Fighting for a democratic police: Politics, experts and bureaucrats in the Transformation of the Police in Post-authoritarian Chile and Argentina

PAUL CARLOS HATHAZY

Comparative Sociology

Brill

Año: 2013 vol. 12 p. 505 - 547

1569-1322

Through a comparative field analysis, I explain why, after being subjected to the same reform projects and rationalities in the democratic period, police bureaucracies changed in Chile but remained unchanged in Argentina. In doing so advance a field theory account of police bureaucratic change that (a) overcome the limitations of Late-modern, Post-modern and Governmentality theories of police change, and (b) emphasizes positionality, agency and a plurality of interests in processes of administrative change. I demonstrate that the proliferation of new experts and their reconversion strategies within the field led to the emergence of specific demands for reform while the historical structures and location of the policing field and the outcomes of struggles within them determined the differential evolution of police organizations in democratic times.