The Rise of Comparative Policing

Jacques de Maillard, Sebastian Roché, Jacques de Maillard, Sebastian Roché

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000436846
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book argues that policing should be studied in a truly comparative manner as a way of identifying more accurately the diverse features of police organisations and the trends which affect contemporary policing. Studying policing comparatively is also a way to develop more sophisticated theories on the relations between police, state, and society aiming at higher degree of generalization. In particular, broadening the empirical basis, often limited to Western countries, favours the formulation of more encompassing theories. The comparative analysis, then, is used to refine meso or macro theories on various aspects of policing.

The book covers the challenges of comparative research in diverse areas of policing studies with innovative tools and approaches to allow for the development of that subfield of policing. It is a significant new contribution to policing studies, and will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Public Policy, Sociology, Political Science and Law.

The chapters in this book were originally published in Policing and Society.

Part 1

Policing and the state: national paradigms, private security and citizens’ role

OPEN ACCESS

Plural policing, the public good, and the constitutional state: an international comparison of Austria and Canada – Ontario

Bas van Stokkom and Jan Terpstra

ABSTRACT

For the past two or three decades many jurisdictions have experienced a pluralisation of policing. In addition to the regular public police, in most countries new providers have become involved in policing public and semi-public places. This paper deals with the differences in the ways that plural policing and its consequences are defined and assessed in different countries. The paper focuses on two countries that differ considerably in the impact of neoliberalism, Austria and Canada – Ontario. In these countries different discourses are used to assess plural policing and its potential negative impact. In Canada the public good is the central concept in discussions of plural policing. This often refers to instrumental goals such as value for money and service delivery to consumers. In Austria plural policing is generally discussed in terms of the tasks and position of the state, the monopoly of violence, and by referring to constitutional and fundamental legal perspectives. This study shows that international comparative research on (plural) policing cannot be based on the tacit assumption that central concepts such as public good have universal relevance. On the contrary, these normative concepts are highly context dependent, an important conclusion for future international comparative research on policing and security.

1. Introduction

Since about the late 1980s, almost throughout the world, there has been a turn towards plural policing. It is not only the regular police, but now also other providers of policing who patrol the public and semi-public places. A recent international comparative study showed that although this is an international development, nevertheless there are important differences in its process and outcomes (Terpstra et al. 2013).

This paper deals with different ways in which plural policing and its main consequences are perceived and defined. In Anglo-Saxon countries it is quite usual to use the notion of the public good to evaluate plural policing and its main social consequences. The dominance of the neoliberal and the related new public management (NPM) discourses contributed to the adoption of highly economic and instrumental interpretations of the concept public good, for instance in terms of ‘consumer service delivery’ (Loader 2000, Newburn 2001). The idea of policing as a public good has been studied by several leading theorists (Shearing and Wood 2003, Crawford 2006, Loader and Walker 2007). For example, in their Civilizing Security (2007), Loader and Walker argue for security and policing as a ‘thick’ public good rather than the usual ‘thin’ economic and instrumentalist interpretations. Because of this public good, the state is seen as indispensable for anchoring security and policing. Although this analysis is very important in understanding the debate about plural policing and security, we believe that the concept of the public good is highly specific for certain political and cultural contexts. We expect that other concepts and notions tend to be used in continental-European countries that are highly dependent on their specific cultural, historical and political context and history.

For that reason, in this paper we use a comparative approach to understanding the different discourses that are used to define and discuss plural policing and its consequences. That such an approach has not been adopted hitherto reflects the lack of attention to the context-dependency of the notion of the public good in research on policing.

In this paper we study two countries, Austria and Canada, that have contrasting discourses on (plural) policing. These two countries differ in the impact of neoliberalism. Despite the fact that neoliberalism has also had some influence in Austria, in general the country holds to state centrism, especially where policing is concerned. Canada played a leading role in the introduction of neoliberalism in the governance of security. The central question is: In what different ways are plural policing and its consequences perceived and defined in these two countries? What are the underlying views and values in these different evaluations? The differences may be relevant to understanding the emotional and political resistance to pluralisation and differences in the willingness to privatise policing and security. Understanding these differences in the ways that the pluralisation of policing and security is perceived and discussed is fundamental to future international comparative research on this topic.

In this paper we first discuss the methodology of our international comparative research (Section 2). Next we deal with the developments in plural policing in Canada (Section 3) and Austria (Section 4), after which we present an analysis of the main discourses about plural policing used in Canada (Section 5.1) and Austria (Section 5.2). Both discourses represent different sets of values and perspectives, meaning that the two countries differ in the way plural policing is generally assessed. Finally, we contrast the two countries and deal with some consequences of our analysis for international comparative research (Section 6).

2. International comparison: methodological issues

This paper builds on a comparative study conducted in five different countries, which focused on the similarities and differences in plural policing between the countries. In each of the countries we studied relevant documents and interviewed 25 key persons (Terpstra et al. 2013). In this paper we try to understand the different terms in which plural policing and its (negative) impact are perceived, discussed and evaluated. We expect this to have a huge impact on the degree and nature of both the adoption of plural policing and the resistance to it. To understand these differences, here we concentrate on two countries, Canada and Austria. In many respects these two countries represent contrasting positions. In Canada, neoliberalism has become highly influential since the mid-1980s (Clark 2002), including policing. Private security companies make a considerable contribution to policing and security in (semi-)public places (Rigakos 2002, Rigakos and Leung 2006). In view of the significant differences between the provinces in Canada, the study concentrated on Ontario. Since the 1980s Ontario has generally been considered to have a strong doctrinaire neoliberal policy, in contrast for instance to Quebec, which represents a more pragmatic and state-oriented reform policy (Clark 2002, Gattinger and Saint-Pierre 2010).

Austria can be seen as an example of continental-European countries where the state still retains much of its strong position (despite the fact that neoliberal measures such as privatisation have also acquired some support). Austria has a somewhat contradictory position. On the one hand, it has also experienced a pluralisation of policing (although this process started relatively late and is not very extensive compared with other European countries; CoESS 2011, Terpstra et al. 2013). On the other hand, policing by non-police providers in Austria is often seen as an anomaly: the service should actually be provided only by the regular (state) police.

International comparative studies of policing and criminal justice often raise several problems. Researchers often refer to two of these (Jones and Newburn 2006). First, such studies often have to cope with a lack of reliable empirical data for comparison between different jurisdictions. Secondly, these studies encounter difficulties due to differences in formal rules, procedures and legal terminology. For instance, to understand differences in plural policing between Austria and other countries, it is relevant to know that the legal concept of public space in Austria does not depend on property rights, as is the case in most other countries, but on accessibility to the general public (Fuchs 2005). Unfamiliarity with this aspect may result in misunderstandings and unjustified generalisations about the role of the police in supervising private property. Although both a lack of empirical data and legal differences can complicate international comparative studies, an underlying complex of emotional, historical, cultural and political factors can make it even harder to draw valid comparisons. One of the problems is that these factors may be so self-evident to members of national cultures and communities, that often they are not even noticed. For instance, as Nelken (1994) argues, differences in government policy and the performance of major institutions may depend on different patterns of trust, either real or imagined, between citizens and the state. For relative outsiders it may be difficult to comprehend the largely unwritten and informal context. Traditions, sensitivities, emotions and hidden interests may have a strong, but mainly hidden impact in a certain national context. In Austria, for instance, there is a strong emotional resistance to plural policing, partly based on collective memories about what happened in the country in the years before the Second World War (Terpstra 2015). Although these memories are still present in the collective awareness, they are only rarely referred to in public documents or debates.

In the present study we have tried to overcome these problems by not having the research in the separate countries done by researchers from the countries concerned. Such an approach may not only make it difficult to share a common focus, it may also raise the risk that elements that are tacit and self-evident to those who study their own country, will remain unremarked. We therefore decided to do the research in each of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: challenges and promises of comparative policing research
• Part 1 Policing and the state: national paradigms, private security and citizens’ role
• Part 2 Comparing police–citizen relations: policies and practices
• Part 3 Police legitimacy, democracy and integrity: the need for comparative instruments across contexts
• Index