Police Reform and Counter-Reform under Regime Transformation Dynamics

A relatively unanimous consensus in the scholarly literature on democratization studies holds that since the mid-seventies of the twentieth century, a third wave of democratization of political regimes—away from forms of semi or fully authoritarian rule toward more liberal forms of democratic governance—has been taking place globally (cf. Huntington 1991, Merkel 2010). From a minimalist criteria approach, such processes of constitutional, procedural and substantive democratization aimed—at least formally—at establishing political regimes characterized by free and fair competitive elections, equality to all persons before the law concerning civil rights and political liberties, effective division of powers, horizontal accountability and active citizen involvement in political decision making (Tilly 2007: 7–8, Merkel et al. 2003: 50–54).