Policing for democracy or democratically responsive policing? Examining the limits of externally driven police reform
| Author | Jarrett Blaustein,Andy Aitchison |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370812470780 |
| Published date | 01 July 2013 |
| Date | 01 July 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Criminology
10(4) 496 –511
© The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1477370812470780
euc.sagepub.com
Policing for democracy or
democratically responsive
policing? Examining the limits
of externally driven police
reform
Andy Aitchison
University of Edinburgh, UK
Jarrett Blaustein
Aberystwyth University, UK
Abstract
This paper engages with literatures on democratic policing in established and emerging
democracies and argues for disaggregating democratic policing into two more precise terms:
policing for democracy and democratically responsive policing. The first term captures the
contribution of police to securing and maintaining wider democratic forms of government, while
the second draws on political theory to emphasize arrangements for governing police actors based
on responsiveness. Applying two distinct terms helps to highlight limitations to external police
assistance. The terms are applied in an exploratory case study of 15 years of police reform in
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The paper highlights early work securing the necessary conditions
for political democracy in BiH but argues that subsequent interventions dominated by the
European Union undermine responsiveness. A recent United Nations Development Programme
project suggests that external actors can succeed in supporting democratically responsive policing
where they do not have immediate security interests at stake.
Keywords
Bosnia and Herzegovina, democracy, European Union, policing, responsiveness
Introduction
Democratic policing has been defined and redefined by scholars, practitioners and
reformers (for example, Bayley, 2006; OSCE, 2008; Pino and Wiatrowski, 2006).
Limited consensus exists on what makes policing ‘democratic’ and how this is best
Corresponding author:
Andy Aitchison, School of Law, University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH8 9LY, UK.
Email: andy.aitchison@ed.ac.uk
470780EUC10410.1177/1477370812470780European Journal of CriminologyAitchison and Blaustein
2013
Article
Aitchison and Blaustein 497
achieved, especially when pursued through externally driven reform. In translating
democracy into prescriptions or evaluative schemes for police services and police
governance (for example, Jones et al., 1996; Marenin, 1998; Marks, 2003) or into lists of
values to inform police reform (OHR, 2004), the distinction between policing that sup-
ports the establishment or maintenance of democracy and the specific arrangements for
democratic governance of police services is overlooked or understated. We elaborate on
this distinction, then draw on supporting material from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to
identify international interventions associated with policing for democracy and to high-
light structural conditions associated with liberal state-building that obstruct the devel-
opment of democratically responsive policing. We argue that, although external actors
may be well placed to support policing for democracy in divided, post-conflict or post-
authoritarian contexts, democratically responsive policing requires greater sensitivity to
locally defined needs and is undermined when external interventions are driven by the
needs, priorities and interests of sponsors. Contrasting the interventions on the part of the
European Union (EU), which has strong security interests in the Western Balkans, with
those of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), underlines this point.
Our reading of work on policing and democracy in established liberal democracies
(for example, Bradley et al., 1986; Jones et al., 1996; Loader, 2002) suggests that, where
the democratic nature of the polity is taken for granted, analyses neglect the role of the
police in establishing and maintaining a democratic polity in favour of the mechanisms
that govern police services.1 Work on post-colonial contexts (Bayley, 1969; Marenin,
1982) and post-authoritarian states in Africa (Marks, 2003), Australasia (Goldsmith and
Dinnen, 2007), Europe (Ryan, 2009) and South America (Hinton, 2008) cannot take
democracy for granted. This produces more even, if not always explicit, attention across
policing for democracy and democratic governance of the police. As the rhetoric of dem-
ocratic policing within established democracies is critiqued (Manning, 2010: 21–2), a
strong body of work associates the ‘export’ of democratic policing with a wider agenda
aimed at aligning governing processes, institutions and structures in weak states with the
preferences and priorities of strong external actors (Bowling and Sheptycki, 2011;
Ellison and Pino, 2012; Ryan, 2011). We seek to salvage something from democratic
policing to provide reformers with a framework for police support in new or emerging
democracies.
As an example of a country experiencing intensive and extensive international inter-
vention in police reform, BiH illustrates the challenges of, and limits to, externally driven
programmes of democratization. As an exploratory case study, BiH is used to illustrate
the application of the terms ‘policing for democracy’ and ‘democratically responsive
policing’ and to assess their value in identifying the limitations of external police assis-
tance. Aitchison spent the summers of 2004 and 2005 in BiH, conducting interviews with
participants in, and observers of, criminal justice reform and reconstruction (see
Aitchison, 2011: 8–12). In this period, the Police Restructuring Commission was estab-
lished and made its recommendations, and negotiations on restructuring took place
between the main political parties under the oversight of Bosnia’s international overseer,
the Office of the High Representative (OHR).2 After an initial field visit in 2010,
Blaustein spent three months of 2011 embedded in the Sarajevo office of a multilateral
development organization active in the field of police reform. Documentary output from
the main participants in police reform has also been utilized. In what follows, we
To continue reading
Request your trial