Jacob R. Turner

Areas of interest: electoral campaigns, policing, quantitative methods

Jacob Turner is a researcher investigating the police and public security policies in the context of democratic regimes. His main interests are how the police influence public policies and how contact with violent agents of the state constructs ideas of citizenship.

His dissertation, "War in Words: Law, Order, and Iron Fist Politics in Brazil", investigates the participation of police officers in electoral politics in Brazil. Using a combination of survey experimental methods, semi-automated text analysis of electoral platforms, and qualitative interviews with dozens of candidates and public security professionals, the dissertation argues that the emergence of "security sector candidacies" represents a qualitative shift in the ways that police engage with the political system. Because of lingering, unaddressed professional grievances, a perceived inevitability of reform, and active threats to the status quo, police increasingly feel the need to make policy themselves, not simply block unwelcome reforms from outside, as is traditionally the case.

While his main focus is Brazil, Jacob has also published research focused on El Salvador and has an active project investigating the origins of institutional trust in US cities, with a pilot survey instrument already deployed in South Bend, Indiana.

Jacob's research has been generously funded by the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG) and a Fulbright Study/Research Grant, as well as internal grants from the Hellen Kellogg Institute for International Studies and The Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts. His work has appeared in Party Politics and Teoría e Pesquisa.