Category Archives: democracy

6/5/20: 99% of Police Violence Cases Go Unpunished: The Culture of Impunity


For those interested in the current events in the U.S., here is a data-driven background to police violence as a systemic problem: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/.

Couple of key charts, focusing on systemic and broad reach of the issue:


The chart above appears to be in part impacted by significant outliers. However, I doubt that removing these will generate a strong enough relationship, especially a linear relationship, between the two data sets.

Another interesting feature of the data: "99% of killings by police from 2013-2019 have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime." Which, of course goes to the heart of the policy brutality problem being a systemic one: no one is held accountable. The Buffalo police department case, currently unfolding, is a perfect illustration. Read the details here: https://buffalonews.com/2020/06/05/57-members-of-buffalo-police-riot-response-team-resign/. In the nutshell, police officer gravely and unnecessarily injures an elderly unarmed and non-violent resident. This is done in witness of the entire squad and the media. Live, on camera. The injured person is displaying immediate signs of head trauma, noticed by the police squad. No one provide any help to him. Worse, one person attempting to do so is pushed away by his colleague. In response, and after massive outrage from the public (only after such outrage), the two police officers being directly involved in the alleged case of unwarranted violence, are placed on suspension, pending an investigation. 57 of their colleagues decide to stage a protest. This is a direct signal of not just defiance by the 57 police officers against the norms of any society and procedures of their own department, but a sign of their conviction that they are above any accountability for their actions. Circling back to the 99% reference, if you work in an environment where 99 of 100 cases of the use of deadly force are left un-addressed, you will act like a judge, a jury and an executioner, while expecting the rest of the society to slavishly adhere to your command and control.

There is a daily, and on some days, hourly, stream of news flow showing live abuses of their power by the police forces. The geography of these abuses does not appear to be well-defined by political voting: liberal and conservative-led states, counties and cities are all subject to this problem. Which indicates that the culture of non-accountability in police forces in the U.S. is not driven by politics, or at the very least, not driven by politics alone. If we are to seek remedies to the problem, we need to understand the underlying causes, first. In my opinion, marginal or methodological changes to the police forces operating manuals won't do the job here, because the cause of this problem is, in my opinion, institutional, not supervisory or compliance. There is a need to break the culture of non-accountability by the police, to remove the perception of police as being somehow above the ordinary resident, and to remove the power of police to shield themselves behind the wall of silence. We need robust and frequent prosecution of police officers involved in acts of brutality and ex excessive use of force, and we need to follow these prosecutions with pursuing criminally and administratively those of their colleagues who aid and abet them in these acts by silence, indifference, false 'solidarity' and non-reporting of crimes.

1/6/20: U.S. political culture and mass protests: "Russia-gate" Season X, Episode Z


The U.S. media has been quick in accusing Russia of stirring the current wave of violence that is sweeping across the U.S. cities. As daft as it may sound, Russia has now been effectively elevated to the national cause of every malaise in many major U.S. media outlets. As quipped on Twitter by Seva Gunitsky, politics professor at University of Toronto,


Well, the problem, of course is that the U.S. leads the rest of the advanced economies in domestic political violence in recent years.


The above chart comes from Samuel J. Brannen Christian S. Haig Katherine Schmidt "The Age of Mass Protests: Understanding an Escalating Global Trend", Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2020. Note that Europe in the above includes countries that are outside the EU27, such as Russia and Ukraine. The entire continent of Europe has consistently fewer anti-government protests than North America, which includes Mexico and Canada. North American data here is heavily dominated by the U.S.

And this is not a new phenomena. Police brutality and racism, racially-based violence and violent protests are not new for the U.S., and all of these events predate the existence of Russia as an independent state, as established here: http://peterturchin.com/age-of-discord/united-states-political-violence-database/. The full paper is here: http://peterturchin.com/PDF/Turchin_JPR2012.pdf.

26/10/18: De-democratization of our values?


Do you, my friends love that smell of napalm in the mornings? Does it fill you with confidence about the future - your own and that of the rest of the world? For if you do answer 'Yes' to both of these questions, congratulations: you've made it into the American values (on average).

Here is the data from Pew Research on public trust in institutions:
Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/18/most-americans-trust-the-military-and-scientists-to-act-in-the-publics-interest/ft_16-10-18_trustinstitutions_overview/.

Democratic cornerstones of political leadership and the media are trusted by less than 50 percent of the Americans, 27 percent to 41 percent. Command & control institution of the military is trusted by 79 percent. Scepticism over coercive power and centralized counter-democratic system based on rank-command trumps all the softy stuff. even educators are more trusted in the settings involving more deterministic decision-making (e.g. medical sciences and sciences) than in more polemical setting (e.g. general education).

But if you thought European are all softy-dofty democratically minded, think again. In fact, there is not much of difference between the American population and the European ones on the same topic:
Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/04/trust-in-the-military-exceeds-trust-in-other-institutions-in-western-europe-and-u-s/.

Yes, yes, I hear you, the choir of Patriots: but in a democratic society, military is subject to democratic checks and balances, so why is this degree of confidence in military a matter for concern?

Let me explain why:

  • Firstly, irrespective of the democratic or other checks and balances, military is not a pluralist institution that encourages debates, inquiries, and discoveries through dissent. In other words, while military may be framed into the broader democratic constraints, it cannot by itself be a genuinely democratic institution. There is no democracy in command systems. 
  • Secondly, to anyone pontificating on democratic checks and balances, may I suggest revisiting the entire modern history of the U.S. to identify exactly at what point in time did democratic checks and balances imposed onto military do their jobs before the damages were incurred? In Vietnam? Nope. In multiple military engagements in Latin America? Nope, again. In the Balkans? Not really. In Afghanistan or Iraq? Not at all. 
Thus, in real terms, checks and balances do not define a democratic set of values that put strong public preference in favour of the military ahead of much weaker preferences in favour of the immediate democratic and pluralist institutions, such as politics, media, business, education.


What is happening, thus, as revealed by the above data, is the strong drift in public preferences away from democratic and liberal foundations of our modern states and toward more command and control, more coercive power-based institutions, such as military. To paraphrase one semi-failed leader of the past: it's public values de-democratization, stupid.

26/10/18: De-democratization of our values?


Do you, my friends love that smell of napalm in the mornings? Does it fill you with confidence about the future - your own and that of the rest of the world? For if you do answer 'Yes' to both of these questions, congratulations: you've made it into the American values (on average).

Here is the data from Pew Research on public trust in institutions:
Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/18/most-americans-trust-the-military-and-scientists-to-act-in-the-publics-interest/ft_16-10-18_trustinstitutions_overview/.

Democratic cornerstones of political leadership and the media are trusted by less than 50 percent of the Americans, 27 percent to 41 percent. Command & control institution of the military is trusted by 79 percent. Scepticism over coercive power and centralized counter-democratic system based on rank-command trumps all the softy stuff. even educators are more trusted in the settings involving more deterministic decision-making (e.g. medical sciences and sciences) than in more polemical setting (e.g. general education).

But if you thought European are all softy-dofty democratically minded, think again. In fact, there is not much of difference between the American population and the European ones on the same topic:
Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/04/trust-in-the-military-exceeds-trust-in-other-institutions-in-western-europe-and-u-s/.

Yes, yes, I hear you, the choir of Patriots: but in a democratic society, military is subject to democratic checks and balances, so why is this degree of confidence in military a matter for concern?

Let me explain why:

  • Firstly, irrespective of the democratic or other checks and balances, military is not a pluralist institution that encourages debates, inquiries, and discoveries through dissent. In other words, while military may be framed into the broader democratic constraints, it cannot by itself be a genuinely democratic institution. There is no democracy in command systems. 
  • Secondly, to anyone pontificating on democratic checks and balances, may I suggest revisiting the entire modern history of the U.S. to identify exactly at what point in time did democratic checks and balances imposed onto military do their jobs before the damages were incurred? In Vietnam? Nope. In multiple military engagements in Latin America? Nope, again. In the Balkans? Not really. In Afghanistan or Iraq? Not at all. 
Thus, in real terms, checks and balances do not define a democratic set of values that put strong public preference in favour of the military ahead of much weaker preferences in favour of the immediate democratic and pluralist institutions, such as politics, media, business, education.


What is happening, thus, as revealed by the above data, is the strong drift in public preferences away from democratic and liberal foundations of our modern states and toward more command and control, more coercive power-based institutions, such as military. To paraphrase one semi-failed leader of the past: it's public values de-democratization, stupid.