Police science, British style: pub licensing and knowledges of urban disorder

Abstract

In mainstream legal scholarship and political theory as well as in some governmentality studies, police is presented as an eighteenth-century form of power/knowledge with close links to the administrative sciences developed in absolutist states. Commentators often state that police regulation has not disappeared but has been largely replaced by liberal governance. This article argues that police powers and knowledges are not, as is generally thought, in a zero-sum, mutually exclusive relationship with liberal governance. The problem space of 'police' is that formed by the desire to prevent urban disorder and incivility. Because it is a field of governance, not a theory or a mentality, police projects can use both liberal and illiberal mechanisms. The legal technology of licensing, a very widely used but under-studied legal tool, allows an old police objective - the promotion of urban order and 'civility' through measures targeting spaces and activities - to be effected by turning the work of managing risks over to the private sector, hence avoiding direct state interference with citizens' liberties. Licensing governs the field of police with a liberal tool. This argument is empirically grounded in a sketch of the history of the rationalities used to justify and evaluate pub licensing in the UK, a history whose ending is taken to be New Labour's 2000 White Paper on liquor licensing and urban disorder.