Democracy, police violence, social movements and the reconstruction of citizenship (THESIS VERSION CH 2)

Abstract

This chapter discussed, from a theoretical point of view, the relationship among democracy, police violence and social movements, and the implications of this relationship for the quality of democracy, citizenship, social movement – state interaction, and other factors. As became clear in this chapter, police violence, exclusion, unaccountable and delegative rule, and co-opting are inherent features of a democracy with fault lines, but at the same time they are phenomena that erode democracy. This is not a matter of what came first, but rather a matter of a mutual feedback loop. Social movements are generally assumed to enhance citizenship and democracy. But in a flawed democracy, they come to face low levels of accountability and symbolic politics.