Democratic policing is founded on the consent of the governed. The article claims that consent involves four principles of policing that culminate in the need for empirical evidence about how best to achieve democratic values through police practice. The first principle is that the mission of policing is to achieve compliance with the law, rather than to dispense coercion, to achieve ends rather than to employ any specific means. The second principle is that diverse democracies require diverse means to achieve compliance among diverse peoples. The third principle is that police can build the master identity of all citizens in democracies as citizens. The fourth principle is that empirical evidence on how to obtain compliance through persuasion and good manners ("polite policing") will help police minimize the use of coercion, and increase the legitimacy of the democratic nation-state. References, notes