Becoming Montenegrin: biopower, police reform and human rights

Abstract

The paper forms a Foucauldian analysis of police reforms in Montenegro. Drawing on interviews with police officers at all ranks in 2004, undertaken as reform was commencing, and on interviews undertaken in 2010, after Montenegro's independence, the paper explores the biopolitics of liberalisation. The paper aims to demonstrate norms of internal security liberalisation that operate beyond a legal understanding of state power. It illustrates the operation of a rule of police that produces norms conducive to the governance of a dynamic market state. It argues that the rule of police subsists within but also subverts the rule of law and the human rights approach to democratic development.

Keywords:

• police
• biopolitics
• human rights
• Foucault
• liberalisation
• Montenegro

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Barry J. Ryan, PhD, lectures International Relations at Keele University and is the author of Police Reform and Statebuilding: The Freedom of Security, published by Routledge. His research has been published in Review of International Studies, Security Dialogue, International Peacekeeping and Policing and Society. Prior to lecturing at Keele, he lectured at the University of Limerick and Lancaster University. Barry has worked with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Europe throughout the Balkans; with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Albania; and with Irish Aid on security-related projects. His work on global policing power was awarded Best Article in 2013 by the British International Studies Association (BISA).

Notes

1. Kirsti Samuels, ‘Rule of Law Reform in Post-Conflict Countries: Operational Initiatives and Lessons Learnt’, Social Development Papers: Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction, Paper no. 37 (World Bank: Washington, DC, 2006), http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTCPR/Resources/WP37_web.pdf (accessed January 11, 2013).

2. The Office of the UN Secretary General has described the rule of law approach as: ‘A principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It requires, as well, measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness and procedural and legal transparency’. UN Secretary General, ‘The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies’, Report of the Secretary-General S/2004/616, August 2004, para. 6.

3. Klaus Mladek, ‘Exception Rules: Contemporary Political Theory and the Police’, in Police Forces: A Cultural History of an Institution, ed. Klaus Mladek (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 221–66.

4. Barry J. Ryan, ‘Reasonable force: the Emergence of Global Policing Power’, Review of International Studies 39, no. 2 (2013): 435–57.

5. Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction’, in The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, eds. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathyrn Sikkink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

6. Ibid., 8.

7. Ibid., 4.

8. Ryan Goodman and Derek Jinks, ‘How to Influence States: Socialization and International Human Rights Law’, Duke Law Journal 54, no. 3 (2004): 621–703. 

9. Michael Merlingen, ‘Governmentality: Towards a Foucauldian Framework for the Study of IGOs', Cooperation and Conflict 38, no. 4 (2003): 375.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Michael Merlingen and Rasa Ostrauskaite, European Union: Peacebuilding and Policing (London: Routledge, 2008), 37.

13. Barry J. Ryan, ‘The EU's Emergent Security First Agenda: Securing Albania and Montenegro’, Security Dialogue 40, no. 3 (2009): 311–31.

14. Štefan Füle, EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy, Brussels, 23 May 2012, http://www.delmne.ec.europa.eu/code/navigate.php?Id=2201 (accessed November 1, 2012).

15. Where possible, officers of different ethnic background were requested. Only two female officers at rank level and none at management level participated and this is due primarily to the low level of female representation within the Montenegrin police. Both the 2004 interview and the 2010 interviews were translated and facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe as an aspect of its assistance to the FRY/Montenegrin government.

16. Representatives from the main thematic areas of police reform agreed to be interviewed. These included members at all levels of command from uniformed police, border police, criminal investigation police, forensics, human resources, media relations and education and training.

17. As the reproduction of these interviews could have negative consequences for my respondents, I have chosen to keep both the identity of respondents and the dates of their interviews confidential.

18. Bentham cited by Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish; The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 207.

19. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 207.

20. Michael Dillon, ‘Sovereignty and Governmentality: From the Problematics of the “New World Order” to the Ethical Problematic of World Order’, Alternatives 20, no. 3 (1995): 329.

21. Michel Foucault, Security, Territory and Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977–78, ed. Michel Senellart (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), 65.

22. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978–79, ed. Michel Senellart (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), 294.

23. J.H. Shennan, International Relations in Europe, 1689-1789 (London: Routledge, 1995).

24. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics.

25. Ibid., 43.

26. Didier Bigo, ‘Internal and External Aspects of Security’, European Security 15, no. 4 (2006): 385–404.

27. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).

28. Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’, in One-Way Street, ed. Walter Benjamin (London: Verso, 2006), 132–54.

29. Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

30. Foucault, Security, Territory and Population, 313.

31. Barry J. Ryan, Police Reform and Statebuilding: The Freedom of Security (London: Routledge, 2011), 17.

32. Michael Dillon, ‘Cared to Death: The Biopoliticised Time of Your Life’, Foucault Studies 1, no. 2 (2005): 37–46.

33. Colleen Bell, ‘Surveillance Strategies and Populations at Risk: Biopolitical Governance in Canada's National Security Policy’, Security Dialogue 37, no. 2 (2006): 151.

34. Jean-Paul Brodeur, The Policing Web (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

35. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 63–4.

36. Emphasis added. Brad Evans, Liberal Terror (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), 196.

37. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics.

38. This descriptor is found throughout Richard V. Ericson and Kevin D. Haggerty, Policing the Risk Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).

39. Lucia Zedner, ‘Pre-crime and Post-criminology?’ Theoretical Criminology 11, no. 2 (2011): 261–81.

40. Merlingen and Ostrauskaite, European Union: Peacebuilding and Policing.

41. Cf. Louise Amoore, ‘Vigilant Visualities: The Watchful Politics of the War on Terror’, Security Dialogue 38, no. 2 (2007): 215–232.

42. Ryan, ‘Reasonable Force’. 

43. Elizabeth Roberts, Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro (London: Hurst Publishers, 2007).

44. Srdja Pavlovic, ‘Literature, Social Poetics and Identity Construction in Montenegro’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 17, no. 1 (2003): 135.

45. Misa Djurkovic, Montenegro: Headed for New Divisions? Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Conflict Studies Research Centre, Balkan Series 07/11, March 2007.

46. Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

47. B. Simonović and M. Radovanović, ‘Crime Prevention in Yugoslavia’, in International Perspectives on Community Policing and Crime Prevention, ed. S. Lab (New York: Prentice-Hall, 2003).

48. Z. Kešetović, ‘Police-Public Relations in Function of Crime Prevention’, paper presented at Policing in Central and Eastern Europe: Deviance, Violence and Victimisation, Ljubljana, 12–14 September 2002.

49. R.J. Crampton, The Balkans Since the End of the Second World War (London: Longman, 2002).

50. M. Milutinović, ‘Kriminalitet i druge pojave socijalne patologije i uloga komune u njihovom suzkijanju’, Pravni zbornik 1 (1964): 9–32.

51. Barry J. Ryan, ‘All That's Constant is Change: A Brief Political History of Police Reform in Serbia’, Western Balkans Security Observer no. 11 (2008): 11–9.

52. Barry J. Ryan ‘What the Police Are Supposed to Do: Contrasting Expectations of Community Policing in Serbia’, Policing and Society 17, no. 1 (2007): 1–20.

53. Milo Djukanović served as Prime Minister for three consecutive terms from 1991 to 1998 (1991–1993, 1993–1996, and 1996–1998); subsequently he was President of Montenegro from 1998 to 2002 and Prime Minister again from 2003 to 2006. He returned to the Office of Prime Minister between 2008 and 2010. Elected again in 2012, at the time of writing he is the current Prime Minister of Montenegro.

54. The official figure given to the researcher by the Ministry was 4000 but independent estimates have produced figures between 10,000 and 30,000 men.

55. Ryan, ‘The EU's Emergent Security First Agenda’.

56. The researcher was subject to numerous road traffic ‘fines' of varying amounts for which no receipt was issued.

57. On 17 December 2004, the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) together with Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC) and Minority Rights Centre (MRC) filed a joint communication with the United Nations Committee against Torture against Serbia and Montenegro relating to the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Mr Osmani.

58. See Linda Schouten, Novak Gajić and Sharon Riggle, Police Reform in Montenegro 2001–2006: Assessment and Recommendations (Podgorica: Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Montenegro, 2006), 36–37. A Law on Police was passed in 2005 which aimed to give operational autonomy to the police by separating it from the Ministry of Interior. A new Criminal Procedure Code was adopted in 2004 through which Council of Europe human rights standards were embedded. This Code introduced new forms of crime and substantially effected the police capacity to operate. Police sought derivations from this Code, particularly in areas such as the seizure of assets, surveillance and search powers.

59. Schouten, Gajić and Riggle, Police Reform in Montenegro 2001–2006, 61.

60. Ibid., 76.

61. Just over half of the electorate of Montenegro voted for independence during a referendum on 21 May 2006. Votes were cast along strictly ethnic lines. The Assembly of the Republic of Montenegro made a formal Declaration of Independence on 3 June 2006.

62. European Commission, Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on Montenegro's Progress in the Implementation of Reforms, COM (2012) 222, Brussels, 22 May 2012.

63. Novak Gajić and Sonja Stojanović, Police Reform in Montenegro 2006–2011: Assessment and Recommendations (Podgorica: Organisation for Security and Cooperation Mission to Montenegro, 2012), 9.

64. It must be said that the forensics laboratory was a highly expensive investment for a small newly independent country, which incurs high operating costs. With a population of 620,000, the crime rate in Montenegro is relatively low.

65. Barry J. Ryan, OSCE Mission to Montenegro Report on Police Perceptions of Reform (Podgorica: Organisation for Security and Cooperation Mission to Montenegro, 2010).

66. Gajić and Stojanović, Police Reform in Montenegro 2006–2011.

67. Alberto Cammarata, Head of Political, European Integration and Trade Section of the EU Delegation to Montenegro, at a conference on ‘Video Surveillance’ held in Podgorica, 27 January 2012, http://www.delmne.ec.europa.eu/code/navigate.php?Id=2051 (accessed November 1, 2012).

68. Gajić and Stojanović, Police Reform in Montenegro 2006–2011.

69. Ibid.

70. Numerous examples are provided by the European Roma Rights Centre. See, for instance, http://www.errc.org./article/police-inactive-in-protecting-roma-in-serbia-and-montenegro/757 (accessed July 16, 2012).

71. It is interesting, and pertinent to my argument, that the ‘problem’ of human rights abuses on IDPs and refugees by police and other authorities is being addressed by the EU as one relating to a lack of citizenship. Montenegro is therefore officially recognising the status of these long-term inhabitants of Montenegro by providing them with ‘foreigner status'. According to an EU document, ‘Once I/DPs have received ‘foreigner’ status, they should be entitled to all social rights including adequate living conditions (social housing), access to education, health, employment and social services and no longer depend on government support under IDP status. Ultimately, the aim is that these people will be independent and responsible for their own lives and able to contribute to the society in which they are living.’ See: http://www.delmne.ec.europa.eu/code/navigate.php?Id=1626 (accessed July 1, 2012).

72. UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) figures from June 2008 say that some 4300 Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian refugees are still living in Montenegro. See: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR66/001/2008/en/29999c37-6e1e-11dd-8e5e-43ea85d15a69/eur660012008eng.pdf (accessed June 8, 2012).

73. This survey was undertaken by the Montenegrin-based NGO ‘Civic Initiative’. Email correspondence with author.

74. I am referring here to the improvised mechanically propelled carts that Roma habitually use to collect scrap.

75. This is particularly true with regards to laws on operational autonomy and accountability. Gajić and Stojanović, Police Reform in Montenegro 2006–2011.

76. Ibid., 11.

77. Ibid., 88.

78. Risse and Sikkink, ‘The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms'.