Policing
for
Democracy
or
Democratically
Responsive
Policing? Examining the Limits of Externally Driven Police
Reform
Andy Aitchison and Jarrett Blaustein
University of Edinburgh School of Law
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
emphasise 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 fifteen 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 EUdominated interventions undermine responsiveness. A recent UNDP project suggests that external actors
can succeed in supporting democratically responsive policing where they do not have immediate security
interests at stake.
KEYWORDS
Policing; democracy; responsiveness; Bosnia and Herzegovina; EU
Introduction
Democratic policing has been defined and redefined by scholars, practitioners and reformers
(e.g. Bayley 2006; OSCE 2008; Pino and Wiatrowski 2006). Limited consensus exists on what
makes policing ‘democratic’ and how this is best achieved, especially when pursued through
externally-driven reform. In translating democracy into prescriptions or evaluative schemes for
police services and police governance (e.g. Marenin 1998, Jones et al 1996, Marks 2003), or into
lists of values to inform police reform (OHR 2004), the distinction between policing which
supports 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 highlight structural
conditions associated with liberal state-building which obstruct the development of
democratically responsive policing. We argue that, while external actors may be well placed to
1
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 EU, which has strong security interests
in the Western Balkans, with the UN Development Programme, underlines this point.
Our reading of work on policing and democracy in established liberal democracies (e.g.
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 which govern police services1.
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 democratic policing within established democracies is critiqued (Manning 2010
21-22), 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 intervention in
police reform, BiH illustrates 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 assistance. 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, pp. 8-12). In this period the Police Restructuring
Commission was established and made its recommendations, and negotiations on restructuring
took place between the main political parties under the oversight of Bosnia’s international
overseer, the High Representative2. After an initial field visit in 2010, Blaustein spent 3 months
of 2011 embedded in the Sarajevo office of a multi-lateral development organisation active in the
field of police reform. Documentary output from the main participants in police reform has also
been utilised. In what follows, we examine the role of police in establishing and maintaining
necessary conditions for democracy. We suggest that supplementing these necessary conditions
with a multi-dimensional concept of responsiveness derived from Kuper (2007) underpins police
democratisation and sets useful boundaries for external intervention.
2
Police and Democracy
In examining the relationship between police and democracy, we take Bayley’s definition of
police as a starting point encompassing the capacity to use force, a distinction from military
armed forces, and a mechanism for social or political delegation of authority to a body of people
responsible for the regulation of interpersonal relations (1985: 7). We recognise that this does not
cover the whole gamut of actors and actions that constitute the wider sense of policing, but our
focus in the first instance rests on public or state-police3 as key to understanding the distinction
between policing for democracy and democratically responsive policing.
A minimalist view of democracy stresses procedural dimensions: regular and open selection of
leaders; a popular franchise; and appropriate procedural safeguards. These are made meaningful
by key freedoms, including freedom of the press, of association and assembly, and of expression
(Parrott 1997: 4; see also Collier and Levitsky 1997: 434). These freedoms produce a capacity for
public debate. A more expansive definition of democracy, indicative of consolidation, requires
political power to change hands peacefully more than once (see Huntington 1991: 266), and in
terms of the effective power to govern (Collier and Levitsky 1997: 444) requires major political
actors and social groups to accept and utilise representative institutions to pursue political claims
(Dawisha 1997: 43).
Andrew Kuper’s work on global democracy develops responsiveness as the fundamental
element of democracy, examining the idea across horizontal and vertical dimensions (2007:
especially 103-4). While Kuper does not dismiss the value of procedures, he focuses primarily on
a conceptual core of responsiveness. Vertical responsiveness expects the ‘reasonable
contestations’ of citizens to generate a ‘proper response’ from those in positions of authority.
This need not be simple acquiescence to the demands of a majority and responses can vary from
explanation through to policy change (Kuper 2007: 104). Horizontal responsiveness describes the
checks and balances between political actors and institutions. Kuper seeks to avoid a range of
practical obstacles to the realization of democracy as imagined by Habermas and Goodin (Kuper
2007: 61-74). By anticipating structures where interdependent authorities need to respond to one
another, building consensus and cooperation (Kuper 2007: 103), he still acknowledges the value
of discourse and communication in those original schemes. As no individual actor can claim
perfect knowledge, constellations of ‘knowers’ are forced into mutual responsiveness. In our
exploration of the conceptualisation of democratic policing, we find that many separately
conceived indicators are oriented towards responsiveness.
3
Policing for democracy
Bayley’s early work on police and political development sets out the case for linking police
activity and political regimes. Police are not simply passive agents shaped by their political
environment but help shape that environment and the system of government (Bayley 1969: 12-13,
409). Minimum standards of police practice are necessary, if not sufficient, to support political
democracy. The police organisations required for these tasks need not be democratically
responsive in the sense defined below and we argue that the limited goal of policing for
democracy can feasibly be driven by external actors. Policing for democracy is policing which
does not damage, but actively supports, the development of the core elements of democracy and
democratic consolidation. In terms of practical implications, policing for democracy calls for a
combination of restraint and positive obligations rooted in protecting the exercise of political
freedoms. Restraint means avoiding actions designed to intimidate people exercising political
rights (e.g. political campaigning, attending political meetings, meeting constituents, media
reportage). Likewise, it requires that police do not react with oppressive force to non-violent
political and community gatherings. While police need not be excluded from party membership,
this ought not to influence their professional conduct. As an extension of this, police officers
should not support political actors seeking to undermine democratic institutions by criminal or
extra-constitutional means.
Positive obligations encompass the protection of electoral processes, securing voters against
intimidation and obstruction and protecting ballot boxes and election counts. Following elections,
police play a role in ensuring that political representatives are safe to carry out their role. Where
there are attempts to subvert normal democratic processes, or there are extra-constitutional or
violent attempts to pursue political claims, then policing for democracy requires that these are
investigated in cooperation with the appropriate prosecutorial or judicial authorities. More
broadly the police are obliged to enact decisions of legitimately constituted judicial and
prosecutorial authority, through the execution of arrest warrants and conduct of investigations.
Finally, policing for democracy requires the more general maintenance of peace and order which
is necessary for free and open political exchange. These restraints and obligations help to ensure
that institutions act in their legally constituted manner, that there is a free and open line for
communication between citizens and political representatives, and that public space is available
for political debate. Elias identifies the economic and social opportunities created by the
consolidation of the means of force and subsequent internal pacification (1994: 419-420). The
relative pacification of police and their direction towards providing an equitable minimum of
security is necessary, if not sufficient, for free political action. This fits with Marenin’s principle
of ‘general order’ in his criteria of democratic policing, meeting a ‘minimal expectation of
4
stability, order and routines which allows people to predict what they are able to do’ (1998: 171).
We isolate this general order, along with a liberal principle of equal application, from democratic
policing in order to define the more specific practice of policing for democracy. The concept of
policing for a democracy is about what police do and how they do it, and carries no assumptions
about the governing structures which produce this. For example, in a post-conflict environment,
where police power and authority are strongly contested by former parties to the conflict,
achievement of restraint and fulfilment of obligations identified above may be maximised by
strong direction and oversight by external actors. Where this is accompanied by strong
investigative powers and levers to ensure that domestic law and regulations are used to respond to
abuse of power, space can be created for democratic political forms to develop in the wider
polity.
Democratically Responsive Policing
While policing for democracy is a necessary but insufficient platform for a democratic polity,
and may be imposed from outside, it falls short of democratically responsive policing. With
particular reference to three key texts in the democratic policing canon (Jones et al 1996;
Manning 2010; Marenin 1998), we identify two prior qualifications for a democratically
responsive police service that focus on equity of policing and the capacity to deliver a minimum
level of service and security. The principle of equity and police capacity to provide a certain
minimum threshold of security were identified in the discussion of policing for democracy and
encompass the values of service delivery, efficiency and effectiveness highlighted by Jones et al
(1996: 191) and Marenin (1998: 169). We see the elements of policing for democracy as a
necessary prerequisite for democratically responsive policing. Beyond these elements, much of
the democratic policing literature points towards the value of responsiveness and we argue that a
focus on responsiveness achieves a greater conceptual clarity. We present this schematically in
table 1, below, and explain the reasoning and the impact on our understanding of democratically
responsive policing in the remainder of the section.
TABLE 1. Democratic policing and responsiveness
<<INSERT TABLE ONE AROUND HERE>>
Responsiveness is omnipresent within the literature on democratic policing (e.g. Bayley 2006;
Jones et al 1996). Jones et al include it as their third most important criterion, expecting police to
be ‘responsive to some expression of the views of the public’ on the principled basis ‘that
government should reflect the wishes of the people’ (1996: 191). Following Kuper,
responsiveness is not simply acquiescing to a generally expressed will. Rather, ‘responding’ can
mean refuting, with reason, public demands. Police and their governors may be called to
5
‘respond’ to a wide range of individuals, groups and institutions (for a discussion of the role of
‘reasons’, see Loader and Walker 2007: 227 ff.). We subsume a number of other criteria
identified by Jones et al, Manning and Marenin as dimensions of a ‘headline’ concept of
responsiveness. The distribution of power speaks directly to Kuper’s sense of horizontal
responsiveness between a set of actors and institutions, none of whom can claim perfect
knowledge. There are various mechanisms to distribute power. Jones et al focus on governing
structures (1996: 188). Manning favours competition, and while his point risks getting lost in his
ensuing discussion of the blurring of police and military in contemporary wars (2010: 67-68),
competition- and market-based policies seek to promote responsiveness to citizens defined as a
consumer (Clarke et al 2007).
Jones et al identify three further dimensions that contribute to responsiveness: information,
redress and participation. Information underpins other democratic criteria (1996: 192) and
promotes responsiveness in two ways: the publication of information is as a stimulus for citizens,
groups and institutions to present preferences to police who must then respond; secondly,
providing information can be a reasonable response. This may not require a change in policy, but
requires police to articulate what they are doing and why. Jones et al have a broad notion of
redress, which starts from the democratic right to remove people from public office, but
encompasses responding to complaints through appropriate investigation and compensation
(1996: 192). Mechanisms for redress allow the public to express their discontent with particular
police actions and call upon the police to apologise and commit to behavioural change. Finally
participation, the lowest priority in Jones et al’s criteria, is a stimulus demanding a police
response.
Manning anticipates a responsive police service by incorporating reactions to citizen
complaints (i.e. calls for service) in his criteria (2010:66); Marenin, using the term ‘accessibility’,
requires police to respond to citizens’ requests for help (1998: 169). Manning and Marenin both
include a criterion of accountability, whereby police ‘must accept that they have to explain
themselves… to outsiders who pay for their salaries, supply their resources and suffer the
consequences of their work’ (Marenin 1998: 170, see also Manning 2010: 68). Marenin captures
the vertical response required to citizens as tax payers and citizens as ‘the policed’, but horizontal
responsiveness requires further institutional accountability to courts, legislature and executive.
Finally, congruence points towards being responsive to something more difficult to pin down
than individuals, groups or institutions: ‘the unique cultural, ideological and legal characteristics
of a country’ (Marenin 1998: 171). This suggests a sociological concept of common
consciousness (Durkheim 1938: 68) or a political theory of the general will (Rousseau 1923). In
post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies in which police democratization is frequently
6
pursued, social divisions make such concepts difficult to operationalize. Nonetheless, with the
various mechanisms for responsiveness included in the discussion above, one would expect an
operationalized measure of congruence to correlate with the level to which these other criteria are
achieved. By subsuming the various criteria of the distribution of power, competition,
information, redress, participation, reaction, accessibility, accountability and, with noted
reservations, congruence, into a headline concept, we hope to offer a concept of police
democratization as responsiveness, built on the foundation of equity and a minimum quantity of
security. This goes beyond policing for a democracy by building in conditions on how the police
are governed over and above assessments of what they deliver and how equitably they deliver it.
In transitional, post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies, external actors’ pursuit of
democratically responsive policing is problematic. Intrusive and coercive externally-driven
processes of liberal state-building and democratisation can overshadow domestic democratic
institutions and processes of governance (Chandler 2010; Duffield 2007) and risk becoming the
dominant stimuli shaping policing as well as shaping wider processes of political decisionmaking. This is not an outright condemnation of external interventions. The more limited concept
of policing for democracy retains space for a range of external interventions designed to address,
equitably, a public order security gap and to create a secure space within which open, democratic
processes can take place. Having developed the distinction between policing for a democracy and
democratically responsive policing, we proceed with an exploratory case study of BiH. In a
context of anti-democratic and non-democratic policing4, early interventions focused most
strongly on policing for a democracy. Subsequent interventions associated most strongly with the
EU use the language of democratic values but undermine responsiveness to locally defined
preferences. Our final subsection identifies circumstances in which external support can enhance
local responsiveness.
Addressing anti-democratic and non-democratic policing
Immediately after BiH’s first multi-party elections, policing was evidently non-democratic and
anti-democratic. After the war, this persisted with police acts of commission and omission
highlighting a combination of iniquity and unresponsiveness detrimental to citizens’ fundamental
freedoms. Violence against opponents of the dominant political parties was reported in particular
local contexts, such as the persecution of Democratic People’s Union supporters in the North
West (Human Rights Watch 1997). Freedom of movement was heavily constrained. Citizens
attempting to cross the internal Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) between Republika Srpska
(RS) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH)5 were subject to extortion,
intimidation and physical violence while irregular fees were collected at external borders
7
(Aitchison 2007: 333; OHR 1997). As late as 2002, it was reported that journalists from FBiH
were turned back at the IEBL en route to cover Srebrenica memorial events (OHR 2002).
Freedom of assembly was constrained, either through the partisan use of extreme force in
responding to gatherings, highlighted when Bosnian Croat police fired on a Bajram march of
Muslims in Mostar (Aitchison 2007: 332) or by the failure to prevent violence targeted at
peaceful assemblies, as seen in attacks on delegations laying cornerstones of mosques in Trebinje
and Banja Luka in 2001 (Amnesty International 2001a, 2001b).
Other acts of omission suggested that police were failing to, or choosing not to, protect
particular citizens. Failures to prevent violence against returnees or to investigate crimes against
minorities discouraged those wishing to return to their pre-war homes (Amnesty International
1998; OHR 1997). The failure to protect those wishing to remain in their homes during transfers
of governmental authority was manifest in early 1996 in Mrkonjić Grad, Vogošča and Grbavica
(OHR 1996). Failure to provide adequate protection extended to politicians. This was seen in the
stoning of a bus of Social Democratic Party delegates in Brčko in 1997 (OHR 1997)6; an
unresolved attack on councillors in Srebrenica (Amnesty International 2000: 20); and the inability
of municipal councillors elected by absentee voters in Foča to safely assume their responsibilities
(Human Rights Watch 1998: 51-52)7. Police power and institutions had been captured by political
groups in the early stages of the disintegration of Bosnia and Herzegovina (see Prosecutor v
Sikirica), and this is reflected in their continuing political allegiance in the post-war period. The
unresolved tension between police allegiance to a party-based structure of authority and a new
context of governance saw police disregarding the legally constituted authority, with parallel
forces operating in those some cantons in FBiH, RS police refusing to cooperate in policing
shared territory in and around Brčko (OHR 1997), and police units bugging the President of RS,
Biljana Plavšić, after a major political split in RS (OHR 1997). Finally in 2001, when the Croat
Democratic Union (Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica, HDZ) attempted to withdraw Croatdominated cantons from FBiH, there were reports of HDZ-affiliated police officers abandoning
their positions (OHR 2001a, 2001b). The conduct of actual elections seems to be one area where
police conduct was generally unproblematic8, nonetheless it is clear that post-war police in BiH
were operating in ways which obstructed the freedoms necessary for electoral democracy. The
following section looks at ways in which this was addressed through international intervention.
Towards policing for a democracy
Strong support for policing for democracy is evident in early UN action. Some of these have
been covered in Aitchison’s earlier work, but without differentiating policing for a democracy
from democratically responsive policing (2007: 331-4). The UN International Police Task Force
8
(IPTF) monitored and facilitated the entities and their commitment to provide a ‘safe and secure
environment for all persons in their respective jurisdictions… with respect for internationally
recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms’ (GFAP 1995: Annex 11.1). This essentially
describes policing for democracy, its foundational aspects of a minimum level of security,
general order, and universal, equitable provision of this for all persons. Monitoring and
facilitation developed into enforcement action which included pressuring local police to
investigate crimes thoroughly, regardless of the ethnicity of the victim, pressure to investigate
and prosecute police misconduct, removal of police officers whose conduct, either during the war
or in the post-war situation, did not fit with equitable provision of safety and security, and direct
challenges to police persecution of citizens crossing the Inter-Entity Boundary Line. The process
of overseeing police to challenge anti-democratic practices took longer than the initial one-year
mandate, and the UN policing mandate extended to the end of 2002. Over this period, it is evident
that actions to secure policing for democracy are combined with initiatives oriented towards the
democratisation of Bosnia’s police. Yet the emphasis was clearly on using external oversight to
ensure a particular form of policing and a particular level of service rather than on the domestic
arrangements in place to govern and direct policing.
The limits of external intervention
In addition to work to develop policing that supported political democracy, elements of
UNIPTF’s work enhance responsiveness. This included efforts to build up minority recruitment
after processes of ethnic cleansing and other forms of displacement. A more diverse police force
would be more likely and able to respond to the needs of a reconstructed community, including
returnees9. New Policing Commissioners (in the FBIH) and Directors (in RS), were introduced
under UN auspices to separate operational matters from wider policy matters. This limit to
politicians’ capacity to direct policing, beyond establishing a policy framework, is part of
horizontal responsiveness between institutional actors. Once policing for democracy has been
established with external oversight, it can be protected in the longer term by ensuring the police
do not simply respond to any one dominant party who might use this to subvert normal
democratic processes. Yet although democratising the police may secure policing for democracy
in the long-run, reducing the need for external oversight, there are concerns about tensions
between goals of democratization and the interests of actors providing police assistance. This
critique is most well-developed in respect of the EU (see e.g. Collantes-Celador and Ionnides
2011; Ellison and Pino 2012), and suggests that those donors most willing and able to commit to
long term democratization projects do so, at least in part, with their own interests in mind. This
9
introduces a new pole in the landscape of responsiveness, and our concern is that this detracts
from the capacity to respond to domestic actors, institutions and citizens.
From 2003, when the EU Police Mission (EUPM) took over from UNIPTF, there is evidence
that tasks related to policing for democracy were less of a priority. BiH had held a series of
elections, involving changes of power at various levels of government10. Subsequent reforms
were proposed by the Office of the High Representative (OHR), backed by the EUPM, and tied to
pre-accession criteria of the EU. In these, democratic standards are an important legitimising
discourse11. Twelve principles outlined by OHR fit with democratic policing as conceptualised
above. For example, they stated that the police should be ‘protected from improper political
interference’, perform their duties ‘in accordance with democratic values’ and operate ‘within a
clear framework of accountability to the law and the community’ (OHR 2004). These principles,
and the Police Restructuring Commission (PRC) set up by OHR to operationalize them,
generated recommendations which included local policing plans, an independent inspection
regime and a public complaints, fulfilling some of the criteria of democratically responsive police
(see Aitchison 2011: 98). But the PRC also proposed policing areas which ignored existing
political and territorial divisions within BiH (PRC 2005). Muehlmann (2008) gives an insider
account of the process. His assessment of the dominant role of external actors resonates with our
own interviews in BiH. An OHR representative identified the early advances in inter-party talks
as evidence of Brussels ‘leading the agenda’ and described the approach of party representatives
at the Vlašić talks of 2005 as, ‘this is something the European Union wants, let’s get on with it’
(Aitchison, Interview, Sarajevo, May 2005). Representatives of the European Commission were
very clear that restructuring was required to facilitate EU interaction with BiH government and
police institutions and to effectively address crimes of particular concern to the Union (Aitchison
2012: 9). Yet the proposal of cross-IEBL policing areas on the grounds of technical criteria was
seen by RS politicians as a failure to recognise ‘the weight and importance of these symbolic
issues’ (Mladen Ivanić in OHR 2005b). Ultimately, the necessary link between the political
division of the territory of BiH and policing areas was recognised in the multi-party Mostar
agreement of 2008, which postponed the question of police structures until the resolution of
ongoing discussions on the constitution of BiH (Aitchison 2011: 102).
External pressure to adopt structures that do not correspond to locally contested and defined
preferences, is accompanied by a tendency for EU intervention to focus on specific forms of
crime related to the Union’s security interests rather than those defined in BiH. This has been
documented elsewhere (Aitchison 2012: 8; Collantes-Celador and Ionnides 2011: 428 ff). In
relation to its member states, it makes sense that the EU should restrict its activities to these
fields, where pooling state capacity may lead to more effective policing. Member states can
10
respond to this while retaining responsibility and capacity for policing local crime. In the case of
a weakened state, focusing policing assistance on particular forms of crime of interest to the EU
risks diverting resources required to deal with crimes of most immediate interest to the domestic
population. In terms of democratically responsive policing, the gravitational force exerted by the
EU provides a skewed distribution of power in which policing is overly responsive to one,
external, actor. Blaustein (forthcoming) has identified elsewhere that even when the EU does not
actively seek to influence policing policy, domestic assumptions about EU preferences still shape
decisions12.
Once policing for democracy has been established, it may require on-going external support
for maintenance, but if a subsequent emphasis on democratic policing becomes linked to other
reforms pursued by a powerful regional actor, there is a risk that this undermines the prospect of
establishing policing which responds to domestically generated preferences and consent. By
driving forcefully towards a framework for policing that abandoned the established Dayton
framework of governance, against the wishes of large constituencies in BiH and their elected
political representatives13, and by linking this strongly to EU accession, the police restructuring
process was non-democratic. Moreover by conflating the process with democratisation, it
undermined opportunities for the democratisation of existing police institutions in BiH when the
process floundered on issue of cross-IEBL policing areas.
The following section gives an
example of work on community partnerships in BiH under the auspices of a development agency.
We argue that this indicates limited circumstances in which external assistance can support the
development of democratically responsive policing.
Community partnerships as democratically responsive policing
There is a degree of overlap between democratically responsive policing, as defined above,
and certain articulations of community policing, particularly in terms local input into policing
priorities and police responses to these (see e.g. Mackenzie and Henry 2009). Alongside major
multilateral police reform projects, smaller scale bilateral and multilateral development projects
have focused on community policing in BiH, often at a local level. Between 2003 and 2011 the
UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Swiss Agency for Development
and Cooperation (SDC) supported municipal-level projects to develop community policing.
Following on from this they assisted with the development of a national Strategy for CommunityBased Policing in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH Ministry of Security 2007), and provided
support to a National Implementation Team to deliver this. Subsequent concerns about the
functionality and sustainability of local community-based policing models in BiH prompted the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to pilot its own Safer Communities project in
11
2010 with the aim of improving cooperation between community police officers and municipal
authorities at the local level (Blaustein forthcoming). By providing technical and financial
assistance for five municipal-level ‘citizen security forums’, the Safer Communities team fostered
a partnership-based approach for community safety governance that encouraged local
representatives, municipal officials and senior police officers to collaborate in order to address a
local security and public safety issue affecting the lives of local citizens. This addressed a lack of
horizontal responsiveness whereby police were often the first point of contact for citizens raising
security concerns but had limited capacity to respond effectively due to poor inter-agency
cooperation.
The project’s support for stray dog shelters in Zenica illustrates the capacity of community
forums to deliver locally responsive policing. Stray dogs were a persistent source of insecurity in
the city, but the issue had not been addressed by local authorities. Stray dogs were a persistent
source of insecurity in the city, but the issue had not been addressed by local authorities due to
poor coordination and a diffusion of responsibility between the police and different municipal
authorities. The forum was a space in which the issue could be identified, prioritised, and
responsibility for a solution agreed. UNDP seed-funding provided the financial means to design
and construct shelters to house the problem animals. This example shows the value of local
forums where problems and solutions are articulated and of funding that is channelled through an
agency which does not have its own regional security interests14.
Conclusions
Our paper has disaggregated democratic policing to provide two separate concepts, policing
for democracy and democratically responsive policing. We have argued that the former is a
necessary platform for the attainment of the latter insofar as it accounts for the need to develop
the basic institutional capacities and willingness of the police to fairly and effectively deliver
secure public spaces in which democracy can develop and local needs and preferences can be
articulated. By drawing on Kuper’s political theory and applying this to earlier studies of
democratic policing we can employ a terminology of democratically responsive policing which
places a greater emphasis on considering whose interests should shape policing and how these are
best articulated. Democratically responsive policing requires a strong role for domestic actors and
institutions. Our exploratory case study suggests that powerful external actors involved in liberal
state-building can skew democratically responsive policing in the weak states by becoming the
key stimulus for responsiveness. In BiH, the international community’s pursuit of alternative
goals in the same package of measures that advocate ‘democratic policing’ has undermined
opportunities to develop democratically responsive policing. Until external actors can be
12
confident in their ability insulate countries receiving police assistance from external interests, a
more limited focus on supporting policing for democracy provides a reasonable framework for
assistance. The UNDP pilots show the value of external assistance separated from specific
political interests of donors. By supporting the formation of local forums, the Safer Communities
scheme created a context in which seemingly mundane, but nonetheless important, security
concerns of BiH citizens are voiced and elicit an adequate response.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Earlier versions of this paper were presented in Washington, Edinburgh, New York and Cardiff in 2011
and 2012. We would like to thank the following people for their comments, feedback and questions, which
have helped shape and strengthen the final paper: Graham Ellison, Alice Hills, Liam O’Shea and Nathan
Pino; Trevor Jones, Adam Edwards and colleagues at the Cardiff Centre for Crime, Law and Justice;
Kirsten McConnachie and Richard Jones at the University of Edinburgh School of Law. Finally, Jarrett
would also like to thank UNDP in Bosnia-Herzegovina and members of the Safer Communities team for
their on-going support with his doctoral research.
NOTES
1. Loader and Walker recognise the instrumental importance to democracy of particular freedoms
associated with security. Yet focusing on ‘mutually reinforcing’ dynamics, where the public
simultaneously constitutes and secures itself, they sideline the initial establishment of minimal democratic
conditions and leave unexamined the question of external actors as guarantors of freedom (2007: 153,
163).
2. The position of the High Representative was created in the Dayton Peace Agreements of 1995. The
High Representative draws his authority from those agreements, a series of UN Security Council
Resolutions and the conclusions of a Peace Implementation Council. For more detail see Aitchison 2012:
5).
3. Understood as publicly funded, appointed and governed police.
4. Non-democratic serves as an antonym for democratically responsive, while anti-democratic policing is
the opposite of policing for a democracy. While our exploratory case study takes an example of an
emerging democracy, we anticipate that the distinction between policing for democracy and
democratically responsive policing can support analyses of policing in established democracies. The
miners’ strike of 1984-85 in the UK raised a number of issues of police action and competing rights in a
context of a dispute on industrial policy and labour relations (McCabe and Wallington 1988).
5. Post-war BiH featured a weak central government. Most power was held by two sub-state entities,
Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the latter of which saw further
devolution of power to 10 Cantons. The two entities were separated by a boundary line, which had the
same status as other internal, administrative divisions. Special arrangements were made for the
strategically important district of Brčko. For more on the structures of government in BiH, see Aitchison
2011: chapter 2, sections III and IV).
6. If this is an example of ‘anti-democratic’ policing, it is worth comparing it to similar incidents
involving international actors in BiH. Walker (1997) describes Momčilo Krajišnik and his associates from
the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) being pelted with stones and eggs when escorted from Hotel Bosna in
Banja Luka by British troops. The group took refuge in the hotel after failing to hold a rally supporting
one side of the factionally divided Serb representatives from the Eastern and Western RS. In this instance,
western states, including the UK, were supportive of Biljana Plavšić who had split from Krajišnik and the
Pale-based faction of SDS. There are various ambiguities in this case, including suggestions that
13
Krajišnik’s presence in Banja Luka was linked to an attempted coup, that his party were armed, and that
50 bus-loads of Krajišnik’s supporters had been turned back. Nonetheless, whether an attempt at peaceful
assembly or to violently wrest control of RS, even heavily armed external forces either could not, or
would not, protect the political actors involved.
7. Electoral regulations in BiH allowed voters to cast their vote in their pre-war municipality. In Prijedor
and Foča, this produced results where an electoral alliance of predominantly Bosniak parties received a
significant proportion of the vote primarily on the strength of displaced voters. In Prijedor, the alliance
gained 35% of the overall vote, but less than 1% of the votes cast in the municipality compared to 92% of
those cast from outside. In Foča the comparable figures were 38%, 2%, 93%.
8. Police were observed in 5% of polling stations during 1997 municipal elections, but in all bar 17 polling
stations this was justified in accordance with rules and regulations (Schmeets 1998: 86, 173); Kasapović
(1997) gives no indication of problems with polling in the previous year’s general elections.
9. For a discussion of the role of representativeness in government agencies, see Selden 1997. With
specific reference to criminal justice agencies, see the summary of research in Bradbury and Kellough
2011.
10. Parliamentary elections took place at state and entity level in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002. For a discussion
of shifts in power see [Author 1] 2011: chapter 2.IV.
11. Democratization is a strong current in OHR documentation on Police Restructuring, but co-exist with
discourses of effectiveness, which are far more prominent in public broadcasts. See, e.g. the ‘Staklo’
campaign (OHR 2005a).
12. Much of the EU’s influence in BiH is based on a gradual accession process, including a Stabilisation
and Association Agreement (Aitchison 2011: 101,178; Juncos 2011). The European Commission also
links funding for development projects in BiH to accession criteria (Blaustein, fieldnotes). As the main
source of funding for OHR, the EU has access to a further source of influence (OHR 2012).
13. OHR 2005c and 2005d show separate polls highlighting minority support for police reform as part of
EU membership and majority support for the existing (Dayton) arrangements. Aitchison (2011:100) gives
an account of opposition to the proposals in the RSNA.
14. While Safer Communities illustrates how a global multilateral agency can potentially foster local
improvements in democratically responsive policing, the limited availability of core funding within the
UN development system means that project managers based at UNDP country offices are often compelled
to manage their projects in ways that reflect the perceived interests of potential bilateral donors (Blaustein
forthcoming).
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17
Table 1. Democratic policing and responsiveness
Jones, Newburn and
Manning (2010: 65 ff.)
Marenin (1998: 169 ff.)
Smith (1996: 190 ff.)*
Qualifier 1: Equity
Equity (1)
Fairness
Equality
Qualifier 2: Ability to
provide
minimum
General Order
Delivery of service (2)
Efficiency
threshold of security
Effectiveness
Responsiveness
Responsiveness (3)
(mechanisms for, or
Distribution of power (4)
measures of)
Competition
Information (5)
Redress (6)
Participation (7)
Reaction
(to
Accessibility
complaints)
Accountability
Accountability
Congruence
* Jones et al provide a hierarchy of criteria for democratic policing, indicated here by corresponding
numbers.
The shaded area represents the common ground between policing for democracy and democratically
responsive policing.
18