousand residents in the state and estimates the model using it (both actual and estimated). Further, the model is used to estimate the percentage of all homicides in each state that are alleged to be committed by police officers. Operationalization of Independent Variables The key independent variable in this study is the position of the governor on the left-right spectrum of political ideology. Political parties in Brazil are known for their relative weakness and lack of coherence. Indeed, party switching is endemic; many politicians belong to as many as seven different parties over the course of their political careers. 152 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 Because partisanship does not correlate well with specific public policy positions taken by individual politicians, finding support for this hypothesis should not be easy. This variable is operationalized into three categories: right, center, or left. Right and center-right parties are based on Mainwaring et al.’s classification (2000, 31–32) and Power’s surveys of the Brazilian Congress throughout the 1990s (Power 2000). Considered to be at the ideological center are governors from two parties: the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) and the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB). The rest of the governors are from parties considered to be of the left.4 For the remaining independent variables, the number of nonpolice homicides is estimated by subtracting the number of police homicides from the total. Data on homicides are available from the Brazilian Ministry of Health’s database on mortality (DATASUS 2002).5 Methodological Considerations As is standard with pooled time series, heteroskedasticity across panels is assumed here.6 Since this dataset contains more panels than time periods, autocorrelation is less of a problem, and therefore least squares dummy variables regression is used. This consists of OLS regression with panel corrected standard errors. The complete model is as follows: depvar = ␣ + ␤1popden + ␤2nphom + ␤3right + ␤4rt2020 + ␤5ill+ ␤6infmort + ␧ Depvar is one of five dependent variables (number of police homicides, number of estimated police homicides, police homicide rate, estimated police homicide rate, and the percentage of all homicides that are attributed to the police) for each of the three police categories (military, civil, and all). Popden is population density per square kilometer; right is the party of the governor; rt2020 is the ratio of the top 20 percent of income earners to the bottom 20 percent—an indicator of inequality; ill is the rate of illiteracy; and infmort is the rate of infant mortality. FINDINGS The first important finding is that the number of police homicides varies significantly by police force (see table 2). That is, military police officers are responsible for five times as many homicides as civil police officers. Of course, the military police force in each state is generally larger, but usually in a ratio of about three to one. Therefore, even for their respective size, the military police are more likely to use deadly force than the AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL 153 Table 2. Homicides by Police Officers in 19 States, 1994–2001 Military Police Civil Police Other Policea All Police Number Percent 6,021 1,067 747 7,835 76.8 13.6 9.5 100.0 a Includes police officers not identified by force, and may include both civil and military police officers. Source: MNDH, BDV. civil police. This finding was expected, however, given the nature of respective policing duties noted above. A second finding is that the level of police homicides varies substantially across Brazilian states, as measured in two different ways. First, the percentage of all homicides attributed to the police is very high in three states with percentages above 15 percent: Rio de Janeiro, Pará, and Bahia (table 3). The state with the fourth-highest percentage of reported police homicides (Rio Grande do Norte) has only about half those percentages (7.8 percent); from there the percentage declines slowly to 2.9 percent for Roraima. With respect to the rate of police homicides and estimated police homicides, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia again demonstrate accentuated levels, while Pará falls in ranking to eighth place and Acre jumps to second place (figure 1, p. 155). If the high rankings of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia with respect to police homicides per one hundred thousand residents bear out the conventional wisdom that police violence takes place primarily in large urban centers, the ranking of the two smallest states of Acre and Roraima does not confirm that notion. With respect to the rate, these two states have the second- and seventh-most violent police forces among the states considered, while Rio Grande do Sul, a very populous state with a very large capital city, has the least. Examining the trends of police violence across years from 1994 to 2001 reveals both good and bad news (figure 2, p. 156). The good news is that rate of homicides by all police officers has declined generally over the period in question. The overall rate of estimated police homicides decreased by almost 9 percent, although the trend does show substantial fluctuations. For example, estimates show that the rate at which the military police employed deadly force grew steadily for two years through 1996, dropped for one year, then peaked in 1998. Sharp declines in reported police homicide rates are evident in 1999 and 2000, but the trend moves sharply upward again in 2001. Figure 2 also demonstrates that the rate for total police killings is clearly driven by homicides by military police officers. No strong patterns of homicides 154 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 Table 3. Homicides by Police Officers as Percentage of All Homicides as Reported in State Newspapers, 19 States, 1994–2001 Rio de Janeiro Pará Bahia Rio Grande do Norte Piauí São Paulo Alagoas Federal District Pernambuco Paraíba Sergipe Goiás Acre Tocantins Rio Grande do Sul Ceará Amazonas Espirito Santo Roraima Military Police Civil Police Other Police All Police 15.2 9.1 8.1 4.8 5.1 5.9 4.4 4.7 4.4 4.2 2.2 3.4 2.7 3.4 3.2 3.3 2.0 2.8 0.6 1.7 3.9 4.7 1.1 1.2 0.1 1.2 0.9 1.5 1.0 2.2 0.7 1.3 0.7 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.2 1.5 0.2 2.5 2.7 1.8 1.0 0.8 1.0 0.9 0.4 0.5 1.1 0.5 0.4 0.2 0.6 0.2 1.0 0.2 0.8 17.0 15.4 15.4 7.8 7.2 6.8 6.6 6.6 6.3 5.6 5.5 4.6 4.4 4.3 4.2 4.0 3.6 3.2 2.9 Note: Based on available data. Source: MNDH, BDV. by the civil police emerge from the data. The rate of homicides by the civil police is much lower than that of the military police—again, more than the difference in size of the two forces would account for. Reported civil police homicides declined by nearly 45 percent from 1994 to 1997, but the trend has been upward since then. We can now examine the rate of police killings using a pooled time series regression analysis.7 The first results correspond to five different modes of the dependent variable with respect to the military police (table 4, p. 157). When predicting the number or estimated number of reported homicides attributed to the military police, all the control variables except inequality and illiteracy are statistically significant and in the expected direction. The coefficient for illiteracy does not reach statistical significance, and inequality lies in the opposite direction from that hypothesized above. The overall model explains roughly 70 percent of the variance in the number of police homicide victims across states and years. The substantive finding with respect to political partisanship AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL 155 Figure 1. Rate of Reported and Estimated Police Homicides in 19 States, 1994–2001 is that the number of police homicides in a given state and year increases by an average of 24 to 43 when the governor comes from a party of the right. The standardized (beta) coefficients show that partisanship is not as important as population density and nonpolice homicides in predicting military police homicides. With respect to the rate of police homicides, the overall model accounts for much less of the variance among states when only the reported rates are used (R2 = .23), but does about twice as well when the estimates are used (R2 = .44). The political variable is again significant, and lies in the expected direction in both models. An increase of 0.1 in the rate of killing per 100,000 when the governor is of the right may not sound high, but in a state like São Paulo, this suggests an extra 33 police homicide victims every year, after controlling for the other variables. The beta weights are stronger here with respect to the other variables, however, and roughly on par with nonpolice homicides and about half to a third as important as population density. All variables reach statistical significance (p < .05) in the final model, but the surprise here is the negative association with the nonpolice homicide variable. Again, the substantive conclusion with this model is that the police account for 1.2 percent more homicides in states that are governed by the right, controlling for the other variables. Turning to the civil police, the overall model performs much less well, which is not surprising, given the low variation noted in civil 156 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 Figure 2. Rates of Reported and Estimated Police Homicides by Year, 1994–2001 police homicides (see table 5, p. 158). Still, only one variable achieves statistical significance in all five estimations and lies in the expected direction: the political variable. With respect to the number of police homicides, the results indicate that states with governors from parties of the right report between 3 and 5 more homicides by the civil police when controlling for the other variables. An examination of the beta weights of the partisan variable reveals substantial variation and leads to no straightforward conclusions. Probably most interesting here is that the nonpolice homicide variable performs much less well in these models, and in two of them does not reach statistical significance. This result indicates that lethal violence by the civil police is much less linked to the overall crime and violence exhibited in the state. An analysis of total reported police killings yields results similar to the findings for the military police alone. The major difference is that the coefficient for the political variable rises; to wit, states governed by executives from the right exhibit between 31 and 51 more police homicide victims than those governed by a center-left or left party. In addition, the coefficient for the rate of police killings rises between .23 and .33 per 100,000. Again, in a large state such as São Paulo, this signifies between 76 and 100 more police homicides per year when the state is governed by the right. Table 4. Regression Analysis of Homicides by the Military Police as Reported in Statewide Newspapers, 1994–2001 Estimated Military Police Homicides _________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta 20.7 .368*** .067*** 24.0*** –2.04*** 65.5* .901*** .128*** 43.8*** –5.84*** 14.7 .039 .004 5.67 .549 .400 .620 .186 –.149 28.2 .064 .007 13.0 1.06 127 .70 127 .71 Estimated Military Police Homicides per 100,000 _____________________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta Constant Population density Nonpolice homicides Right-wing governor Inequality Illiteracy N R-square .943*** .007*** 2.9e–04*** .294* –.031** .459 .558 .160 –.177 .226 .001 8.9e–04 .129 .011 127 .44 .593 .210 .172 –.149 Military Police Homicides per 100,000 _________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta .367*** .003*** 1.5e–04*** .206* .044 4.0e–04 3.0e–05 .081 .412 .254 .219 127 .23 Military Police Homicides as Percentage of All Reported Homicides _____________________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta .045*** .0002*** 8.73e–06*** .012*** –.001*** .001** .011 1.86e–05 2.24e–06 .002 4.2e–04 2.57e–04 127 .29 157 Notes to tables 4, 5, and 6: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001; only trimmed models shown. Sources: MNDH BDV; IBGE; DATASUS. .496 .187 .218 –.208 .215 AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL Constant Population density Nonpolice homicides Right-wing governor Inequality Illiteracy N R-square Military Police Homicides _________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta .001 127 .13 .252 Estimated Civil Police Homicides per 100,000 ____________________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta .438* .190 8.1e–04* 3.5e–04 .226 –.015* .007 –.254 .092*** .025 .187 .006*** .001 127 .12 127 .07 Civil Police Homicides as Percentage of All Reported Homicides ____________________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta .018*** .005 –4.6e–04** .003** 3.0e–04*** 1.6e–04 .001 5.2e–05 –.019 .014 .020 .194 49: 1 Constant Population density Inequality Right-wing governor Illiteracy Infant mortality Nonpolice homicides N R-square .005*** Estimated Civil Police Homicides Civil Police Homicides per 100,000 _________________________ _________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta Coeff. Std. Err. Beta 13.0* 5.70 .133** .048 .104** .035 .312 –.981*** .274 –.176 3.20* 1.37 .069 .102*** .017 .263 .387*** .092 .125 .160* .055 .003* .001 .123 .006*** .002 .155 –3.5e–05*** 1.0e–05 –.108 127 127 .13 .12 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY Constant Population density Inequality Right-wing governor Illiteracy Infant mortality Nonpolice homicides N R-square Civil Police Homicides _________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta 4.65 3.87 .034** .013 .199 –.406* .172 –.142 4.47** 1.56 .188 .395*** .068 .250 158 Table 5. Regression Analysis of Homicides by the Civil Police as Reported in Statewide Newspapers, 1994–2001 Table 6. Regression Analysis of Homicides by All Police as Reported in Statewide Newspapers, 1994–2001 All Police Homicides per 100,000 _________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta .708*** .059 .003*** 4.0e-04 .364 1.0e–04* 4.9e-05 .105 .331*** .071 .290 127 .69 127 .71 127 .23 Estimated All Police Homicides per 100,000 ____________________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta 1.67*** .320 .009*** .001 .642 2.7e–04** 8.5e–05 .185 .230* .091 .118 –.053*** .012 –.227 127 .46 127 .29 All Police Homicides as Percentage of All Reported Homicides ____________________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta .088*** .013 2.5e–04*** 2.0e–05 .579 .018*** –.003*** .001*** .003 6.1e–04 3.6e–04 .251 –.348 .209 159 Constant Population density Nonpolice homicides Right-wing governor Inequality Illiteracy N R-square Estimated All Police Homicides _________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta 82.5* 33.0 .978*** .083 .439 .149*** .006 .576 50.8*** 12.0 .164 –6.52*** 1.26 –.175 AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL Constant Population density Nonpolice homicides Right-wing governor Inequality Illiteracy N R-square All Police Homicides _________________________ Coeff. Std. Err. Beta 24.9 19.8 .371*** .030 .350 .080*** .005 .652 31.2*** 6.18 .213 –2.03** .743 –.115 160 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 CONCLUSIONS This study advances our understanding of the relationship between democracy and the protection of basic rights in several ways. First, scholars must be ready to buck the conventional wisdom regarding the relationship between human rights and democracy, and to examine the conditions under which democracy (in its minimalist electoral form) might also lead to more human rights violations. Second, this analysis brings to light a subtle and important assumption that runs through much of the democratic consolidation literature: that members of a society do not necessarily share an equal interest in promoting the effective guarantee of physical integrity rights for all citizens. In short, the politics of democratization are distinct from the politics of democratic consolidation. This is especially true if what we mean by democratic consolidation is not only the growing assurance that democratic governance will not be reversed, but the deepening of democratic principles so that state institutions treat all citizens in ways that protect their individual rights no matter what. Understanding partisan politics is key to understanding outcomes of human rights conditions in nascent democracies. The analysis here demonstrates that governors on the right end of the spectrum are associated with significantly greater rates of killing by the military and civil police forces. Partisanship was shown to be a robust explanatory variable in predicting rates of police violence using both raw data and superior estimates, though not the only or even the most important determinant. If partisan politics is key to understanding the lethal use of police force, the analysis also clearly demonstrates that controlling or diminishing key social maladies could greatly contribute to fighting this problem. Lethal police violence significantly increases in densely populated areas and areas where the level of homicides is already high. Key indicators of poverty, such as the levels of infant mortality and illiteracy, often proved significant determinants of police violence, as expected. When controlling for these variables, however, inequality was often significant but consistently opposite to the hypothesized direction. This research demonstrates, then, the link between economic policy and the use of lethal violence by state agents. The good news here is that police violence can be reduced once politicians find political support for such a policy among the electorate. Ultimately, however, this is bad news for those who believe in the basic principles of liberal democracy, for the protection of individual rights should not depend to such a large extent on the partisanship of the executive. After all, the rights guaranteed by the constitution do not change with the arrival of a new governor. Instead, supporters of a strong human rights agenda must implement rights protection mechanisms that are either legally difficult or politically costly to change. In AHNEN: POLICE VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL 161 this way, the protection of fundamental rights for all citizens will slowly become less a partisan issue, as members of different classes come to understand the inherent value of liberty for all. Such institutionalization of rights protection is, of course, itself a partisan political issue in the short run. Thus, we might still expect parties on the left to take the lead in implementing such rights-enhancing reforms. Finally, there is no guarantee that the right political conditions exist to achieve such strong democratic consolidation. As many scholars have noted, the democratic regimes we observe in Latin America are wanting in important respects—so important that many scholars refuse to classify them as democracies. Research on the politics of human rights protection can help us understand the extent to which achieving a more inclusive democratic governance might be possible. NOTES Research for this project was supported by a grant from the Faculty Development Fund of St. Mary’s College of California. The National Human Rights Movement of Brazil also generously provided access to its database on violence, without which this project could not have been completed. I wish to thank Jonathan Hartlyn, Claudio Fuentes, Susan Weissman, and four anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments on various drafts of the manuscript. All errors or omissions are my own. 1. P-value for the correlation is .075 for a one-tailed test. The average number of police killings across the three years is 280 in the BDV and 318 in Cano’s data, a difference of 38, or less than 14 percent. As expected, the BDV data undercount Cano’s reported number of military police killings. 2. It is curious that newspapers in some states report a total number of homicides greater than the official government figure for that year. Nevertheless, the Health Ministry notes that its statistics are not complete, and typically include only about 80 percent of all deaths, though the number should theoretically also be higher for homicides. For greater discussion on this point see Cano and Santos 2001; Amorin Ratton 1996. 3. Another plausible assumption is that police officers have more resources with which to hide their misdeeds, and therefore the underreporting of killings by police officers should not differ from the general underreporting rate. This estimate is also calculated, but analysis of the results shows that the substantive conclusions of this study do not change under this assumption. 4. The coding is right or center-right = 1, center = 0, left or center-left = 1. Data available from Nicolau (1998) and TSE (2002). 5. As per Cano and Santos (2001), this analysis recognizes the incompleteness of Ministry of Health data. Especially noteworthy is the undercounting of homicides; many deaths from external causes are listed as “indeterminate” (meaning unsure if they were accidents, suicides, or homicides) because of police and other pressure on coroners’ offices. After carefully studying data on deaths from both the Ministry of Health and the Public Safety Office in Rio de 162 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 49: 1 Janeiro, Cano and Santos’s solution is to count as intentional homicides 10 percent of the total number of deaths due to external causes but listed as indeterminate. 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