The incursion of the Rio de Janeiro state security forces into the Complexo do Alemão, against the Comando Vermelho, was both a tactical failure and a political success. At the same time that the goals of seizing the faction’s leadership were not achieved, surveys indicate that the majority of the Brazilian population approved of the actions of 28 October. Perhaps most surprising is that community residents — specifically those most exposed to police violence — are among those most supportive.
The strangeness of agreeing to the operation disappears when we understand that security is not a public policy like other policies. Previous governments, especially leftist ones, relegated the issue to the background, ignoring that providing security is a necessary condition for the legitimacy of the state and its very existence. For fearful voters, concerns about public health, education, or macroeconomic stability become secondary.
Democracy is not always a sine qua non for citizens to accept state authority, but security is. As in situations of war where constitutional guarantees may be suspended, citizens living in conditions of persistent insecurity may believe that only tough measures can contain groups that challenge the regime. Many studies show that although the dilemma that order can only be restored by sacrificing rights is false, voters who feel threatened believe in this exchange.
The cycle of democratic collapse is completed when politicians who promise order at any cost appear at the ballot box. This was the case of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador; To a lesser extent, it explains the proliferation of “law and order” politicians in recent years at all levels of government in Brazil.
In a recent study, we showed that voters exposed to violence actually choose an authoritarian leader. We analyzed the phenomenon of the “new cangaço”, which occurred throughout the 2000s. During this period, heavily armed criminal groups invaded hundreds of cities, many of them small, and often prevailed in confrontations with police.
Our research design seeks to measure the causal impact of attacks. Those municipalities that are attacked a year before the elections constitute the treatment group. After the elections, the affected municipalities form the oversight group. Since the attacks had no political connotation, the two groups are similar: any differences can be attributed to criminal acts on the attitudes of the population. Immediately, we noticed that participants in an important opinion poll in the affected municipalities declared that, in addition to feeling insecure, they expressed greater support for institutional disruption in the event of rampant crime.
However, our most poignant findings come from an analysis of the 2018 elections. On the one hand, there was an openly authoritarian candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, who promised to restore order by giving the police carte blanche. On the other hand, there are names like Geraldo Alckmin, who is running on a center-right list and has a positive record in public security in the state of São Paulo. Our results show quite clearly that only support for Bolsonaro grows significantly in cities that were attacked shortly before the election.
Insecurity can poison democracy. The state’s inaction in confronting the penetration of organized crime into daily life leads to an increasing demand for protection. Attributing support for the kind of police intervention we have just witnessed to a supposed authoritarian stagnation in society is convenient, but unfounded and unproductive.
Politicians committed to democratic institutions cannot simply wait for other established causes of crime – such as inequality, lack of education, and low income – to improve inertia. Without real attention to the problem, politicians committed to democracy will leave public security to those who measure success by the number of deaths resulting from state actions.
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