Recentring the coloniality of global policing

Abstract

This article develops a new framework for the analysis of international policing. We argue that attention to the historical dynamics that shape international policing challenges not only commonly held views about it but also how it is studied. Building on insights from global historical sociology as well as decolonial and postcolonial theories, we place co-constitution, processual relationalism and coloniality at the centre of our understanding of policing both domestically and internationally. We foreground the colonial origins of modern policing, which emerged simultaneously in the metropoles and the colonies to police specific, often racialised, populations. This history reveals not only that ‘domestic’ policing has always been globalised, and therefore cannot be analysed within the confines of the nation-state, but also that policing models in the West have been militarised and racialised from the very beginning. Our approach shows why technocratic fixes are unlikely to solve recurring problems that span both the Global North and the Global South – such as using excessive force by police or targeting marginalised, often racialised populations. Our framework pushes forward a new, more critical conversation about how we, as scholars, make sense of international policing and its consequences globally.