How can Iraq learn from Mexico’s attempts to mount new policing operations and restore order after the 1910 Revolution? This study by the Crisis States Research Centre describes how the challenges of policing regime change in post-dictatorship Mexico laid the foundation for descent into chaos. When new regimes have been born out of violent conflict it is unwise to rush into constitutional reforms that give police power. In Iraq, building state institutions and making them accountable is likely to work better than constitutionally enhancing police powers.
The easiest step in regime change is the initial battle to displace an unwanted administration. Far more difficult is the task of consolidating a new regime that will take its place. This is especially true in the aftermath of violent conflict. An additional problem with mounting new policing operations while democratic regime change is under way is that it entails purging old police forces and assembling new ones. It is hard to know which citizens can be trusted to protect the new regime. Furthermore, the new police may have little of the training, expertise, or knowledge necessary to secure the rule of law.
In the Mexican case, policing dynamics undermined, rather than strengthened, longer-term efforts to establish democratic institutions and practices. They not only buttressed the formation of a centralised, authoritarian state with inordinate coercive power and little accountability, they also brought arms and other violent means of guaranteeing social order and political power into the fabric of the culture.
The experience of Mexico suggests that:
- The more a new regime needs to count on militias as opposed to professional police, with a commitment to non-partisan social inclusion, the worse the societal fragmentation and the greater the likelihood of persistent violence.
- Problems are created by trade-offs between democracy and public security, where privileging security over democracy ultimately works against both, producing further police corruption and abuse of power.
- Early constitutional reforms that restructured police organisation were introduced at a time when revolutionary leaders had only just consolidated their hold on the state. This laid the foundation for practices of impunity and corruption that were very hard to shake.
- As long as officials of new regimes – democratic or otherwise – make a commitment to routing insurgents and political opponents through warfare techniques, citizen mistrust and violence is likely to continue.
In order to establish enough space for Iraqi society to exit from the chaos and conflict, and to set it on a more auspicious path, it is important to:
- build a stable and democratic state where differences among groups are accepted as part of the fabric of society and where disagreements are resolved through the rule of law;
- understand a new police system as the first in many steps of democratic regime reconstruction, rather than as a strategy for targeting enemies. New political leaders might then not erode democracy in the name of public security;
- avoid rushing into constitutional reforms and regulations that enhance the power of the police, which would set in stone their relationships to the state and the administration of justice system;
- start by building state institutions and making them accountable, transparent, and pluralistic; and
- solve the policing problem with citizen support, instead of through constitutional mechanisms.
