How Control Institutions Fail

In February 2018, Brazilian President Michel Temer ordered a federal military intervention in Rio de Janeiro, placing an army general in charge of public security. Framed as a response to organized crime, the intervention led to a 35 percent increase in police killings in the state, along with widespread reports of abuse. Rather than restoring order, the operation escalated violence in poor communities. Nonetheless, Temer praised the operation as a success, reinforcing the militarization of policing.

In February 2020, police in the Philippine province of Bulacan reported several violent confrontations that resulted in the deaths of six drug dealers. Drugs and weapons were reportedly seized. However, it later emerged that these individuals had been detained without arrest warrants days earlier, held in police custody, and then taken in pairs to remote areas where they were executed. What had initially been framed as self-defense turned out to be premeditated killings by the police.

These two examples underscore the deadly consequences that may result from national “wars on drugs” – from top-level political decision-making down to the street-level actions of low-ranking officers.

This pattern of highly excessive and frequent extrajudicial killings provides the backdrop for the project's central question: To what extent can other political actors prevent or at least mitigate such violence if they choose to resist a president who openly disregards or undermines constitutional norms and the rule of law?

Dramatic Rise in Police Killings

Even before the rise of these hardline leaders, Brazil and the Philippines already experienced significantly higher rates of deadly police violence than neighboring countries. While Brazilian police have long been notorious for their brutality, killings rose further after 2016. Similarly, police killings in the Philippines were not new, but they surged dramatically from Duterte’s first day in office. Why did this happen?

Most existing research attributes excessive police violence either to external conditions — like poverty or high crime rates in specific regions – or to internal issues within police organizations, such as culture or crime-fighting strategies. However, these factors fail to explain the sudden surge in killings, clearly triggered by shifts in national politics.

In both Brazil and the Philippines, the increase in lethal police violence coincided with the tenure of presidents who used populist, tough-on-crime rhetoric and explicitly signaled support or tolerance for deadly force. In Brazil, under Temer, police killings rose by 125 percent. His successor Bolsonaro continued the trend, resulting in over 6,000 police-related deaths annually. In the Philippines, the escalation was even more dramatic: within the first six months of Duterte’s presidency, police killed over 2,400 people — a twentyfold increase over previous years.

Treating these political shifts as the starting point, Peter Kreuzer and Ariadne Natal analyzed the roles of national and local elites — both political and administrative — in enabling the following waves of violence.

Unwritten Rules of Cruelty

While both Brazil and the Philippines are democratic states, they are often classified as “deficient democracies” in international indices. Nevertheless, they possess formal institutions intended to limit executive overreach. The central question is whether these mechanisms functioned—and if not, why they failed to prevent, reduce, or stop the violence.

To address this, Kreuzer and Natal examined the interaction between formal and informal institutions.

Formal institutions — laws, regulations, and constitutional norms — define the legal framework of a society. They dictate how individuals and state bodies are expected to behave. Yet their effectiveness hinges on the willingness of those in power to enforce and abide by them. This is where informal institutions come into play.

“Informal institutions are shared social norms that influence how people interpret and respond to events. They arise and evolve through interactions and shared expectations, and can either support, supplement, or undermine formal rules. Unlike written laws, they are unwritten and maintained through mutual understanding. This makes them both powerful and elusive,” explains Peter Kreuzer.

In both Brazil and the Philippines, formal institutions mandate that anti-drug policing must comply with legal standards. However, these rules were undercut by the rise of informal norms championed by national leaders. During his presidential campaign, Duterte infamously declared: “Forget human rights… I will kill you. I will throw you all into Manila Bay and fatten the fish.” After taking office, he said he would be happy to “slaughter” three million drug addicts. He even suggested forcing suspects who surrendered to fight back by handing them loaded weapons. These informal calls for violence were echoed in the police hierarchy. One provincial police director, for instance, likened the drug campaign to fighting dengue fever — justifying the killings by comparing drug suspects to mosquitoes.

Duterte und andere haben eine bisher unbedeutende informelle Institution gestärkt: eine Reihe von Normen und Regeln, die mit den formalen Rechtsnormen konkurrierten. Dieses Narrativ einer existenziell bedrohten Nation, das angeblich illegale Gewalt rechtfertigte, gewann an Legitimität, als klar wurde, dass die Kampagne breite öffentliche Unterstützung hatte.

Undermining Oversight

Crucially, formal oversight bodies — from legislatures to prosecutors — remained passive or complicit. Investigations into police misconduct were rare. Nor did these institutions challenge the dominant narrative of police “self-defense,” which masked targeted killings, despite the dramatic rise in fatalities. Informal norms of political subservience, especially in a clientelist system like the Philippines, where political survival often depends on loyalty to powerful figures rather than ideological commitments, played a central role in this failure.

Though the details differ, similar patterns emerged in Brazil. Both Temer and Bolsonaro amplified a previously marginal set of norms that justified deadly police force, often in direct conflict with legal standards. These informal norms were reinforced through public praise for violent officers, symbolic acts, and legislation aimed at shielding police from accountability. The narrative of a war on crime justified extraordinary — and often illegal — measures. Meanwhile, formal oversight mechanisms – from Congress to public prosecutors – largely stood by, their inaction driven by political alignment, institutional inertia, and fear of electoral backlash in a society where public security remains a potent political issue.

In both countries, the presidents successfully transformed a previously fringe hardline stance into mainstream doctrine for law enforcement. As a result, institutions that were meant to serve as checks became passive observers.

The researchers combined extensive data analysis with fieldwork, including interviews with mayors, governors, police commanders, prosecutors, and human rights officials. Their findings have been published in two PRIF Reports, multiple PRIF Spotlights, and various blog posts. Additional publications by Peter Kreuzer explore how mainstream politicians in the Philippines have long used deadly violence against political opponents – practices that, though officially condemned, remain entrenched in local political competition (Kreuzer 2022, 2021).

The mechanisms underlying failure at control identified by Kreuzer and Natal are not unique to Brazil and the Philippines. They offer broader lessons about the limits of democratic resilience: formal institutions like the rule of law, checks and balances, and human rights are essential but not sufficient. Their effectiveness depends on whether political elites genuinely uphold and defend the principles these institutions represent – even under pressure. When informal norms and political interests override constitutional values, even the strongest formal frameworks can fail. (ewa)