Constructing the State: Macro Strategies, Micro Incentives, and the Creation of Police Forces in Colonial Namibia

Juan, Alexander De; Krautwald, Fabian; Pierskalla, Jan H.

doi:10.1177/0032329217705352

Cited by 36 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…If the incumbent's objective is to minimize future rebellions, then the targeting of police resources should be positively associated with the level of violence in a locality in the past. Previous work shows that this may be the case historically in Africa, as the expansion of police stations in the German colonial state was associated with the prior level of local resistance to colonial rule (de Juan et al 2017;Pierskalla et al 2017).…”

Section: Resource Allocation For Policing In Post-conflict Settingsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Policing in a Post-Conflict State: Evidence from Uganda

Dow

2022

Comparative Political Studies

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How do governments in post-conflict settings provide for policing within their countries? I argue that leaders respond to both electoral concerns and security threats in shaping the geographic provision of policing infrastructure. Focusing on Uganda, I contend that the territorial expansion of policing has followed a distinct political logic. First, I use panel data on police infrastructure to demonstrate increased construction in counties with previously lower electoral support for the incumbent regime. Additionally, I find that counties with violence are more likely to experience increases in construction, but especially in areas where the incumbent has more support. Finally, I show that (1) proximity to police infrastructure is associated with worse individual perceptions of the police and (2) that increased construction of police infrastructure has large significant effects on reducing voter turnout while increasing vote share for the incumbent president. These findings have important implications for post-conflict reconstruction, stability, and violence.

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Section: Resource Allocation For Policing In Post-conflict Settingsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Policing in a Post-Conflict State: Evidence from Uganda

Dow

2022

Comparative Political Studies

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“…Governments may strategically deploy loyal security personnel (De Juan, Krautwald & Pierskalla, 2017; Hassan, 2017). The historical origins of the grid system precludes endogenous assignments on the unit level.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another way to ensure compliance is to strategically deploy loyal officers (De Juan, Krautwald & Pierskalla, 2017). Governments might selectively assign committed officers to locations that they deem politically or militarily important (Hassan, 2017).…”

Section: Limitations In Streamlining Officer Ideologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, strategic deployments are only feasible if the pool of committed officers is large enough to offer the government a choice in whom to deploy and whom to keep off the battlefield. Since the pool of skilled and committed officers is often limited, governments have to accept trade-offs between loyalty and deployments (De Juan, Krautwald & Pierskalla, 2017).…”

Section: Limitations In Streamlining Officer Ideologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ideology and state terror

Scharpf

2018

Journal of Peace Research

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How does ideology influence state terror? Studies on state repression have looked at the leaders’ decisionmaking to explain how much violence states use against internal enemies. However, government leaders usually rely on their security forces to produce violence. I argue that distinct ideological beliefs within the military apparatus produce different levels of repression even if leaders are determined to terrorize the population. I expect officers who share the ideology of their leader to willingly execute the government’s repressive program, while officers who do not share the leader’s convictions refuse to terrorize civilians. I study these dynamics in the case of Argentina’s Dirty War (1975–81) during which the government tasked its ideologically divided army with a nationwide terror campaign. Combining qualitative and quantitative data from historical sources, I identify the ideological beliefs and repressive behavior of military commanders. Consistent with my expectation, I find that loyal nationalist officers in the infantry, artillery, and communications branch of the army perpetrated significantly more violence than liberal cavalry officers who rejected the junta’s terror program. The results demonstrate that ideological beliefs within the state’s security apparatus can lead to violent outcomes that deviate from government orders.

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“…Their case study is the creation of a police force in the colony of German Southwest Africa-modern day Namibia-in the aftermath of the Nama and Herero genocide. 42 They show how macro-strategic goals of territorial control, resource extraction, and protection of white settlers shaped the territorial expansion of police stations, reflecting the political priorities of colonial administrators and settlers alike. At the same time, the analysis shows that territorial expansion of coercive state presence faced an immense challenge of personnel recruitment.…”

Section: Dynamics Of Colonial Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies: An Introduction

Juan

Pierskalla

2017

Politics & Society

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What are the causes and consequences of colonial rule? This introduction to the special issue "Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies" surveys recent literature in political science, sociology, and economics that addresses colonial state building and colonial legacies. Past research has made important contributions to our understanding of colonialism's long-term effects on political, social, and economic development. Existing work emphasizes the role of critical junctures and institutions in understanding the transmission of those effects to present-day outcomes and embraces the idea of design-based inference for empirical analysis. The four articles of this special issue add to existing research but also represent new research trends: increased attention to (1) the internal dynamics of colonial intervention; (2) noninstitutional transmission mechanisms; (3) the role of context conditions at times of colonial intervention; and (4) a finer-grained disaggregation of outcomes, explanatory factors, and units of analysis.

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Constructing the State: Macro Strategies, Micro Incentives, and the Creation of Police Forces in Colonial Namibia

Cited by 36 publications

References 15 publications

Policing in a Post-Conflict State: Evidence from Uganda

Policing in a Post-Conflict State: Evidence from Uganda

Ideology and state terror

The Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies: An Introduction

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