To face the challenge of public safety provision, states have opted for two different approaches: democratization of policing or militarization. When it comes to democratization, some states have employed measures to involve citizens in co-participation in matters of security, with the objective of bringing citizens closer to police forces. Other states, however, have opted for militarizing their provision of security, separating citizens even farther from the police. In these last 30 years, militarization has been easier than democratization because in some countries, citizens trust the military more than they do the police, even in countries where military dictatorships took place. This study examines whether separating citizens from those who provide their security also distances citizens from other parts of the state. The decision to either democratize or militarize citizen security affects what citizens think about and do in relation to state institutions, impacting citizen-state linkage. Importantly, the way politicians speak about citizen security affects the different ways decisions of policing are taken and how citizens also make their minds about it. Thus, this study has a broader impact in showing how, from rhetoric to decision-making to implementation, the way politicians approach policing will ultimately forge citizens' investment in political participation.
This study will contribute to several debates in political science. First, it directly speaks to the burgeoning literature on policing by examining how politicians' decisions and rhetoric on security provision directly impact the linkage between citizens and the state. This study argues that said impact is reflected in citizen attitudes towards democratic and militarized security as well as their participation in security co-production. Second, it contributes to the literature on state capacity and governance by better theorizing the connection between preferences in security decision-making, institutional capacity, and citizen attitudes and behavior. Third, it adds to the literature on militarizing law enforcement by taking a novel approach to militarized security from the citizens' perspective and focusing on how attitudes towards militarizing or democratizing law enforcement change. Lastly, it adds to the literature on political participation by testing whether achieving security co-production relies on other types of political participation.
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.
