| dcterms.abstract | Beginning in 1990s, Latin American countries have witnessed a dramatic emergence in collective action by unemployed and informal workers. Yet, the rise in mobilizations was coupled with a depiction of protests as violent and dangerous by authorities and the media and was followed by high levels of police violence, control, and imprisonment of protesters. Furthermore, according to human rights groups, police were more violent and repressive at protest by marginal groups. Drawing on an original database of newspaper reports on contentious collective action events from 1997 to 2007 and qualitative data, this research looks at the case of Argentina to address the following questions: How does protest policing work? Does it vary based on the characteristics of protesters, targets, protest tactics, claims, and level of disruptiveness? Why are some groups perceived as more threatening to authorities and thus subject to harsher police coercion? Why, when responding to a protest event, authorities and police sometimes appear to prevent violence, and negotiate, while at times react with extreme violence? In 2001 and 2002 a political, economic, and social crisis resulted in the death of dozens of demonstrators and the emergence of new forms of organizing and policing. Thus, the case of Argentina is of particular interest because it offers an unparalleled window to examine the actions of security forces during a cycle of contentious action, and how a repertoire of protest and repression changed from before and after an economic and institutional crisis. By analyzing the range of variations in police response to demonstrations, this dissertation comes to the following conclusions. Firstly, that in a context of increasing unemployment, informality, and precarious work, collective claim making in demand for jobs and welfare benefits is perceived as threatening to authorities. Thus, protest events with demands for work and welfare aid are subject to more and harsher policing—even when the demonstrators were not otherwise provocative. Secondly, the results demonstrate that the relationship between politics and police is of great complexity and it cannot be assumed that police behavior is in direct response to decisions made by political leaders. Police have their own interests, understandings and prejudices of what the protests are about and who the demonstrators are, and their actions are at least partially independent from political leaders’ decisions or the state’s interest. This disparity between policy and police action derives from the discretionary power of the police as an institution and of individual police at protest events. Furthermore, police decision-making is not solely based on what the protesters were doing, their characteristics or the actual protest event itself, but about a historical construction that challengers to the state should be suppressed. And how this is conducted is connected to the discretionary power granted to the Argentine police. This dissertation also found that the political sign of the provincial governor, when in opposition to the national government —the president—mattered in police responses to protest events. Finally, that the social context and specific political scenarios and dynamics are fundamental in the way authorities, police, and protesters interact and shape repressive actions. Demonstrators with no leverage over the institutions they were targeting were met with tougher, more violent responses from police whether or not they were themselves violent. For groups with structural leverage, in turn, the chances of experiencing police violence decline considerably. | |
