Police violence and abuse are urgent problems for democracies around the world. Despite repeated instances of excessive use of force, even in contexts where equal and fair application of the law should be expected, police reform remains elusive. Authoritarian Police in Democracy provides a thought-provoking explanation as to why. This very clear, timely, and well-researched book illuminates the apparent contradiction between persistent authoritarian policing practices and democratic contexts. González argues that the absence of democratic police reform results from the electoral calculus of politicians responding to societal demands for security combined with the extent of political competition. Under conditions of fragmented societal preferences and weak political opposition, politicians eschew reform to avoid potential backlash from police. Reforms are possible but unlikely in this situation. Scandals resulting from egregious instances of abuse catalyze societal preferences, creating a window of opportunity to enact reforms but only if an election is at stake. In addition to its many theoretical contributions, the book is an excellent example of the craft of rigorous qualitative research. Gathering information over more than two years on a topic that is difficult to study, González combines interviews, ethnographic observations, and archival materials to trace the process leading to police reform.

The book is organized into eight chapters: the first two outline and develop the theoretical argument, and most of the rest of the book explores three very thorough case studies—the state of São Paulo in Brazil, Buenos Aires province in Argentina, and Colombia—that unpack and illustrate the mechanisms behind the theoretical argument. The book presents carefully constructed comparisons within cases over time and across cases. The cases are presented over two sections, following a variation in reforms. Part 1 presents evidence of the conditions that make reforms unlikely. Part 2 turns to the conditions that make reform efforts possible, as well as examining evidence of failed attempts.

One of González’s key contributions is to place the spotlight on the police, an institution generally understudied in political science and treated as apolitical, subordinated to regime leaders, and relatively powerless in comparison to the military. In the book, she demonstrates how powerful police bureaucracies are—because of their ability to control coercion and shape public discourse around security (pp. 16–21)—and how their degree of independence from political leaders makes them a strong deterrent when it comes to reform. A second crucial contribution is separating regime type from coercive institutions. In doing so, González provides the key theoretical insight that authoritarian police are a feature of democracy not because of unaddressed legacies after the transition to democracy in Latin America but as a consequence of the democratic process itself (pp. 52–53). The book convincingly demonstrates that politicians, who are concerned with losing elections, will carefully calculate when to implement police reforms based on the “mood” of public opinion and the strength of the political opposition they face. The book offers the central practical lesson that debates on police reform cannot be limited to improvements in capacity, understood as technical elements of everyday police practices. Instead, the book highlights the central role of societal actors—citizens, politicians, and the police themselves—in influencing police practices.

An innovative aspect of the book is the idea that scandals generate the impetus for reform. The book argues that scandals—instances of abuse that become widely known and generate outrage (p. 49)—are triggered by a random process that leads to the convergence of citizens’ preferences in favor of reform; as such, they are exogenous to the cycle of reforms themselves, at least initially. This aspect of the argument is less compelling than the rest of the book. Although the book elaborates a justification for the exogeneity of scandals, it also states that they are context dependent. That is, there is something in the specific situation in which the deviant event takes place that makes it outrageous at a particular point in time. Given the important role that scandals play for the theoretical argument, a more systematic assessment of what constitutes a scandal would have enhanced the claim. Without systematic evidence one cannot entirely rule out the possibility that preference convergence drives mobilization in response to a deviant event, thereby creating the scandal. In fact, in the discussion of the Colombian case, an initial failed attempt at police reform could be interpreted as evidence of some level of convergence, which might have triggered the scandal that subsequently led to successful reform (p. 218). Yet, such systematic assessment would be difficult to accomplish. The evidence presented in the book clearly shows the importance of the context, and González pays superb attention to the particularities of her cases.

According to González, the push for reform hinges on the extent to which societal preferences regarding the distribution of protection and coercion—that is, who deserves to be protected or repressed (pp. 38–40)—are fragmented or converge. An especially relevant point is that fragmentation typically happens along class lines (pp. 40–41), but it also occurs within classes. For example, the book describes how in low-income neighborhoods there are divisions among residents when it comes to supporting the police’s use of excessive force (p. 4), or how the residents even engage in contradictory actions, such as complaining about repression while also demanding a greater police presence (pp. 204–5). This suggests that preferences for repression may result from explanatory factors other than those typically highlighted in the literature, such as authoritarian views or even crime victimization. It also prompts the question why those who suffer repression the most might also favor repressive practices.

In the book, preference convergence implies an agreement on who deserves protection and punishment, and differences across classes are overcome, even if briefly. This is exemplified in the discussion of Buenos Aires, where the murder of three men in a poor neighborhood did not spark mobilization beyond its residents, whereas abuses against journalists led to massive protests (pp. 258–64). Although both events are scandals, only the latter led to mobilization, but it is not clear exactly how. If the distribution of protection and repression reflects inequalities, the scandal needs to somehow tip the scale and bring large groups of the population together. Those mobilized after a journalist’s brutal killing represented relatively powerful sectors of society (students, church leaders, labor unions, human rights groups), but it is not entirely clear whether this mobilization represented a convergence of preferences across social classes (p. 264). Some lingering questions remain: How did convergence happen? Under what conditions is there shared discontent across social classes? Is it possible that the driver behind attempts at reform is simply the power of those being mobilized?

González’s work outlines a compelling research agenda with multiple facets. For example, it creates an opportunity to further explore whether the extent of cohesion within police organizations might affect their ability to credibly withdraw the provision of security. Further, in providing a framework to understand the conditions for democratic police reform, the book also creates an opportunity for thinking about the conditions for undemocratic reforms. Arguably, undemocratic reforms also occur because of a convergence of preferences, but for more repressive policing practices.

Authoritarian Police in Democracy should be assigned in graduate courses on qualitative research design and in courses focusing on state repression and violence. The lessons from the book have broader relevance for discussions on state capacity and democratization, and it is a must-read for academics interested in understanding the drivers of institutional change, as well as activists and policy makers focused on devising more democratic security institutions.