International Police Assistance:Democracy, Politics and Culture.

This briefing provides an overview of recent research on International PoliceAssistance. Firstly the relationship between policing and democracy is examined. Whileinternational missions have been successful in supervising police agencies to support emergingdemocracies, their power and influence means they can become an obstacle to police forcesresponding to needs articulated by local citizens. Secondly, the wider political context is of majorimportance, and so technical reforms without democratic state-building are of limited value. Finally,where international deployment is appropriate, suitable pre-mission training on differentunderstandings of the police role, working across languages and cultural differences, is essential tomaximise effective and legitimate delivery of police assistance