The Consequences of Militarized Policing for Human Rights: Evidence from Mexico

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231168362
• Author: Gustavo Flores-Macías,Jessica Zarkin
• Date: 01 March 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2024, Vol. 57(3) 387–418

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231168362

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The Consequences of

Militarized Policing for

Human Rights: Evidence

from Mexico

Gustavo Flores-Mac´

ıas

1

and Jessica Zarkin

2



Abstract

What are the consequences of the militarization of public safety? Govern-

ments increasingly rely on militaries for policing, but the systematic study of

this phenomenon’s consequences for human rights has been neglected. NGO

and journalistic accounts point to widespread violations by the military, but

these snapshots do not necessarily present evidence of systematic abuse.

Based on unique data on military deployments and human rights complaints in

Mexico, we conduct a systematic, country-wide study of the consequences of

constabularization for human rights. Following matching and difference-in-

difference strategies, we f‌ind that it leads to a 150% increase in complaints

against federal security forces. We also leverage deployments for disaster-

relief operations and complaints against non-security institutions to show that

the increase is not due to underlying conditions or higher reporting in the

military’s presence. The f‌indings have important implications for our un-

derstanding of quality of democracy and the democratic ideals of civilian

policing.

Keywords

Latin America, human rights, police militarization, Mexico

1

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

2

Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jessica Zarkin, Government, Claremont McKenna College, 888 N Columbia Ave, Claremont, CA

91711, USA.

Email: jzarkin@cmc.edu

The militarization of law enforcement is increasingly prevalent across the

world. It has taken the form of police becoming like the armed forces in their

tactics, weapons, and organization, as well as militaries taking on domestic

policing. There is a growing body of research focusing on the consequences of

this policy. In particular, several studies focusing on the United States suggest

that the militarization of police has failed to reduce crime or improve off‌icer

safety (Gunderson et al., 2021;Lowande, 2021;Mummolo, 2018), but others

point to favorable outcomes (Bove & Gavrilova, 2017;Harris et al., 2017). In

the developing world, some studies suggest that the policy is counterpro-

ductive for counter-insurgency outcomes (De Bruin, 2021) and in countries

where the armed forces have been constabularized,

1

as in Latin America (Blair

& Weintraub, 2021;Flores-Mac´

ıas, 2018;Flores-Mac´

ıas & Zarkin, 2021b;

Gan, 2020;Magaloni & Rodr´

ıguez, 2020;Osorio, 2015). In the context of the

so-called drug wars against organized crime, which have claimed more than

300,000 lives and 73,000 disappeared in Mexico alone, this research has

pointed to greater levels of violence, obstacles to police reform, and lower tax

collection as consequences of militarization.

Although existing research has made important strides to understand the

effects of constabularization, its consequences for human rights remain un-

derstudied. This gap is problematic primarily for two reasons. First, NGO

reports suggest that the military routinely engage in human rights violations in

Latin America (e.g., Human Rights Watch, 2019), but these accounts have yet

to systematically evaluate the armed forces’performance. Second, this se-

curity policy is highly popular among Latin American publics (Flores-Mac´

ıas

& Zarkin, 2021a). Thus, if constabularization does increase abuses by the

state, then this security strategy poses a considerable paradox for democracy

in the region. One of the fundamental principles of democracy is state re-

sponsiveness (Dahl, 1972). However, responsiveness in this arena through

constabularization might entail negating another essential aspect: protecting

human rights.

To examine the consequences of the constabularization of the armed forces

for the protection of human rights, we rely on subnational evidence from

Mexico, where the armed forces have been constabularized in large swaths of

the national territory since the end of 2006. We obtained data—after winning

several appeals to the government’s denial of right-to-information requests

through the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information, and

Personal Data Protection (INAI)—on both military deployments and human

rights complaints at the municipal level.

Based on matching and difference-in-difference strategies for time-series

cross-sectional data (Imai et al., 2021) that compare the rate of human rights

complaints in geographical units where constabularization took place with

similar units without constabularization, we f‌ind that constabularization leads

to a higher prevalence of human rights abuse complaints.

2

By estimating the

388 Comparative Political Studies 57(3)

Average Treatmenton the Treated (ATT), we f‌ind that the rate (per 100,000) of

serious human rights abuse complaints against federal security agencies in

constabularized municipalities is .42 higher in the f‌irst year and between .43

and .61 in three subsequent years of military involvement in domestic po-

licing, compared to non-constabularized municipalities. These effects rep-

resent yearly increases of between 150% and 218%.

Additionally, we leverage data from the armed forces’disaster-relief

missions to show that human rights complaints increase as a result of the

military’s role in law enforcement, but not when the military is deployed for

other purposes.

3

Municipalities in which the armed forces were deployed to

provide natural disaster relief did not register differences in the rate of

complaints compared to municipalities without military presence. We also

leverage complaints f‌iled against the Mexican Social Security Institute

(IMSS)—the non-security sector federal agency with the most complaints—as

a placebo test to show that the increase in abuse complaints against federal

security forces is a function of constabularization and not due to municipality-

specif‌ic underlying trends or characteristics, such as civil society’s ability to

report.

These f‌indings make important contributions to the literatures on the

politics of policing, in general, and the militarization of public safety, in

particular. They also have broad implications for public policy and the

protection of human rights. The results highlight the pitfalls related to the

blurring of the line between the police and the military for law enforcement

and raise concerns regarding politicians’dismissal of the democratic ideals of

civilian policing in pursuit of expedient, yet ineffective solutions to rising

crime in Latin America. Lastly, they highlight the importance of police reform

and productive police-citizen interactions.

The Military’s Respect for Human Rights

The literature on militaries’domestic human rights violations has focused on

civil-military relations during authoritarian rule and counter-insurgency op-

erations. In the f‌irst case, the emphasis has been on civil society’s struggles to

bring militaries to justice (Loveman, 1998;Pion-Berlin and Arceneaux, 1998)

and the role that truth and reconciliation commissions played in transitions to

democracy (Heinz and Frühling, 1999;Hunter, 1996;Pion-Berlin, 1994). In

the second case, attention has focused on the armed forces’atrocities during

civil wars and campaigns against guerrilla groups in the developing world

(e.g., Cornell & Roberts, 1990;Mayka, 2016).

Although existing research has made important contributions to our un-

derstanding of the nexus between militaries and human rights in those

contexts, the consequences of constabularized militaries for human rights in

domestic policing remain largely unexplored. This may be because militaries

Flores-Mac´

ıas and Zarkin 389