Plural Policing and Transition: Reflections on Ellison an O'Rawe (2010)

For those of you with any interest in matters of plural policing, security governance, or even transitional justice, check out a recent article by Graham Ellison and Mary O'Rawe titled “Security Governance in Transition...” published in the journal Theoretical Criminology earlier this year (Vol. 14:1).

What really made this article stand out for me was the fact that unlike most previous attempts to subject Clifford Shearing's 'nodal security governance thesis' to 'empirical scrutiny' (p. 32), Ellison and O'Rawe manage to do so convincingly in relation to a transitional context through their analysis which suggests that “...contrary to the official rhetoric valorizing and claiming local community participation in the aftermath of the ICP reforms, policing has remained decidedly ‘top down’...” (p. 34). As somebody researching the police reform process in Bosnia and Herzegovina it is thus hardly surprising that reading this article immediately compelled me to look for parallels between these two transitional societies (of which I believe there to be many). Off the top of my head, Andy Aitchison's (2007) article in Policing and Society which focuses on the international donor community's approach to shaping the police reform process in Bosnia and Herzegovina similarly concludes that “...mainstream policing assistance to BiH has remained focused on a paradigm dominated by state provision...” (p. 338) while Hansen's (2008) analysis of the EUPM's recent push for greater centralisation and coordination between the country's cantonal and municipal police forces also appears to be indicative of a persistent 'top-down' reformative mentality.

From this quick comparison there arises an important question of whether there are common underlying factors which exist in most transitional (post-conflict) societies that serve to impede upon the actualisation of nodal or pluralistic policing practices or whether this trend, as observed within these two sites is better attributed to unique contextual circumstances such as the historical character of police-community relations, distinctive sources of convergence/policy transfer, and even the existing institutional culture and organization structures of both government and the police. While I would argue that local differences must not be ignored when conducting any kind of comparative analysis, there do appear to be a number of seemingly logical reasons as to why any transitional state with a recent history of conflict would hesitate to embrace a pluralistic framework for policing. Lacking the time or the energy to cover them all here, I will illustrate one such rationale which appears to be pertinent to key decision makers in all transitional contexts featuring enduring social divisions and I will then proceed to draw attention to a major flaw in its underlying reasoning as evident from my own ongoing research based in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Reverting back to Ellison and O'Rawe's analysis of the Independent Commission on Policing in Northern Ireland, one source of concern for both transitional governments and international donors alike regarding the implementation of a participatory model of local security governance is that it could create opportunities for potentially destabilizing local actors and interests (i.e. nationalist parties or even former combatants) to assert and possibly even legitimize their divisive interests within these newly created 'spaces' (p. 43). Perhaps this reasoning should be seen as hardly surprising given that Nicola Lacey and Lucia Zedner (1995) have previously described how the the concept of community, which arguably represents the paradigmatic manifestation of these 'spaces' in most late modern societies, has come to represent an important site of political contestation between liberal and conservative interests in mainland Britain over the past two decades. Thus, while in Northern Ireland, even though the government has not overtly resisted the rhetorical impetus towards Shearing's nodal model of policing, Ellison and O'Rawe nonetheless demonstrate that it (through its various agents including the public police) has managed to subvert any real progress to this effect by “...position[ing] itself to continue to ‘steer’ policing, untroubled by the vagaries of democratic input (p. 45)...”

While perhaps these fears and the resultant actions are not surprising, I would nonetheless argue they are vastly overstated, even when one considers the potentially destabilising issues inherent to most transitional societies. As evident from the fragmented structures of both government and the police in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the risk that these newly created spaces could fall victim to hegemonic manipulation by divisive local interests may actually pale in comparison to the prospect that these same divisive interests are ultimately capable of attaining power and even legitimizing themselves through the formal institutions of the state. This is evident throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina as nationalist parties continue to dominate elections, transparency in terms of both governance and policing is lacking, and municipal police forces across the country remain largely homogeneous in terms of their ethnic composition. All of this effectively translates into a dysfunctional system of state-centric security governance whereby large segments of the population continue to view the police as either corrupt, oppressive and sometimes at best unreliable.

In lieu of these shortcomings, one must therefore consider that concept of community may in fact hold real promise for improving the local provision of security governance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In fact, it may represent the only prospect for any positive change given that Bosnia and Herzegovina's private security sector remains highly underdeveloped and understaffed compared to neighbouring Croatia and thus does not represent a major compliment or alternative to public policing in this context. I argue that this effectively leaves community-based policing and community safety programmes as the leading options for pursuing what Aitchison (2007) has previously described as 'micro-level reforms' conducive to a pluralistic nodal model of local security governance.

Note that I plan to develop this argument further in two papers that I am planning to present at the ESC Conference and the Cambridge PhD Criminology Conference in September but for now, I suggest that if any of this interests you, read through Ellison and O'Rawe's article!