“Transnational Policy Networks and Citizen Security in the Americas”

Mary Rose Kubal Department of Political Science

St. Bonaventure University St. Bonaventure, NY 14778

mkubal@sbu.edu

Prepared for Presentation at the 21st World Congress of Political Science, July 12-16, 2009, Santiago, Chile

[T]he imitation of innovative practices developed by higher-status countries may be driven less by a careful effort to improve policy programs than by a desire to demonstrate “modernity” and attract favorable attention from international public opinion. Decision makers may adopt the rhetoric of reform and make superficial changes, yet without revamping actual policy practices. [Some of these gestures] may be subjectively sincere, yet objectively misguided attempts to “keep up with the Jonses.” In this perspective, ... [p]olicymaking is a performance more than a goal-oriented activity.

-Weyland (2004, 24-25)

In this passage, Kurt Weyland (2004) draws attention to two important issues in

the transnational diffusion of policy models from the global North to Latin American

countries.1 The first is the extent to which policymakers might adopt inappropriate

policies in an attempt to satisfy perceived international norms (and related concerns about

the extent to which policy adoption is voluntary or coerced). The second is the

expressive or symbolic dimension of policy transfer.

The keystone cop antics of former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik

during his brief stint as senior police advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in

Iraq represent surreal extremes in both areas: misguided, externally imposed police

policies and wild-west drama.2 Less surreal, but no less significant are the attempts of

the international community (often through the United Nations) to (re)constitute police

forces in post-conflict or failed states, such as Bosnia, Guatemala or Haiti. By way of

contrast, this paper considers police reform in Argentina and Chile where domestic policy

networks are much stronger and the influence of transnational actors less direct. While

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Workshop on Public Policy in Latin America, University of Calgary, May 1, 2009. 2 Kerik’s tenure as top police advisor to the CPA is described in detail by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City (Chandrasekaran 2007).

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the arrival of former New York City police chief William Bratton to give a public lecture

in Santiago or Buenos Aires is political theater in its own right, the impact of such

transnational exchanges in terms of actual policy change is difficult to measure.

The international consulting ventures of Bratton and others (at the invitation of

local business people and politicians) point to one of the main themes raised in this

workshop: the potential for undue influence of powerful domestic and transnational

social groups in weak states, often to the detriment of the poor and marginalized sectors

of society. Huggins (1998, 24) posits that historically United States government police

assistance to Latin American countries “contributed to a devolution, commodification,

and privatization of internal security, with policing and internal security becoming

customer-defined products.” The more recent trend toward private police consulting is

perhaps a manifestation of this development. The “customer-defined products” purveyed

by private vendors like security “gurus” Rudy Giuliani and William Bratton, private

contractors like DynCorp, and research institutes and non-governmental organizations

will certainly have an impact on Latin America’s weaker social groups. State actors are

also still very much involved in “police assistance” both bi-laterally and through the

United Nations. This paper considers the impact of such “assistance,” with a focus on the

transfer or diffusion of ideas in the form of policy “models.”

The first section of the paper presents a framework for evaluating the role of

different types of transnational networks in policy diffusion and the function of domestic

structures and policy processes in mediating policy outcomes. The second section

focuses on policy models (in particular zero tolerance and community policing) and

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networks in the area of transnational police reform. The cases of police reform in post-

transition Argentina and Chile are then considered in light of this framework.

Transnational Policy Diffusion: Ideas, Networks, and Policy Streams

Constructivist approaches to policy communities in international relations theory

(Adler 2005; Adler and Barnett 1998) have emphasized the importance of the social

construction of knowledge and the role of transnational epistemic communities in

forming international norms of behavior, for example in arms control or environmental

regulation. In their work on transnational advocacy networks Keck and Sikkink (1998, 4-

5) take a similar approach, rejecting the separation of comparative politics and

international relations in the discipline of political science. They assert that actors engage

in strategic activity “in an intersubjectively structured political universe” (Keck and

Sikkink 1998, 5). Recent work in the fields of criminology and law and society points to

the evolution of a transnational policy community in the area of police reform (Goldsmith

and Sheptycki 2007; Newburn and Sparks 2004), but the extent to which this

“community” shares common norms and values is unclear.

Although the focus of this paper is more on the domestic structures that mediate

the impact of transnational networks and thus account for variation in policy transfer

across countries (Risse-Kappan 1995), the nature of the ideas (or policy models) being

diffused and the networks through which they are dispersed are crucial contextual factors.

As Weyland (2004, 7) observes “[n]ot all successful policies become models.” Rather,

“models embody general worldviews and derive from them specific proposals for

addressing concrete problems” and are most likely to be adopted when they create

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“synergy” by contributing to “broader goals” (Weyland 2004, 8). Yet when a model is

linked to broader goals, particularly political goals, it seems likely that specific policy

proposals are less likely to be transferred. Jones and Newburn (2004) make the case that

“zero tolerance” traveled from the United States to the United Kingdom precisely

because the concept (despite being linked to specific policies in the U.S. context) was

“flexible” enough to satisfy the political goals of Conservative and Labour governments

without the adoption of specific zero tolerance policing measures.

Keck and Sikkink (1998, 16) focus on transnational advocacy networks’ (TANs’)

use of “ideas, information, and strategies to alter the information and value contexts in

which states make policies.” They observe that the issues with the most “resonance” are

those “involving bodily harm to vulnerable individuals, especially when there is a short

and clear causal chain (or story) assigning responsibility” and “issues involving legal

equality of opportunity” (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 27). Hence the power of the human

rights discourse that emerged in the international community after World War II despite

the fact that it calls into question traditional notions of state sovereignty. Yet, Fuentes

(2005) argues that in Latin America even with the increased integration of international

human rights norms into legislation, the emergence of dense transnational human rights

advocacy networks, and transitions to political democracy, the structural dependence of

politicians on the police to maintain social order has favored “pro-order” over “pro-

rights” coalitions. This has allowed for the continuation of police violence, particularly

in poor and marginalized communities.

Networks, communities, and ideas

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Keck and Sikkink (1998, 29-30) differentiate transnational advocacy networks

from other transnational networks in terms of their commitment to “shared principled

ideas or values” as opposed to “instrumental goals” (business) or “shared causal ideas”

(scientific groups, epistemic communities). One potential problem with this distinction is

that epistemic communities are also based upon shared identities and values as well as

shared causal ideas. In fact, Adler (2005, 16-19) makes the case that epistemic

communities and TANs share many characteristics and are both “communities of

practice.” These are communities of people engaged “in learning and applying a

common practice;” they are generally focused on a “domain of knowledge” and share a

“repertoire of communal resources” including symbols and discourse (Adler 2005, 15).

This does not represent a critique of the TAN category per se, and it may be worth

maintaining the distinction between communities of activists and communities of experts

when looking at their influence on the domestic policy process, as I do below.

A second issue related to the association of TANs with “principled ideas or

values” is the implicit assumption that these values are liberal and progressive, e.g. anti-

slavery, pro-human rights, anti-violence against women.3 However, as Fuentes’ (2005)

study of pro-rights and pro-order coalitions around police reform in Argentina and Chile

makes clear, the pro-order coalition which advocated for limiting citizen rights was also

based on principled ideas, as are transnational coalitions of white supremacists, anti-

immigration advocates, etc. As Kingdon (1994, 222-223) observes, it is both empirically

and theoretically problematic to separate ideas from self-interest; people “cannot arrive at

positions without both self-interest and principle.” Thus it is important to consider the

3 Is this a fair assessment? Has this issue been taken up anywhere in the literature? Are the same assumptions made about values in communities of practice?

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role of ideas in policy diffusion and agenda setting, but also to keep in mind that

transnational and national coalitions will likely form around ideas of all stripes; which

ideas (or policy models) prevail will depend on domestic processes, the skill of policy

entrepreneurs, and the level of institutionalization of international regimes or networks

(Risse-Kappan 1995).

Mediating transnational influence: domestic structures and policy streams

It is at the level of domestic structures that the potential for undue influence of

powerful domestic and transnational social groups in weak (or less autonomous) states

comes to the fore. Risse-Kappen (1995, 22) develops a typology of domestic structures

based on three axes: state structure (centralization v. fragmentation), societal structure

(weak v. strong) and policy networks (consensual v. polarized). According to this

typology, structures that facilitate the access of transnational actors (such as fragmented

political systems and strong societies) may mediate against policy impact. Whereas, in

“state-controlled” and “state-dominated” systems (both with weak societies and

centralized political institutions), transnational access may be difficult but the policy

impact is likely to be greater, if state officials can be brought on board (Risse-Kappan

1995, 28, Table 1.2). It should be noted that centralization of political institutions refers

not only to central versus federal structures but also concentration of executive power,

bureaucratic infighting, executive-legislative relations, and attitudes toward the state

(whether it is conceived as a “benign” protector or “threat to individual liberties”) (Risse-

Kappan 1995, 21-22).

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In many Latin American countries domestic structures vary significantly over

time and across issue areas. For example, macro-economic policy is much more

centralized in countries like Argentina and Mexico than education, which is administered

by provinces and states. Arguably Carlos Menem had much greater control of the policy

process in his tenure as Argentine president than does Cristina Fernández de Kirchner,

who lost a crucial vote on agriculture taxes in 2008 when her own vice-president cast the

tie-breaking vote. The level of societal organization and strength might also vary by

policy area with some countries having strong public sector unions or indigenous

organizations, for example. The same can be said of policy networks, although in Latin

America the trend is toward “polarized polities” with an emphasis on “distributive

bargaining,” rather than “consensual polities” with “strong intermediate organizations

operating in a compromise-oriented decision-making culture” (Risse-Kappan 1995, 22).4

This structural approach is particularly useful to understanding the extent and

nature of transnational network access to target state actors and institutions. Kingdon’s

(1994) less structural “garbage can” approach provides a more nuanced understanding of

transnational impact on the policy process in target states and may help to explain

variation in transnational influence across issue areas (e.g macro-economic policy,

education, policing policy). In this model, the three policy “streams” (problems,

4 In addition to affecting the access and implementation of foreign ideas, these structural configurations may affect the appropriateness of model transfer. For example, policies developed in countries with strong civil society and business organizations – such as targeted “situational crime prevention” measures associated with zero tolerance policing in the United States – may not travel so well to countries without such conditions. For example Stenson and Edwards (2004, 215-16) make the case that these policies did not work in the United Kingdom where corporations did not play a major role in “local urban governance” in part due to the legacy of the welfare state. This would certainly have to be a consideration in evaluating the appropriateness of such measures for the Latin American context.

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proposals, and politics) operate independently, but when “policy windows” open they

may converge and allow for sweeping policy changes. As illustrated in Figure 1, I argue

that different types of networks are likely to have differential influence in the three

streams and have policy entrepreneurs with different skills, resources, and knowledge,

making them better or worse suited to take advantage of policy windows.

Figure 1. Networks and Policy Streams

Network Type Stream

Advocacy Network Problems (Agenda setting)

Epistemic/Policy Community Proposals (Solutions)

??? Politics

“Boomerang”

Here I draw a functional distinction between activist, or advocacy, networks and

epistemic, or expert, communities. Although both are “communities of practice,” TANs

generally focus on getting certain problems (e.g. human rights violations, violations of

indigenous or women’s rights) on the target country’s political agenda. They often use

explicitly political means to do so, such as by generating political pressure in powerful or

“high status” countries in the hopes that these governments will in turn pressure the target

states to change their practices – Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) “boomerang pattern.” In

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many cases, technical policy solutions are not required; ending human rights abuses such

as murder and torture does not require complex policy solutions.5

I certainly do not mean to overdraw the distinction between these types of

communities. Given that they trade on information, all TANs include experts. The

human rights network for example recruited forensic scientists and physicians. As Keck

and Sikkink (1998, 110) observe “[t]he persistence of the [Argentine] Grandmothers [of

the disappeared] helped create a new profession – what on might call ‘human rights

forensic science.’” This expertise was marshaled initially to get human rights abuses on

the agenda – i.e. to prove a problem existed. Once on the agenda, this expertise could

then be used to provide “solutions” (that is to help find the bodies the government once

denied existed).

Assuming that advocacy networks are more likely than communities of experts to

look out for the interests of poor and marginalized populations (and this is not an

unproblematic assumption), even if activists are successful getting problems (such as

police abuse) on the agenda they have much less input in the design of policy solutions.

Indeed, Kingdon (1994) observes that because these streams are relatively independent, it

is likely that communities of experts have already developed potential solutions apart

from the problem definition process; such solutions may or may not address the needs of

marginalized populations. In the United Kingdom during the 1980s and 1990s policy

experts from the United States including James Q. Wilson, George Kelling, Rudolph

Giuliani, and William Bratton pushed for targeted “urban development initiatives”

5 The environmental movement is an obvious exception, and environmental activist networks do include scientific experts (thus overlapping to some extent with epistemic communities).

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including “target-hardening-situational crime prevention” measures and “zero tolerance

policing” (Stenson and Edwards 2004, 214-16). Such measures were “unevenly”

implemented as problem definition and data gathering varied by local jurisdiction, in

some cases resulting in “‘template’, ‘off –the-shelf’ models of youth crime prevention”

and in others involving residents in problem definition and solution formation (Stenson

and Edwards 2004, 220). The question becomes what circumstances encourage local

adoption of “universal” or “off-the-shelf” policy prescriptions and under what conditions

do local officials have the resources and motivation to take community concerns into

account? This example illustrates the importance of local culture (and resources) to the

implementation of “borrowed” policy. This issue will be taken up in the case studies

below.

Policy diffusion in the case of the United Kingdom may be an example of the

emergence of technical “solutions” (pushed by transnational policy entrepreneurs)

driving problem recognition (Kingdon 1994, 218). Indeed, while the rhetoric of zero

tolerance was adopted by both Conservative and Labour governments very few concrete

policies were actually implemented (Jones and Newburn 2004). This was in part because

the UK did not experience the same level of crime (e.g. extremely high homicide levels

and “crack epidemic”) as New York City where many of these policies were developed

and/or put into practice. Referring to Kingdon’s policy streams, Jones and Newburn

(2004, 141) argue “in the UK the ‘problem’ was essentially a political one: there was a

cross-party search for punitive policies, and particularly rhetoric, that could be used to

convince an electorate to cast their vote for those who could be trusted to be toughest on

crime” (emphasis in original).

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While the focus of this paper is more on ideas, it is important to note that the

selling of “zero tolerance” and related policies by its intellectual authors was likely

facilitated by larger social and structural changes. In his study of the evolution of current

criminology and crime control policies in the United States and United Kingdom,

Garland (2001, ch. 1) posits that in addition to institutional and professional logics,

structural changes such as the end of welfare state policies and the rise of neoliberalism

since the 1970s also contributed to trends such as: “the decline of the rehabilitative

ideal,” “the re-emergence of punitive sanctions and expressive justice,” and

“politicization and the new populism” surrounding crime policy. William Bratton’s

insistence that “the root cause of crime is the criminal” (quoted in Bowling 1999, 542),

resonated with a larger “transformation of criminological thought” that began to see

crime as the norm, not as deviant behavior by deprived individuals, shifting crime control

focus to “the criminal event” and “the supply of criminal opportunities” (Garland 2001,

15-6). Society, and, more importantly, the state, is absolved from investing in costly

programs that would target larger “root causes” such as unemployment, low wages, and

mental health problems.

Nowhere were these structural trends more visible than in Latin America in the

1980s and 1990s. The recent popularity of zero tolerance crime control policies in Latin

America and elsewhere follows a decade of often painful market reforms that led to

reduced levels of social spending. Police reforms also follow transitions from military

rule in many countries of the region, as well as rising crime rates during the 1990s and

increased citizen perceptions of insecurity (Carrión 2002; Concha-Eastman 2002; Nield

2000; Reguillo 2002). Yet, while the problem of crime is certainly very real in Argentina

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and Chile, particularly in urban regions such as Buenos Aires province, it appears that the

import of “zero tolerance” and “community policing” models, as in the United Kingdom,

is more symbolic than substantive. Before presenting the case studies, the following

section considered the nature of the policing models being offered to Latin American

governments and the networks through which they are being diffused.

Diffusion of Policing Models in Latin America: Zero Tolerance and Community

Policing

This section focuses on the ideas or policy models packaged for “export” by

policy entrepreneurs and diffused through a loosely connected transnational policy

community. I argue that the influence of transnational actors occurs mainly in the

solutions stream in Latin American countries and involves “experts” who are pushing an

array of policies under the heading, most recently, of “community policing” which

appears to have replaced the now out-of-favor “zero tolerance” label (Ellison 2007, 208).

Although at times international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as

Amnesty International, speak out against police abuses in Latin American countries, a

transnational advocacy network along the lines of the human rights movement has yet to

emerge around the problem of police violence in the region.6

This is in part because the “story” around police abuse is not as simple and clear-

cut as that around human rights abuses (or criminal violence for that matter). As Fuentes

(2005, 5) observes, people want to be safe from police violence and crime, thus “[t]hey

can be mobilized to promote police reform if violence against citizens is detected and to

6 Indeed at the national level in Chile and Argentina there has been more popular mobilization around the problem of crime and victims’ rights than police abuses.

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increase powers if the perception of crime is rising.” The discourse of “democratic

policing” in the transnational policy community and the fact that – with the exception of

Cuba – all Latin American countries have (at least formally) adopted democratic political

institutions, mediate against the emergence of a TAN focused on police abuses – abuses

that in some cases have been justified under the “zero tolerance” label.

It should be observed that within the transnational policy community that has

formed around global police reform, William Bratton and Rudy Giuliani, the main

purveyors of the zero tolerance policing model, are not considered to be in the

mainstream. A recent 400 page edited volume on the subject indexes references to “zero-

tolerance policing” on three pages (Goldsmith and Sheptycki 2007) and the chapter on

the transnational policy community has none at all (Marenin 2007). The one chapter that

gives Bratton and Giuliani significant attention refers to the two as “zealous missionaries

and moral entrepreneurs,” but goes on to observe that “[i]t is difficult to overstate the

hegemony of these [zero tolerance] ideas about urban policing practice” in Latin America

in the mid-1990s (Goldsmith, Llorente, and Rivas 2007, 77, 98).7

The label “zero tolerance” was given to the set of anti-crime policies implemented

by the administration of New York City (NYC) Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his newly-

appointed police chief, William Bratton, in the mid-1990s. Researchers have questioned

7 Mayor Giuliani’s high-profile visits to Mexico City in 2001 and 2003 and his $4.3 million consulting fee (paid by wealthy businessman Carlos Slim) were widely publicized (New York Times 16 January 2003; Pius Llopart 2003). According to the Mexico Solidarity Network (2004) policies resulting from Giuliani’s recommendations include: “fines… of up to US$36 and 12 hours in jail for windshield washers, candy-sellers and street clowns who ply Mexico’s traffic-clogged thoroughfares in search of a meager living.” In 2001 Honduran President Ricardo Maduro met with police officials in New York City and came back to implement a zero tolerance strategy of his own including the same type of aggressive stop-and-frisk policy used in NYC to target young gang members (New York Times 5 March 2002).

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the extent to which zero tolerance was actually applied in the New York case, and the

intellectual authors of the New York strategy, including George Kelling, have distanced

themselves from the term.8 Whether or not the zero tolerance policies actually were

responsible (in whole or part) for reduced crime rates, media reporting on the issue

bolstered public perceptions that the policies had worked.

The public relations success of the Giuliani-Bratton policies, independent of

actual policy results, helps to explain the global diffusion of the zero tolerance model.

Since leaving his position as NYC police commissioner in 1996 (after only two years),

Bratton has “consulted with police and security forces on six continents about the

implementation of zero tolerance strategies;” he is sometimes joined on the circuit by

George Kelling (Smith 2001, 69). The tough-on-crime, aggressive policing policies

associated with the label have been “exported” to countries as diverse as the United

Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, and Mexico (Bowling 1999). In 1999 Bratton visited

Santiago and was quoted in the press as saying “the Chilean government has recognized

crime is a serious issue to be addressed, the only thing lacking now is the resources to

implement it” (Santiago Times 14 April 1999).

Possibly the most-cited reference in relation to the origins of the Giuliani-Bratton

police policies is a 1982 article that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly magazine by James

Q. Wilson and George Kelling, which put forth what has become known as the “broken

windows” theory on the origins of urban crime. In that article, the authors contend that

seemingly minor violations in urban communities, such as broken windows and graffiti

8 The merits of the New York City police reforms have been discussed at length by both their supporters (Kelling and Coles 1996; Kelling and Bratton 1998) and critics (Bowling 1999; Harcourt 2001; McArdle and Erzen 2001). A detailed evaluation of the Giuliani-Bratton policies is beyond the scope of this paper.

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by teenage vandals, create an atmosphere of neglect that facilitates the emergence of

more serious crime in the area (Wilson and Kelling 1982).9 In New York this translated

into a policy of cracking down on so-called “quality of life crimes” such as smoking

marijuana in the street, jumping subway turnstiles, and public urination. Police

Commissioner Bratton also made changes in management style, decentralizing decision-

making authority and resources to the precinct level and holding commanders publicly

accountable for taking pro-active steps to “reduc[e] crime, disorder, and fear” (Bowling

1999, 543).

Ellison (2007, 208) contends that “[z]ero-tolerance policing has been reincarnated

as a strategy that engages with local community concerns about crime, disorder, and anti-

social behaviour, while providing a decisive and swift response on the part of the police.”

This trend has been observed in the United States and Europe where: “while the most

prominent measures of crime control policy are increasingly oriented towards punitive

segregation and expressive justice, there is, at the same time, a new commitment,

especially at the local level, to a quite different strategy that one might call preventative

partnerships” (Garland 2001, 17, emphasis in original). There were similar

developments in Latin America: “Everywhere ‘community participation’ is the buzzword

of reform. With most countries in the region practicing broader forms of democracy,

citizen involvement in police affairs is taking hold” (Christian Science Monitor 28

September 1998). But what is “community oriented policing”?

Based on an extensive review of the literature Ellison (2007, 208) concludes that

community oriented policing (COP) “is a discourse whose transcendent, shape-shifting

9 Bowling (1999, 544) observes that these ideas were already “conventional wisdom among US police officers.”

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quality can mean everything and nothing at the same time.” In fact this may be its appeal

(similar to the case of the diffusion of zero tolerance policing to the UK mentioned

above). Thus community policing may refer to: “public relations campaigns, shop-fronts

and mini-stations, rescaled patrol beats, liaison with ethnic groups, permission to rank

and file to speak with the press, Neighbourhood Watch, foot patrols, patrol-detective

teams, and door to door visits by police officers” (Bayley 1988, 225 cited by Ellison

2007, 209).

So what are the mechanisms by which models like zero tolerance and community

policing have traveled? Goldsmith, Llorente and Rivas (2007, 78) observe the “soft”

nature of the normative framework that has emerged around community policing,

facilitating its “diffusion...across national borders” through interpersonal networks, rather

than “particular texts or doctrines” or “hard” international legal standards. In Risse-

Kappen’s (1995, 30) terminology community policing reforms are not occurring in a

“heavily institutionalized [international] environment.” Yet, the idea of community

policing appears to have a great degree of normative influence. Echoing Weyland’s

(2004) observation about “keeping up with the Jonses” quoted at the beginning of this

paper, Karstedt (2004, 26) observes “[m]odels [of crime policy] are adopted from the

hegemonic power not because of coercion or constraint but because they come with a

particular image of success” (emphasis mine). Ellison (2007, 217) also focuses on the

power of ideas, but notes that there may be coercive aspects to policy transfer: “the

transfer of policing models like COP are heavily overlaid with political assumptions

about the ‘right’ development trajectory and infused with unequal power relations

between donor and recipient.”

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The COP network extends far beyond police consultants like William Bratton and

Rudy Giuliani (“COP gurus”) and includes:

(1) private corporations who offer community policing for hire (DynCorp, MPRI ...); (2) COP gurus, private consultants ... (3) transnational cooperation between state enforcement agencies (...INTERPOL/EUROPOL...); (4) international organisations such as UNPOL working under the aegis of the United Nations; (5) a range of NGOs and aid agencies who engage with overseas police organizations ... (6) the overseas development branches of Western/Northern Governments... (Ellison 2007, 231-14)

The heterogeneous nature of this network raises questions about the extent to which its

component actors share common values or worldviews or even see themselves as

members of a policy community.10 Yet they are all involved in the selling and/or funding

of community policing ideas or services, and “the supply-driven nature of much

development assistance (including COP schemes) amounts to a solution looking for a

problem” (Ellison 2007, 225). (emphasis mine)

The extent to which target countries adopt the police reform “solutions” offered

by the transnational policy network and the actual policies chosen for implementation

will depend on the access of transnational policy entrepreneurs and the dynamics of the

three policy streams in the target country. In extreme cases of post-conflict situations or

state “failure” the transnational community will often have virtual control over choosing

and implementing police reform. Where power asymmetries are not so great and where

target state capacity is relatively high, as in Argentina and Chile, the influence of

transnational networks is less direct, coherent, and sustained, making it difficult to

quantify (particularly in cases where domestic politicians “cherry pick” certain policies to

10 These questions can only be answered through rigorous empirical study, including interviewing the network actors themselves – something I plan to do as I expand this research.

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serve their own political ends). In the case studies below the role of domestic structures

and dynamics within the three policy streams as well as variations in local (that is

subnational) culture and capacity are all considered in evaluating the adoption of different

variants of community policing and zero tolerance policing.

Policy Diffusion in Argentina and Chile

In addition to their relatively high levels of state capacity, both Argentina and

Chile have a recent history of military dictatorship, thus making the issue of police

reform particularly sensitive in relation to human rights legacies and democratic

consolidation. During the past decade both countries have also experienced rising levels

of crime (and even more so rising level of citizen fear of crime), so there exists a similar

discourse on the liberty-order tradeoff (i.e. problem definition). Third, they differ on a

potentially important institutional variable – Argentina is a federal state with independent

provincial police forces while Chile is a unitary state with a centralized national police

force. Eaton (2008) identifies the dynamics of federalism in Argentina as a major

obstacle to police reform in that country. The comparison with Chile provides some

support for this argument, but community policing initiatives were not “evenly”

implemented in centralized Chile, and despite their lack of official jurisdiction over

police and security policy local mayors have played an important role as policy

entrepreneurs and points of access for transnational actors.

Chile: Zero Tolerance to Safe Cities

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Chile is a unitary state with relatively centralized state administration, despite

attempts at regionalization under the military regime (1973-1990) and under subsequent

civilian administrations. While there has been administrative decentralization in some

policy areas, such as health care and education, in theory citizen security policy remains

in central hands. The Constitution (Article 24) gives the central government exclusive

authority over “the preservation of public order” and stipulates that the “forces of order

and public security” are constituted exclusively by the Carabineros and Investigative

Police (Investigaciones) which fall under the jurisdiction of the national defense ministry

(Article 90).11 Yet during the 1990s and 2000s mayors from the right opposition

coalition, in particular Joaquín Lavin of the Independent Democratic Union party (UDI),

were instrumental in importing zero tolerance rhetoric and policies, putting citizen

security onto the national policy agenda (problem stream). This created tensions with the

police and forced center-left Concertación coalition governments to respond with their

own community policing solutions.12 The pro-rights coalition was notably absent from

the discussion, and the policy debates centered on the frame of crime control rather than

police abuse. Nonetheless the zero tolerance label has fallen out of fashion and even the

11 A decree issued by President Eduardo Frei in 1994 transferred responsibility for police operational measures from defense to the interior ministry, which controlled police operations prior to the military government. “Since then, the two ministries have shared responsibility, although the line dividing where one ministry’s jurisdiction begins and where the other’s ends has been murky at best” (Santiago Times 19 December 2002). The government has begun the process of transferring the police entirely to the interior ministry. This represents an important step in the democratization of police administration, but maintains security policy in the hands of the central government. 12 Every president elected following the transition from authoritarian rule has come from the Concertación coalition – the first two from the Christian Democratic Party and the second two from the Socialist Party.

20

right has begun to adopt the language of community policing, while there are elements of

zero tolerance rhetoric in the government’s discourse.13

Joaquín Lavin tapped into a narrow segment of the international policy network –

the purveyors of zero tolerance policies – to help him implement innovative policing

strategies as mayor of Chile’s wealthiest municipality and launch his national political

career. As discussed below, Lavin’s armed municipal police represent one of the more

visible zero tolerance imports of the 1990s. Significantly, Lavín met with Manhattan

Institute (the neo-conservative think tank where George Kelling is an adjunct fellow)

officials during a visit to New York City in May 1997 and they put him in touch with

former police chief-turned-consultant William Bratton – from this contact sprang the idea

of the municipal police force. The Manhattan Institute’s Latin America director was

quoted in the Chilean press as saying “Our crime control strategies, the transparency idea

and administrative decentralization, as well as new solutions to education, are all ideas

that Joaquín Lavín found here [at the institute]” (Santiago Times 2 February 2000).

Bratton met with Lavín during his April 1999 visit to Santiago while the latter was in the

midst of his first presidential campaign.

Lavín was a pioneer in challenging the police monopoly over security services

going back to his first two terms as mayor of the up-scale municipality of Las Condes

(1993-1999). Lavín first made waves by holding a plebiscite allowing community

members to decide how to spend surplus municipal funds – rather than investing in public

spaces like parks or schools, the voters chose to spend the funds on improving home

security through the installation of panic buttons directly connected to local police

13 Author interview Lucia Dammert, FLACSO-Chile, 22 July 2008, Santiago; Author interview Ximena Tocornal, University of Chile, 23 July 2008, Santiago.

21

stations.14 But it was the creation of a volunteer civil defense patrol that first brought

Lavín into conflict with the Carabineros in 1995. In response to the black-vested, moped-

riding patrols, the Carabineros general in charge of security told the press he had doubts

about the constitutionality of the new force (El Mercurio 28 June 1995). Lavín’s

initiatives were most likely unconstitutional, but as long as they remained politically

popular the government looked the other way.15 In the context of the run-up to his first

presidential campaign, in August of 1998 Lavín took the even bolder step of creating a

de-facto armed municipal police force, with the idea that the municipal officers would

assume routine duties such as directing traffic thus freeing up Carabineros officers for

more pressing crime-fighting tasks (Santiago Times 10 August 1998). Despite a

threatened lawsuit, the government eventually allowed the thirty-six-member municipal

force to operate unchallenged (Santiago Times 2 September 1998).

During the 1990s municipal involvement in initiatives dealing with citizen

security became widespread. While early in the decade municipalities competed among

themselves to come up with innovative security measures, by the late 1990s they began to

adopt “common modalities.” These include: municipal gifts of supplies and equipment

such as gasoline and computers to the local police forces; measures facilitating direct

citizen communication with the police, such as radio equipment for community centers

and house alarms like those installed in Las Condes; and administrative support for local

police forces, for example using municipal personnel to deliver court summons (Oviedo

14 It should be noted that at the time Las Condes was Chile’s wealthiest municipality and one of only a handful of Chile’s almost 350 municipalities with the luxury of disposing of surplus funds. Indeed, despite the excitement created by the use of plebiscites in Las Condes, the practice remains rare in good part because of the administrative costs. 15 Author interview Ximena Lazo, CEAL, Valparaiso, June 5, 1997.

22

2002, 330; also Smulovitz 2003a, fn. 63). This trend is likely to increase unequal access

to police services as wealthy municipalities can make more significant contributions to

local police efforts, a concern raised in the discussion of the exportation of the zero

tolerance model above.16

In many ways, the government has been following the lead of the municipalities

concerning crime policy. A change in the constitutional municipal law proposed by the

Eduardo Frei administration (1994-2000) and approved by the congress in 1999

essentially legitimized municipal crime-control initiatives after the fact. It gives mayors

a somewhat ambiguous mandate to continue developing municipal initiatives. Despite

the fact that the Constitution still gives exclusive authority for the maintenance of social

order to the national government, article IV of the municipal law, which lists

municipalities’ shared functions, as of 1999 allows municipalities to perform functions

related to “the support and promotion of preventive measures related to citizen security

and collaboration in their implementation, without prejudice to that outlined in the third

subsection of article 90 of the Political Constitution” (which, as noted above, specifies

the national police as the sole “forces of order and public security”).

The first civilian president, Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994)

assumed office just as citizen anxiety over the government’s ability to control crime was

16 In 1998 Christian Democratic congress member Aldo Cornejo insisted that the police should be funded exclusively by the national government, noting that the current system which allows funding from multiple sources including the national government, regional governments, municipal city governments and the private sector “leads to a disparity in the quality of service in different regions and urban areas” (Santiago Times 26 August 1998).

23

peaking.17 Initial government efforts focused on institutional reform – most notably a

complete restructuring of the criminal justice system – and technical solutions that did

not involve a major citizen participation component or public relations campaign. There

were some initiatives that included a limited participation component, but these were

often not well-coordinated or sustained.18 The Ricardo Lagos administration (2000-

2005) publicly emphasized “social prevention” strategies dealing with the root causes of

crime in contrast to the right’s focus on zero tolerance – while acknowledging that zero

tolerance might have organizational and technical lessons for the police (Burgos 2000,

19-20). The government began to consolidate its efforts through the Carabineros’

Quadrant Plan (Plan Cuadrante) and the interior ministry’s Safe Cities (Comuna Segura)

initiative.19 The latter became the Community Plan for Citizen Security (Plan Comunal

de Seguridad Ciudadana) under the Michelle Bachelet administration (2005-2009) as

part of its National Strategy for Public Security (Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad

Pública).

17 This is most likely not a coincidence. Democracy allowed for the free flow of public information and thus increased public awareness of criminal violence, while increasing citizen participation and growing trust in public institutions most likely encouraged increased reporting of crimes (Oviedo 2002, 317). 18 Examples include the neighborhood security program (programa de seguridad vecinal) launched in 1993 by the regional sub-secretariat of the interior ministry which appropriated funds for projects proposed by neighborhood organizations; citizen protection committees organized through the social organizations division of the ministry of the secretariat general of government in selected low income municipalities in the Santiago region; the neighborhood improvement project and the Chile neighborhood program of the housing and urban development ministry; the national youth institute’s young Chile (Chile joven) program and the youth program supported by the social investment and solidarity fund (FOSIS) (Oviedo 2002, 323-4). 19 The fact that these are two separate programs is indicative of the management inefficiencies created by defense ministry control over the police services while the interior ministry is supposedly in charge of matters of internal, public, and citizen security (Burgos and Tudela, 493).

24

The Quadrant Plan emerged from the Carabineros’ 1995 strategic plan. It began

as a pilot program and in early 1999 was extended to cover the entire Santiago region

(Smulovitz 2003a, 109). Since 2001 it has been gradually expanded to cover 84 (of

approximately 350) municipalities in the majority of Chile’s fifteen regions, and is

considered to be the Carabineros’ “principle operating strategy” (Carabineros 2008, 6).

Many elements of the Quadrant Plan bear a strong similarity to Bratton’s police

management changes in New York which focused on decentralization to the precinct

level, the use of technology to “map” crime and police activity, and a focus on results in

terms of reducing crime levels (Bowling 1999, 543). Under the Chilean plan, each

quadrant, or police patrol area, is profiled based upon quantitative and qualitative

variables such as crime rates, population density, commercial activity, and urban

infrastructure and assigned police resources based on calculated risk levels (Frühling

2003, 37).20 Similar to New York, the officer in charge of each sector must give a public

accounting for police performance and the progress toward target goals, such as reducing

crime rates by a specified amount (El Mercurio 7 August 2003; Smulovitz 2003a, fn. 65).

There is a clear public relations element to the program which is described on the

Carabineros website as an initiative that “endeavors to strengthen the traditional ties of

friendship between you and Carabineros de Chile through a program of vigilance that not

only guarantees your legitimate aspirations for security and positive social interaction,

but also permits the recognition and solution of the real problems that are distressing

20 The Carabineros have developed a quantitative index to determine the assignment of police resources called the vigilance equivalence unit (unidad de vigilancia equivalente, UVE). According to their website, one wagon with three officers is equivalent to 1.00 UVE; one all-terrain motorcycle with one officer equals 0.45 UVE; while a single officer on foot is worth a mere 0.2 UVE.

25

you.” Neighbors are invited to get to know their local police officers. The Quadrant Plan

has been “complemented by other announcements that signal a commitment to engaging

the community in crime prevention initiatives” such as the creation of an office of

community relations and crime analysis, but there is a danger that the plan could

degenerate into a mere public relations initiative without changes in “internal disciplinary

controls, internal organization and doctrine” (Frühling 2003, 37; see also Smulovitz

2003a, 114).

The Safe Cities (Comuna Segura) program was announced by the Lagos

administration in 2000 as an initiative to “strengthen the role of the municipality in

alliance with the community” and to address the root causes of crime at the community

level (Burgos and Tudela 2002, 491). In 2006 the Safe Cities program was integrated

into the Bachelet administration’s multi-sectoral public security strategy as the

Community Security Plan with the participation of eighty municipalities. The emphasis

shifted from addressing “social” problems to “situational” problems because it was

considered too difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of measures aimed at eliminating the

root causes of crime.21 Participating municipalities enter into an agreement with the

interior ministry and together select a technical secretary to head the program. The

fundamental building block of the program is the municipal citizen security council,

comprised of local politicians, bureaucrats, and representatives from the police and

organized community, which is responsible for strategic planning concerning security

issues at the local level. Once the security council is constituted, a municipal citizen

security diagnosis is conducted which provides the background for the formulation of a

21 Author interview Ximena Tocornal, Professor, University of Chile, 23 July 2008, Santiago.

26

municipal citizen security plan. This plan is supposed to outline strategies for

strengthening community-level organization as well as encourage community

participation, particularly that of vulnerable groups, in security initiatives.

Although both the government and Carabineros’ strategies attempt to engage local

communities, the quality of local participation is questionable – a concern raised about

community policing strategies above. Smulovitz (2003a, 112) observes that while it has

been given the “community policing” label, the Quadrant Plan, like others in neighboring

countries, does not really live up to the conceptual definition which requires in addition

to closer community relations, coordination with other state agencies – such health

clinics, schools, welfare providers – in the design of preventive measures, as well as

mechanisms for “continuous and institutional” community participation in security

policy. While the new National Strategy for Public Security integrates sectors such as

education and public housing as well as the police, citizen participation still “tends to be

mobilized by state institutions... [T]here are explicit attempts by the public authorities

and police to contain and institutionalized the forms of spontaneous citizen participation

that might emerge” ( Smulovitz 2003a, 112).22 Rather than extending democratic control

over the police, participatory initiatives may encourage vigilantism. In the late 1990s

participants in citizen security committees “expressed the view that the only way to deal

with criminals was to unite with other citizens and punish them” (Frühling 2003, 38).

22 Oviedo (2002, 330) observes that participation in wealthy municipalities has taken on the passive form of “opinion consultations” – such as Lavín’s plebiscites in Las Condes – and residents prefer not to participate in the implementation of municipal initiatives. In neighborhood with problems of gang violence, participation has not succeeded because of residents’ fears.

27

On the other hand, the weakness of local human rights advocacy groups and their

disinterest in the issue of police reform meant that transnational NGOs like Amnesty

International, intergovernmental organizations such as the UN, and organs within “high

status” country governments such as the United States State Department have “only a

small fraction of the number of documented allegations [of police abuse] in reality”

(Fuentes 2005, 65). In summarizing the main legal changes concerning police powers

since 1990 – the ratification of international treaties concerning human rights (1990-92)

and prisoners’ rights (1993), the abolition of the “arrest on suspicion” clause and

establishment of Miranda rights for detainees (1998) – Fuentes (2005, 52) observes that

local “human rights advocacy groups have exerted some influence in agenda setting, but

low influence in the political debate and policy implementation.” In Argentina, human

rights NGOs have been more influential in the policy debate, but the nature of the federal

system and party politics has made it difficult to sustain reforms limiting police powers.

Argentina: Zero Tolerance v. Democratic Policing

Argentina’s federal structure and the nature of party politics has made sustained

police reform difficult and many of the provincial reforms of the mid-late 1990s that

limited police powers were rolled back following an election cycle in 1999 and 2000 that

focused on zero tolerance rhetoric (Eaton 2008). Sozzo (2005) observes that provincial

and national government reactions to rising crime rates and citizen perceptions of

insecurity in the mid-late 1990s have at times been contradictory – on the one hand

looking “nostalgically” back to a time when the government was free to implement

“mano dura” (tough on crime) policies, while at the same time attempting to implement

28

more innovative preventive policies influenced by international norms of democratic

policing. By the late 2000s the enthusiasm for the zero tolerance model appeared to be

on the wane with the perceived failures of the policies, the political embarrassment of one

of its main proponents, and a shift in public and elite attention to tensions between the

national government and big agricultural interests over the economic model.23 Yet the

coordination and rationalization of provincial policing policies remains a challenge given

the absence of federal jurisdiction over provincial police and security policy and lack of

reliable statistics.

Keeping track of police policy in Argentina’s twenty three provinces is a

challenge even for the federal government, which through the federal security council

(Consejo de Seguridad Interior) and the assistance of the United Nations Development

Program (UNDP) commissioned a series of studies on provincial practices beginning in

2006. The lead author of one of the studies on provincial police budgets observed that in

many cases, beyond their personnel payroll, provincial officials did not have good

records of their spending on policing programs.24 Most of the academic literature on

police reform in Argentina focuses on the autonomous city of Buenos Aires (the federal

capital) and Buenos Aires province (Eaton 2008; Fuentes 2005; Hinton 2006; Smulovitz

2003) and to a lesser degree Santa Fe province (González 2005; Smulovitz 2003; Sozzo

2005). Examples from these cases illustrate that the electoral dynamic and role of policy

entrepreneurs are similar to the Chilean case, as is the shift from zero tolerance to

community policing strategies. However, the role of the human rights network and the

23 Author interview Luis Tibiletti, Ser en 2000 and former federal Secretary of Security, July 11, 2008, Buenos Aires; Author interview Héctor Masquelet, federal Secretary of Security, July 15, 2008, Buenos Aires. 24 Author interview, Marcela Donadio, Ser en 2000, July 10, 2008.

29

high profile of police abuses in Argentina made comprehensive reform limiting police

powers more likely, though not necessarily successful or sustainable.

Many of the reform and counter-reform measures were influenced by

international trends and networks in a fairly unsystematic fashion. Indeed, in the city of

Buenos Aires alone Hinton (2006, 59-60) encountered fourteen separate plans related to

citizen security and police policy (some never fully implemented), many based on

community policing initiatives in high status countries such as the United States, Canada,

and the United Kingdom. González (2005, 61) refers to “incentives offered by financial

and international cooperation organisms, including the Interamerican Development Bank

(IDB), Human Rights Watch (HRW), and the Tinker Foundation.” These international

actors could “supply” policy solutions in the areas of human rights, drug trafficking, and

police reform and modernization. However international actors also responded to

requests of “a certain spectrum of the Argentine political class that solicits financial

resources, equipment, advisement and training, in relation to these themes,” resulting in

the importation of measures for “social control engineering” in urban security and police

management (González 2005, 61). In addition, international norms on democratic

policing also influenced the design of community policing strategies and attempts at

implementing internal controls within police institutions (González 2005, 62)

The sustained debate between the pro-rights and pro-order coalitions resulted in

conflicting policy proposals that reflected the international trends discussed above – a

“dual game” of repressing crime while implementing preventive strategies (González

2005, 61-62; Smulovitz 2003, 131; Sozzo 2005). “Fragmented” political institutions (as

discussed in the framework section above) magnified this tendency. For example, in

30

1997-1998 divisions within Peronist party resulted in the ministries of foreign affairs and

justice taking a pro-civil rights position while the ministry of interior and presidency

were pro-order (Fuentes 2005, 110). In 1998 the national government adopted the

discourse of zero tolerance and brought in consultants associated with the New York City

reforms (Sozzo 2005, 41). President Menem (1989-1999) rejected a social prevention

approach and asserted that the solution of the country’s crime problem required “a strong

arm and zero tolerance” (quoted in Smulovitz 2003, 130). The government proposed

“increased sentences for repeat offenders, reducing the possibility of parole, and

increasing police authority to counteract the effects of recently approved rights

legislation” (Smulovitz 2003, 130). To some extent this was a reaction to initiatives of

the city and province of Buenos Aires.

The city of Buenos Aires is an interesting case because, unlike the provinces, it

does not have its own police force but rather depends on the federal police. In 1996 the

city of Buenos Aires gained formal legal status as the “Autonomous City of Buenos

Aires” and political leaders attempted to assert control over security policy with the Code

for Urban Public Behavior (Código de Convivencia Urbana), which took a pro-rights

stance and among other measures legalized vagrancy and prostitution and limited the

ability of the federal police to carry out detentions, making it very controversial (Hinton

2006, 55; Smulovitz 2003, 130). Partly as a result of an August 1998 crime wave the

municipal legislature backtracked and moved to “restore the ability of police to carry out

preventive detentions” (Smulovitz 2003, 130).

In 1996 a process of police reform began in the province of Buenos Aires under

Governor Eduardo Duhalde (a member of President Menem’s Peronist Party and a rival

31

to the president) following major police scandals. The provincial government initiated a

review of all police personnel and organizational modifications, creating a backlash

which led to the temporary suspension of reforms (González 2005, 63). However, the

Peronist electoral defeat in the 1997 legislative elections convinced the governor that

focusing on security policy was a good electoral strategy for his 1999 presidential

campaign – resulting in a provincial plan to reorganize the security system and crime

investigation (González 2005, 64). The plan called for the immediate reorganization of

the provincial police and focused on strengthening community participation and

regulating the private security system (González 2005, 65).

In 1998 a new provincial law governing the police (Ley Provincial Marco para la

Policia) codified the reorganization of the police force25 and also established community-

based security forums (Foros de Seguridad) at the neighborhood, municipal, and

departmental levels (González 2005, 68). On paper these groups had ample functions:

“evaluate the functioning and activities of the police, collect information and demands of

the community, formulate suggestions about public security, and participate in the

development of prevention plans” (González 2005, 69). In practice, researchers

evaluating the security forums observed uneven implementation at the local level

resulting from socioeconomic variation between municipalities and within them, one of

the concerns raised in the framework above. There were very different levels of security

services and participation (Föhrig and Pomares 2007, 34).

25 It created three police forces: security police responsible for routine patrols and crime control, investigations police responsible for judicial investigations, and traffic police. This is significant to the extent that the crime control and investigative functions were separated.

32

The main benefit of the local security forums was an improved relationship

between those in the community who participated and the police (Föhrig and Pomares

2007, 31). However, much like the results of community policing initiatives in Chile, the

participants (who were often crime victims and almost all over the age of forty) usually

perceived crime to be an issue of lack of budgetary resources for the police and “due

process” as a barrier to crime fighting, as well as stigmatizing certain social groups -

especially poor youths (Föhrig and Pomares 2007, 33). In the Argentine case, the pro-

rights network has been able to provide a counter to such positions (Fuentes 2005;

Smulovitz 2003, 141-44). However, “human rights groups have been able to influence

problem definition and political debate, but they have been unable to influence the

implementation of crucial reforms” (Fuentes 2005, 107). There seemed to be a sense

among provincial reformers that simply incorporating principles of participation and

internal police controls was enough to generate effective practices (González 2005, 74-

75).

This is perhaps a reflection of the disconnect between the problem and policy

streams and the political utility of imported ideas in the Argentine case, where “[u]rban

insecurity is progressively transformed into an object of political exchange, into a product

for the production of political and electoral consensus” (Sozzo 2005, 40). This dynamic

was dominant in the 1999 presidential and gubernatorial elections and the 2000 mayoral

election in the city of Buenos Aires during which some of the zero tolerance consultants

brought in by the Menem administration became campaign advisors. “In the 2000

[Buenos Aires] mayoral race, both frontrunners’ platforms boosted imported strategies as

remedies for the crime epidemic” with the victorious Radical Party candidate

33

campaigning on a community policing model based on the United Kingdom’s experience

and former Peronist economy minister Domingo Cavallo hiring William Bratton as a

campaign consultant (Hinton 2006, 86). Perhaps the most extreme examples of zero

tolerance rhetoric came from the 1999 gubernatorial campaign of then-Vice-president

Carlos Ruckauf, who did not shy away from calling for the killing of criminals in his race

for political control of Buenos Aires province. Ruckauf’s victory and subsequent

reversal of the reforms of his predecessor Duhalde (despite being from the same party)

contributed to the discontinuity of police reform. In May 2000 the new provincial

government reversed a 1998 law, returning to the police powers such as the ability to

hold suspects incommunicado for up to 12 hours (Sozzo 2005, 42).

Although such extreme zero tolerance rhetoric was out of fashion by 2008, many

of the laws and policies associated with the zero tolerance model were still in place and

coexisted with unevenly implemented citizen participation initiatives. Local officials

continue to bring in consultants associated with the zero tolerance model, but this appears

to be a political performance for voters rather than a sincere attempt to invest in concrete

policy reforms. When the consultants leave, it is back to business as usual.26

Conclusions

The case studies provide support for Risse-Kappan's (1995) structural framework

on the impact of transnational networks. Specifically, Chile’s more centralized political

system led to more uniform and sustained community policing policies than in

26 Author interview Héctor Masquelet, federal Secretary of Security, July 15, 2008, Buenos Aires.

34

Argentina’s federal system with its fragmented political parties. Yet the Chilean case

also shows that policy entrepreneurs may emerge in unexpected places, in this case at the

municipal level where mayors have no formal political authority over police policy.

Right opposition mayors used zero tolerance rhetoric to frame the issue of citizen security

in the media (problem definition). However, the mayors were less successful in

influencing the policy and political streams as they ran up against a strong and centralized

police bureaucracy and popular national executives who worked to co-opt the citizen

security issue and implement community policing solutions. Politicians’ use of zero

tolerance and community policing models in both countries illustrates the expressive

nature of policy diffusion and the selective ways in which policy models may be adapted

to suit both policy and political needs in target states – particularly in the context of a

weakly institutionalized transnational policy network.

35

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