Policing Transnational Protest

Having long been a neglected issue, the policing of protest began to attract considerable attention in the 1990s, climaxing in the events in Seattle of 1999. These protests and the changing political climate since September 11, 2001 mean that a new cycle of protest is challenging the concept of law and order and civil liberties. This book examines how new policing styles are developing using case studies from North America and Europe. The volume brings together researchers from a number of disciplines - sociology, criminology, political science and mass communication - who focus on new forms of political protest, policing and public order.

Policing Transnational Protest offers an original perspective on the history of police surveillance of anticolonial activists in France, Britain, and Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. Tracing the undertakings of anticolonial activists from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in Europe and reconstructing the reaction of European governments, it illuminates the increasing cooperation of the police and secret services to monitor the activities of the "oriental revolutionaries" and curb their room to maneuver. But those efforts had an unintended inflammatory effect, provoking both supporters and opponents of colonial rule to understand the conflict in increasingly global and trans-imperial terms. The surveillance also exacerbated tensions between Europeans friendly to the anticolonial cause, and those who prioritized imperial security over civil liberties and national sovereignty. Tracking growing levels of transnational government cooperation against anticolonialists, this book pays special attention to Germany, where many activists were able to carry out their political work in relative safety after escaping surveillance in Britain and France. By analyzing the emergence of ever more sophisticated counter-terrorism schemes and surveillance apparatuses, Br ckenhaus also contributes a pre-history of similar phenomena characterizing the post-9/11 world. He shows how, then as now, an intensification of a "war on terror" went hand in hand with concerns about encroachments on civil liberties, often expressed in open protest against such governance measures. Policing Transnational Protest informs current debates about intelligence gathering and surveillance in several European countries as well as their new cooperative partner, the United States.

The first international examination of how police respond to political protests. The way in which police handle political demonstrations is always potentially controversial. In contemporary democracies, police departments have two different, often conflicting aims: keeping the peace and defending citizens' right to protest. This collection, the only resource to examine police interventions cross-nationally, analyzes a wide array of policing styles. Focusing on Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Spain, the United States, and South Africa, the contributors look at cultures and political power to examine the methods and the consequences of policing protest.

In this book, two titans of social movement scholarship bring together the best current research on the nexus between the local and the global in translating the global justice movement into action at the grass roots, and vice versa. Using recent cases of transnational contention_from the European Social Forum in Florence to the Argentinean human rights movement and British environmentalists, from movement networks in Bristol and Glasgow to the Zapatistas_the original chapters by distinguished scholars presented in this volume adapt current social movement theory to what appears to be a new cycle of protest developing around the globe.

Crisis and Control explains how neoliberal shifts in political and economic systems are militarizing the policing of protest. The book offers a way to understand the influence of political processes on police practices and provides an empirical study of militarized protest policing from 1995 until the present. Lesley J. Wood shows how protest policing techniques have become more militarized and more dependent on intelligence gathering over the past fifteen years partly as a result of the neoliberal restructuring political, economic and social processes. On an increasingly integrated and tumultuous globe, new militarized technologies, formations and frameworks are diffusing quickly through policing networks. Crisis and Control uses novel theoretical and methodological approaches and a unique range of empirical data to make an important and radical contribution to a growing field.

Policing Transnational Protest offers an original perspective on the history of police surveillance of anticolonial activists in France, Britain, and Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. Tracing the undertakings of anticolonial activists from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in Europe and reconstructing the reaction of European governments, it illuminates the increasing cooperation of the police and secret services to monitor the activities of the "oriental revolutionaries" and curb their room to maneuver. But those efforts had an unintended inflammatory effect, provoking both supporters and opponents of colonial rule to understand the conflict in increasingly global and trans-imperial terms. The surveillance also exacerbated tensions between Europeans friendly to the anticolonial cause, and those who prioritized imperial security over civil liberties and national sovereignty. Tracking growing levels of transnational government cooperation against anticolonialists, this book pays special attention to Germany, where many activists were able to carry out their political work in relative safety after escaping surveillance in Britain and France. By analyzing the emergence of ever more sophisticated counter-terrorism schemes and surveillance apparatuses, Brückenhaus also contributes a pre-history of similar phenomena characterizing the post-9/11 world. He shows how, then as now, an intensification of a "war on terror" went hand in hand with concerns about encroachments on civil liberties, often expressed in open protest against such governance measures. Policing Transnational Protest informs current debates about intelligence gathering and surveillance in several European countries as well as their new cooperative partner, the United States.

This book draws on a wide range of studies of collective conflict and the policing of crowds and social movements to provide an understanding of the causes and management of public disorder. It seeks to describe and explain the processes by which the police interpret and respond to instances of public disorder, to account for variations in their strategies and tactics, and to identify the conditions in which police interventions (or inaction) may serve to enhance or reduce the potential for wider confrontation. In addition to providing a penetrating review and critique of relevant theory, the author employs a combination of existing studies and first-hand research to explore the lessons, both practical and theoretical, of recent examples of British and American urban disorders, the policing of worldwide anti-globalisation protests (such as the British G8 protests of 2005), and the activities of British football fans abroad between 1990 and 2006. These case studies are brought together to provide an engaging and sharply focused explanation and evaluation of contemporary police methods for avoiding or controlling public disorder. Policing Public Disorder will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in policing, crowd behaviour and issues around public order and disorder.

Recently, a wall was built in eastern Germany. Made of steel and cement blocks, topped with razor barbed wire, and reinforced with video monitors and movement sensors, this wall was not put up to protect a prison or a military base, but rather to guard a three-day meeting of the finance ministers of the Group of Eight (G8). The wall manifested a level of security that is increasingly commonplace at meetings regarding the global economy. The authors of Shutting Down the Streets have directly observed and participated in more than 20 mass actions against global in North America and Europe, beginning with the watershed 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle and including the 2007 G8 protests in Heiligendamm. Shutting Down the Streets is the first book to conceptualize the social control of dissent in the era of alterglobalization. Based on direct observation of more than 20 global summits, the book demonstrates that social control is not only global, but also preemptive, and that it relegates dissent to the realm of criminality. The charge is insurrection, but the accused have no weapons. The authors document in detail how social control forecloses the spaces through which social movements nurture the development of dissent and effect disruptive challenges.