Matthew Light :Police Reform in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: Armenia in Comparative Post-soviet.

Title: Police Reform in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: Armenia in Comparative Post-soviet Perspective.

Summary :We examine ongoing police reform initiatives in Armenia. Through implicit comparisons with Russia and Georgia, we assess what reforms are feasible in similar electoral authoritarian regimes. Using documentary sources, ethnographic observation, and key-informant interviews, we examine four major areas of reform: anti-corruption measures in the highway police, modernization of police recruitment and training, the policing of protest, and treatment of victims and witnesses in criminal investigations. Unlike Georgia’s sweeping reforms and Russia’s cosmetic ones, Armenia’s reforms can fairly be characterized as modest. We explain this variation in outcomes through differences across the cases concerning intra-elite relations, levels of corruption and street crime, and international linkages. Armenia’s experience demonstrates that at least some forms of police reform can occur in electoral authoritarian regimes. We close by considering the long-term viability of modest reforms that fail to create a significant pro-reform mobilization among citizens, as well as the proper role of international partners in promoting police reform in non-democratic regimes.