Abstract Countries emerging from civil war often experience protests and police repression. While scholars have assumed that most people oppose forceful police responses, frequent instances of repression in conflict-affected countries points to substantial public support. This study examines variation in public support for police use of force against protests in conflict-affected regions of Colombia. Prior research has focused on community policing, personal interactions, or wartime experiences to explain attitudes toward police. We posit that in volatile postwar settings, attitudes also reflect perceptions of evolving security threats. Through a survey experiment conducted after nationwide protests in Colombia, the study finds increased support for police repression when protestors are linked to ongoing insecurity—due to violent tactics or association with coca growers, a group associated with organized crime. Further analysis shows that support for protest repression reflects perceptions of current threat from a changing security environment rather than prior wartime experiences. These findings suggest that evolving security concerns in post-conflict environments shape public opinion of police, leading to increased tolerance for police repression in response to perceived threats. They contribute to explaining police repression in democracies and reveal how threat environments shape public attitudes in countries affected by violent conflict.
Berg et al. (Fri,) studied this question.