The participation of police officers in the political-electoral process: a bibliographic review

Abstract

This article aims to present an overview of the existing social science literature on the participation of police officers in the Brazilian political-electoral  process. Since the country’s redemocratization, numerous police officers have occupied prominent  elected positions in both the Executive and  Legislative branches, with a notable increase in  police candidates emerging from the 2018 elections onward. As this phenomenon gained visibility in public debate, various studies were produced and published. It is therefore pertinent to ask: What scholarly works on this topic exist within the social sciences, what are  their characteristics, and in what ways do they engage with one another? To provide a consistent response to this inquiry, a range of  publication repositories (such as Google Scholar and SciELO), as well as additional sources, were consulted to identify and analyze the studies addressing this subject. At this stage of the research, forty-two works were found, published between 1998 and 2025,  originating primarily from the fields of Political Science and Sociology, and most commonly in the  form of theses, dissertations, and journal articles. Ultimately, the article argues that this body of  literature may be organized into four thematic axes: “Political-electoral elements,” “Representations of  crime, violence, and punishment,” “The ‘Bancada da Bala,’” and “Political movements.”