Showcasing security: the politics of policing space at the 2007 Sydney APEC meeting

Abstract

Using the example of the 2007 Sydney APEC meeting, this article develops a critique of the protest policing literature. While it is accepted that international summits such as APEC are exceptional events, which are policed differently, the view that there has been a general democratisation of protest policing across liberal democracies is contested. Since the Battle of Seattle in 1999 and especially since the terror attacks of 2001, the policing of protest has come to entail a complex combination of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ techniques, including the potential use of powers formerly reserved only for the security services. Under these circumstances civil liberties are threatened, the doctrine of the separation of powers risks violation, and the rule of law is undermined. Increasingly, power resides in the executive branch of the state and policing becomes politicised as a consequence. That politicisation is accentuated at international events such as APEC where national governments and, in turn, the police are subject to supranational pressure exerted by market forces under conditions of global neoliberalism. Accordingly, host nations set out to showcase security in an effort to promote host cities as safe places for tourism and capital investment. In light of the above, and in contradistinction to what some protest policing scholars suggest, the article considers it is not unreasonable to regard the police as principal agents in the repressive state apparatus.