Politics and Policing in Contemporary Democracies: Power, Legitimacy, and Governance in Transition

This panel aims to critically discuss the relationship between politics and policing in an unsettled democracy, an unfolding and nuanced one. In times of populism, technological change and mistrust of institutions, the police become a key arena where state power, legitimacy and governance intersect and are tested. The panel draws on theoretical frameworks such as Weber's idea of the state's monopoly over legitimate violence, Foucauldian theories of surveillance and discipline, and more recent theories in governance of networked and hybrid forms of governance. It questions the conventional distinction between the non-political role of policing and its political functions in terms of its interstratification of power relations, ideology and regime type.
Political actors who govern policing, can politicise it, may allocate resources to it and may have control over it, sometimes resulting in selective enforcement, coercive state practice or politicisation. Policing institutions, however, also have an impact on political outcomes through their impact on the electoral environment, their role in managing dissent, and their ability to build narratives of law, order, and security.
The panel will also discuss the impact of policing on other outcomes of governance that are not direct but are important, such as state capacity, service delivery, citizens' trust and democratic accountability. However, in many settings, police institutions are regarded as street-level bureaucracies which facilitate citizen-state interaction, and thus have a direct effect on perceptions of good governance.
The politicization and abuse of policing, such as repression of opposition, public order policing, and manipulation of public order narratives, will be discussed. Concurrently, the panel will shed light on the deployment of police reforms, community policing and digital innovations (such as predictive policing, artificial intelligence driven surveillance) in support of governance objectives as well as questions on accountability, ethics and rights.
This panel will aim to advance the discussion on democratic resilience, institutional change and the future of governance in an uncertain world by combining comparative, empirical and theoretical approaches.