Policing Institutions and Post-Conflict Peace

• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Author: David A. Dow,Leonardo R. Arriola,Michaela Mattes,Aila M. Matanock
• Date: 01 November 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211013088
• Subject Matter: Special Feature Articles

2021, Vol. 65(10) 1738 –1763

Policing Institutions and

Post-Conflict Peace

Leonardo R. Arriola

1,2

, David A. Dow

3

,

Aila M. Matanock

1

, and Michaela Mattes

1

Abstract

How do policing institutions affect the prospects for peace in post-conflict settings?

We present a principal-agent theoretical framework to explain how the institutional

design of policing affects the recurrence of civil conflict. We argue that the frag-

mentation of police forces can reignite conflict dynamics by impeding coordinated

action, undermining information sharing, and enabling agents to pursue their own

interests. We test these expectations with the Police Force Organization Dataset

(PFOD) on police forces in over 100 developing states. Our empirical analyses show

that increasingthe number of distinct police forcesis systematically associatedwith an

increased risk of conflict recurrence in post-conflict states. We also find that a larger

number of police forces is associated with more abuse against civilian populations in

post-conflict states, setting the stage for new grievances that may undermine peace.

Keywords

police, institutions, state capacity, civil conflict

The state’s coercive capacity is widely understood to be a key factor in managing

civil conflict. Seminal work on the occurrence of civil strife suggests that the state’s

ability to deploy coercive resources (e.g., personnel, arms, and equipment) across its

1

Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

2

Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway

3

DevLab & Department of Political Science, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

David A. Dow, DevLab & Department of Political Science, Duke University, 140 Science Drive, 253 Gross

Hall, Durham, NC 27708, USA.

Email: david.dow@duke.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

ªThe Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00220027211013088

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Special Feature Article

Arriola et al. 1739

territory conditions the choices that rebels make in everything from taking up arms

to sustaining insurgency over the longer term (Tilly 1978; Fearon and Laitin 2003).

To provide evidence for the negative relationship between capacity and conflict,

researchers conventionally examine the military as the principal manifestation of the

state’s repressive potential (Jones et al. 1996; Mason and Fett 1996; DeRouen and

Sobek 2004; Quinn, Mason, and Gurses 2007; Hendrix 2010), suggesting that higher

military spending or larger armies are more likely to deter the onset of rebellion or

prevent its recurrence.

By focusing on the role of the military to analyze the capacity-conflict relation-

ship, however, researchers have overlooked a primary coercive institution for states:

the police. In nearly all states, the police are the main actors officially entrusted with

exercising the legitimate use of force to safeguard internal security (Bittner 1972;

Bayley 1985; Reiner 2000). The police are “the first line of defense against subver-

sion and insurgency” (Lefever 1970, 202), performing critical security services that

range from collecting intelligence to apprehending those who threaten public safety.

Furthermore, while militaries play a primary role in security provision during civil

conflicts, transitioning to peace often requires the demilitarization of politics (e.g.

Lyons 2005) and, accordingly, the restoration of civilian police as the main provi-

ders of internal security.

The role of the police in managing civil conflict and its aftermath remains largely

overlooked in academic studies—recent exceptions include Bayley and Perito

(2010), McCormick (2013), Fair and Ganguly (2014), Ansorg, Haass, and Strasheim

(2016), and Eck (2018)—despite the fact that policymakers increasingly stress civil-

ian policing in ending insurgency and preventing its recurre nce. When the U.S.

military updated its counterinsurgency field manual for the first time in over two

decades to guide operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the new manual included a

section devoted to policing with the explicit recognition that “[t]he primary frontline

COIN force is often the police—not the military” (U.S. Army/Marine Corps 2006, 6-

19-6-20). The broader U.S. government similarly recognized the role of policing

when it issued a multi-agency counterinsurgency guide acknowledging that “COIN

situations often arise because the police are incapable of maintaining order” (U.S.

Government 2009, 23).

1

From this policymaking perspective, the restoration of

order requires enhancing the police’s capacity to conduct law-and-order functions.

Policing becomes particularly important during the war-to-peace transition, as

civilian authority progressively replaces military operations in the provision of

security. Yet, researchers remain unable to offer evidence-based assessments of how

policing’s organization ultimately affects whether the state can maintain the peace.

What is clear is that peace is unlikely to be re-established unless a state’s police can

adequately respond to the violence, whether political or criminal, that often char-

acterizes the aftermath of civil war (Steenkamp 2011). In Iraq, for example, the

police largely proved incapable of fulfilling their law-and-order mandate as part of

the country’s post-conflict reconstruction (Wozniak 2017). The lack of resources

hindered the proper training and equipping of personnel, but more problematic was

2Journal of Conflict Resolution XX(X)