CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 60Policing Practices and PerceptionsCriminal Justice and PenologyPolitical Theory and Democracy

Policing, Democratic Participation, and the Reproduction of Asymmetric Citizenship

Open access
GONZÁLEZ, YANILDA, MAYKA, LINDSAY·2023·American Political Science Review
DOI 10.1017/s0003055422000636
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Can democratic participation reduce inequalities in citizenship produced by policing? We argue that citizen participation in policing produces a paradox, which we call asymmetric citizenship. For some citizens, expanding participation in policing expands citizenship by enhancing state responsiveness to demands. Yet citizen participation in policing often produces demands to repress marginalized groups, thereby contracting their citizenship rights. We theorize that formal spaces for citizen participation in policing produce asymmetric citizenship through three mechanisms: (1) defining some groups as “virtuous citizens” and labeling marginalized groups as “security threats,” (2) gatekeeping to amplify the voice of “virtuous citizens” while silencing marginalized groups, and (3) articulating demands for police repression of marginalized groups to protect the rights of “virtuous citizens.” We illustrate the framework through a qualitative analysis of São Paulo’s Community Security Councils. Our analysis elucidates mechanisms through which democratic participation can reproduce, rather than ameliorate, inequality in policing.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/s0003055422000636

Cites

4 of 4 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • If a summary drops or misrepresents an argument, officials reviewing public input are less likely to encounter it.

    “If a summary drops or misrepresents an argument, officials reviewing public input are less likely to encounter it [36].”

    From All Public Voices Are Equal, But Are Some More Equal Than Others to LLMs? (2026) · cites this paper as [36]

    The Data and Methods section says the authors coded CONSEG meeting minutes, and Mechanism 2 describes informal barriers that prevent marginalized groups from bringing concerns to police. Neither passage addresses whether a summary omits or misrepresents an argument, or whether officials reviewing that summary are then less likely to encounter it. I searched for omitted or misrepresented arguments in meeting minutes and summaries; no passage in our copy establishes that link. (LLM, conf=0.76)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 71

  1. Ahnen, Ronald. 2007. "The Politics of Police Violence in Democratic Brazil." Latin American Politics and Society 49 (1): 141-64.
  2. Alves, Jamie Amparo. 2014. "From Necropolis to Blackopolis: Necropolitical Governance and Black Spatial Praxis in São Paulo, Brazil." Antipode 46 (2): 323-39.
  3. Alves, Jamie Amparo. 2018. The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  4. Armenta, Amada. 2017. Protect, Serve, and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement. Oakland: University of California Press.
  5. Avritzer, Leonardo. 2009. Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  6. Bachrach, Peter, and Morton Baratz. 1962. "Two Faces of Power." American Political Science Review 56 (4): 947-52.
  7. Baiocchi, Gianpaolo, Patrick Heller, and Marcelo Silva. 2011. Bootstrapping Democracy: Transforming Local Governance and Civil Society in Brazil. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
  8. Bayley, David. 2006. Changing the Guard: Developing Democratic Police Abroad. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  9. Bell, Monica. 2016. "Situational Trust: How Disadvantaged Mothers Reconceive Legal Cynicism." Law & Society Review 50 (2): 314-47.
  10. Bittner, Egon. 1990. Aspects of Police Work. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
  11. Bonner, Michelle. 2019. Tough on Crime: The Rise of Punitive Populism in Latin America. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
  12. Bonner, Michelle, Guillermina Seri, Rose Kubal, and Michael Kempa, eds. 2018. Police Abuse in Contemporary Democracies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  13. Brinks, Daniel. 2008. The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  14. Caldeira, Teresa. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Oakland: University of California Press.
  15. Caldeira, Teresa. 2002. "The Paradox of Police Violence in Democratic Brazil." Ethnography 3 (3): 235-63.
  16. Cardoso, Leonardo. 2019. Sound-Politics in São Paulo. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  17. Cheng, Tony. 2020. "Input without Influence: The Silence and Scripts of Police and Community Relations." Social Problems 67 (1): 171-89.
  18. Coelho, Vera Schattan. 2006. "Democratization of the Brazilian Health Councils: The Paradox of Bringing the Other Side into the Tent." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30 (3): 656-71.
  19. Collins, Jennifer. 2014. "New Left Experiences in Bolivia and Ecuador and the Challenge to Theories of Populism." Journal of Latin American Studies 46 (1): 59-86.
  20. da Matta, Roberto. 1987. "The Quest for Citizenship in a Relational University." In State and Society in Brazil: Continuity and Change, eds. John Wirth, Edson Nunes, and Thomas Bogenschild, 307-35. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
  21. Davis, Diane. 2006. "Undermining the Rule of Law: Democratization and the Dark Side of Police Reform in Mexico." Latin American Politics and Society 48 (10): 55-86.
  22. Donaghy, Maureen. 2011. "Do Participatory Governance Institutions Matter? Municipal Councils and Social Housing Programs in Brazil." Comparative Politics 44 (1): 83-102.
  23. Dryzek, John. 2000. Deliberative Democracy and beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  24. Eckhouse, Laurel. 2019. "Race, Party, and Representation in Criminal Justice Politics." Journal of Politics 81 (3): 1143-52.
  25. Endres, Danielle. 2009. "The Rhetoric of Nuclear Colonialism: Rhetorical Exclusion of American Indian Arguments in the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Siting Decision." Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6 (1): 39-60.
  26. Falleti, Tulia, and Santiago Cunial. 2018. Participation in Social Policy: Public Health in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  27. Fan, Mei-Fang. 2006. "Nuclear Waste Facilities on Tribal Land: The Yami's Struggles for Environmental Justice." Local Environment 11 (4): 433-44.
  28. Fung, Archon. 2004. Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  29. Geller, Amanda, Jeffrey Fagan, Tom Tyler, and Bruce Link. 2014. "Aggressive Policing and the Mental Health of Young Urban Men." American Journal of Public Health 104 (12): 2321-27.
  30. Gerring, John. 2007. Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  31. Gilens, Martin, and Benjamin Page. 2014. "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Averge Citizens." Perspectives on Politics 12 (3): 564-81.
  32. Gilliam, Franklin, Jr., and Shanto Iyengar. 2000. "Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public." American Journal of Political Science 44 (3): 560-73.
  33. Glenn, Evelyn. 2011. "Constructing Citizenship." American Sociological Review 76 (1): 1-24.
  34. Goldstein, Robert Justin. 1978. Political Repression in Modern America from 1870 to present. Cambridge: Schenkman.
  35. González, Yanilda. 2016. "Varieties of Participatory Security: Assessing Community Participation in Policing in Latin America." Public Administration and Development 36 (2): 132-43.
  36. González, Yanilda. 2017. "'What Citizens Can See of the State': Police and the Construction of Democratic Citizenship in Latin America." Theoretical Criminology 21 (4): 494-511.
  37. González, Yanilda. 2020. Authoritarian Policing in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  38. Hacker, Jacob, and Paul Pierson. 2010. "Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States." Politics & Society 38 (2): 152-204.
  39. Herring, Chris. 2019. "Complaint-Oriented Policing: Regulating Homelessness in Public Space." American Sociological Review 84 (5): 769-800.
  40. Holston, James. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  41. Hong, Sounman, and B. Shine Cho. 2018. "Citizen Participation and the Redistribution of Public Goods." Public Administration 96 (3): 481-96.
  42. Krause, Krystin. 2014. "Supporting the Iron Fist: Crime News, Public Opinion, and Authoritarian Crime Control in Guatemala." Latin American Politics and Society 56 (1): 98-119.
  43. Landemore, Hélène. 2020. Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  44. Laniyonu, Ayobami. 2018. "Police, Politics and Participation: The Effect of Police Exposure on Political Participation in the United Kingdom." British Journal of Criminology 58 (5): 1232-53.
  45. Lowi, Theodore. 1964. "American Business, Public Policy, Case- Studies, and Political Theory." World Politics 16 (4): 677-715.
  46. Marshall, T. H. 1950. Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  47. Mayka, Lindsay. 2019a. Building Participatory Institutions in Latin America: Reform Coalitions and Institutional Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  48. Mayka, Lindsay. 2019b. "Society-Driven Participatory Institutions: Lessons from Colombia's Planning Councils." Latin American Politics and Society 61 (2): 93-114.
  49. Mayka, Lindsay. 2021. "The Power of Human Rights Frames in Urban Security: Lessons from Bogotá." Comparative Politics 54 (1): 1-25.
  50. Mayka, Lindsay, and Jessica Rich. 2021. "Brazil's Participatory Infrastructure: Opportunities and Limitations for Inclusion." In The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies, eds. Diana Kapiszewski, Steven Levitsky, and Deborah Yashar, 155-81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  51. McNulty, Stephanie. 2013. "Participatory Democracy? Exploring Peru's Efforts to Engage Civil Society in Local Governance." Latin American Politics and Society 55 (3): 69-92.
  52. McNulty, Stephanie. 2019. Democracy from above? The Unfulfilled Promise of Nationally Mandated Participatory Reforms. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
  53. Miller, Lisa. 2016. The Myth of Mob Rule: Violent Crime and Democratic Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  54. Mitchell, Michael, and Charles Wood. 1999. "Ironies of Citizenship: Skin Color, Police Brutality, and the Challenge to Democracy in Brazil." Social Forces 77 (3): 1001-20.
  55. Moncada, Eduardo. 2009. "Toward Democratic Policing in Colombia? Institutional Accountability Through Lateral Reform." Comparative Politics 41 (4): 431-49.
  56. Montambeault, Françoise. 2015. The Politics of Local Participatory Democracy in Latin America: Institutions, Actors, and Interactions. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
  57. Parthasarathy, Ramya, Vijayendra Rao, and Nethra Palaniswamy. 2019. "Deliberative Democracy in an Unequal World: A Text-as- Data Study of South India's Village Assemblies." American Political Science Review 113 (3): 623-40.
  58. Pateman, Carole. 1970. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  59. Prowse, Gwen, Vesla Weaver, and Tracey Meares. 2019. "The State from Below: Distorted Responsiveness in Policed Communities." Urban Affairs Review 56 (5): 1423-71.
  60. Schneider, Anne, and Helen Ingram. 1993. "Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy." American Political Science Review 87 (2): 333-47.
  61. Skogan, Wesley, and Susan Hartnett. 1999. Community Policing, Chicago Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  62. Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2019. Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  63. Soss, Joe, and Vesla Weaver. 2017. "Police Are Our Government: Politics, Political Science, and the Policing of Race-Class Subjugated Communities." Annual Review of Political Science 20:565-91.
  64. Streeter, Shea. 2019. "Lethal Force in Black and White: Assessing Racial Disparities in the Circumstances of Police Killings." Journal of Politics 81 (3): 1124-32.
  65. Touchton, Michael, Natasha Borges Sugiyama, and Brian Wampler. 2017. "Democracy at Work: Moving beyond Elections to Improve Well-Being." American Political Science Review 111 (1): 68-82.
  66. Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry Brady. 1995. Voice and Quality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  67. Walker, Hannah. 2020. Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation, and Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  68. Wampler, Brian. 2007. Participatory Budgeting in Brazil: Contestation, Cooperation and Accountability. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
  69. Wampler, Brian. 2015. Activating Democracy in Brazil: Popular Participation, Social Justice, and Interlocking Institutions. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
  70. Weaver, Vesla, and Amy Lerman. 2010. "Political Consequences of the Carceral State." American Political Science Review 104 (4): 817-33.
  71. White, Ariel. 2016. "When Threat Mobilizes: Immigration Enforcement and Latino Voter Turnout." Political Behavior 38 (2): 355-82.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
GONZÁLEZ, Y., & MAYKA, L.
Affiliations
  • Harvard University (US)
  • Colby College (US)
Corresponding author
  • GONZÁLEZ, YANILDA
  • MAYKA, LINDSAY
ORCID
Venue
American Political Science Review
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2022-07-12
Volume
117
Issue
1
Pages
263-279
ISSN
  • 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5943
DOI
10.1017/s0003055422000636
OpenAlex
W4285042181
Cited by
60
References
4
Citations by year
2026: 17 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 9
FWCI
35.10
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • American Political Science Review (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
Open Society Foundations (Drugs, Security, and Democracy Fellowship)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policing Practices and Perceptions
  • Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
Keywords
citizen participation in policing, democratic participation, policing, marginalized communities, security threats, gatekeeping, police repression, São Paulo, state responsiveness

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review