8 - Conclusion

Summary

The concluding chapter explores the often-contradictory relationship between democracy and enduring state violence and the intervening role of inequality. It builds on the book’s key findings to further elucidate the problem that policing poses for democracy, in theory and in practice. The repertoires and distribution of protection and repression in the cases analyzed in this book – and indeed, in many other democracies – are antithetical to what some scholars view as the substantive principles and outcomes of democracy. Yet, these practices are often reinforced by the electoral and participatory processes other scholars have identified as constitutive of democracy. This book’s analysis of three police forces therefore lays bare a tension between procedural and substantive dimensions of democracy. In order to elucidate this tension, the concluding chapter disaggregates democracy and considers how these two dimensions may come to be at odds with one another. The chapter considers how the input of democracy – citizens’ preferences and demands – is channeled through democratic processes such as elections and participatory institutions to produce substantive outcomes that are antithetical to democratic principles. Key to understanding how quintessentially democratic processes result in authoritarian policing practices and structures is the distortions introduced by inequality to each dimension of democracy.