CR31. Policing democracy

Resumen del Salón:

The growing militarization and scope of activities of police forces is a phenomenon that affects countries in the global South, as well as in Europe and North America. This militarization and the increasing levels of police violence poses a challenge for both “emerging” and “consolidated” electoral democracies and sets severe obstacles to expansion of notions of citizenship and the effective development of citizenship rights, particularly of historically marginalized peoples. The executive session explores important questions on the logic and practices of policing in contemporary (electoral) democracies. By putting together apparently contradictory terms, "Policing Democracy" makes a critical intervention on the conversation on militarization, racialized regimes of legality, and the challenges for expanding democracy beyond electoral politics. What can we understand by militarization and how is it related to police violence? Can policing and democracy be compatible or are both terms antithetical? Is policing inherently at conflict with the expansion of citizenship rights? Can police forces overcome their authoritarian and exclusionary legacies in democratic polities or do they inevitable remain authoritarian enclaves? And finally, how might we understand policing beyond the work officers do in the street and include the rationalities that govern liberal democracy and its regime of rights?

Coordinador 1: Graham Denyer-Willis, Centre of Development Studies and Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge

Coordinador 2: Jaime Amparo Alves, CUNY / Universidad Icesi

Comentarista: Philippe Bourgeois, University of California, Los Angeles. (Ph.D. Antropología Stanford University)

Moderador: Juan Abarracan Dierolf, Universidad Icesi