The comparative analysis of European national police systems: a theoretical and methodological proposal for a new research agenda

ABSTRACT

The analysis of national police systems is the core subject of several sociological and criminological scholarly papers. This analysis, however, especially when carried out comparatively, has been relatively neglected in political science, leaving important questions unanswered. If law enforcement systems are at the core of a legitimate violence apparatus within modern states, what structural–political factors can determine the differences and the similarities among different national contexts? And how can they be explored? This article aims to fill this gap by developing a theoretical framework and a methodological proposal that facilitate the development of a political science new research agenda. At the theoretical level, this article investigates the long–term organizational features that have shaped the original models of the organizational field underpinning the various European national police systems, which have the ability to persistently affect the development of those police systems. At the methodological level, this article seeks to define a typological instrument that can determine the differences and the similarities among different national police systems in today’s European democracies, as well as their evolutionary features, within a comparative analytical framework.

KEYWORDS:

• National police systems
• law enforcement systems
• organizational features
• original models

Acknowledgments

This article is the result of joint research undertaken by the two authors. Marco Calaresu primarily wrote sections 5, 7, 8, 9. Mauro Tebaldi primarily wrote sections 2, 3, 4, 6. The authors jointly wrote sections 1 and 10, reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript, including table, notes, and references. Our gratitude goes to Andrew Graham and Vanesa Lio for having read and discussed with us an earlier version of this article. We would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for their detailed and constructive remarks to our work. As usual, all errors remain ours.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. As far as the term consensus is concerned here, we mean that the monopoly of violence, particularly when referred to democratic regimes, is being legitimized by its foundation in law, its adherence in practice to that law and the effective correction of missteps or abuses of the monopoly. Similarly, we mean the legitimacy dissolving by the state’s abuse of the police function (the suppression of legitimate dissent or use of police to target opposing views), and police practices that clearly oversteps boundaries of tolerable actions.

2. By the term police deviance, we mean here ‘a deviant dimension of police work or, indeed, of the professional identity of police officers [which] has numerous causes and manifests itself in very different ways. What interests us here is generically the tendency of the police to evade or even more or less openly violate the legal constraints that should regulate their activities, or in any case to make these constraints relatively insignificant’ (Poggi, 1998, p. 96).

3. As pointed out by Devroe and Ponsaers (2017, p. 24), in fact: ‘The notion policing is often used to refer to the activity of a complex network of formal and informal public and private partners, mostly identified with the notion of plural policing […] contributing to certain police functions (assemblages of police forces with city guards, special investigation officers, parking controllers, environmental functionaries, social inspectors; intelligence agencies; private commercial agencies; citizens initiatives, neighbourhood watch programmes, etc.)’.

4. Nor will the analysis be undertaken at the level of the ‘police models’, which deals with cultural aspects (Ponsaers, 2001).

5. The simplicity of the formulation should not hide the discussion among scholars about the concept of centralization and its measurement (to cite a few examples: Bayley, 1985; Hunter, 1990; Reiner, 1991, 1992). E.g., different formulations of the concept of centralization induce Bayley (1976, 1985)) and Ames (1981) to come to different conclusions concerning the level of centralization of the Japanese police (Mawby, 1999).

6. In the German language, this orientation towards police activity can be summarized in the concept of Polizeiwissenschaft, which coincides broadly with the concept of welfare (Brodeur, 2007, p. 259).

7. We should stress that the proposed scheme is ideal-typical in nature: the variables considered are not in fact dichotomous, but instead, are located between the two extremes of a continuum.

8. Note that this consideration originally applies to party organizations and not, as we use it, to police organizations.

9. According to Panebianco (1982, p. 439) a theory of organizational change must be able to answer three questions: the first relates to the ‘direction’ of change (‘necessary’ or ‘contingent’), the second to the ‘degree of intentionality’ of the change (‘intentional’ or ‘unintended’), and the third to the ‘origin’ of the change (‘exogenous’ or ‘endogenous’).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marco Calaresu

Marco Calaresu earned a Ph.D. in Political Science at Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence-Pisa). He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Sassari and he was Visiting Scholar at New York University and Cardiff University. His research interests include security studies and the quality of democracy. Among his recent publications: Security pacts: The Italian experience (Eleven International Publishing, 2017) and Governing by contract as a way to reduce crime? An impact evaluation of the large-scale policy of security pacts (with M. Triventi, in Policy Sciences, 2018).

Mauro Tebaldi

Mauro Tebaldi holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Florence. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Sassari, where he teaches Political Science. His research interests mainly concern political institutions, security studies, and democratic theory. His publications include several journal articles and books, among which: Sicurezza, libertà e democrazia. Analisi comparata di sei paesi europei (Il Mulino, 2016); Local security policies and the protection of territory: An analysis of the Italian experience (2007–2009) (with M. Calaresu, in City, Territory and Architecture, 2015).