Policing, securitization and democratization in Europe

We have witnessed over recent decades the extension across Europe of an enhanced policing capacity—one comprising a complex, ever-shifting mix of informal professional networks, inter-governmental co-operation, and nascent supranational institutions (notably Europol). These developments have been accompanied— and justified—by a set of public narratives that highlight the threat posed by various ‘criminal ’ and ‘alien ’ Others (migrants, drug traffickers, organized crime syndicates and so forth) to Europe, its borders and its citizens. How though can we best account for these developments and assess their likely trajectories? What do they signify about the kind of political order that is being constructed within the European Union? Is Europe today being governed through security and, if so, with what effects? In taking up these questions this article has two aims. First, to develop a heuristic framework that can help us make better sociological sense of both the meanings and interests that are competing to shape the field of European policing, and the processes of securitization that presently dominate it. Second, to consider the problems of authorization and legitimation raised by the onset of thinly accountable police processes and institutions at the European level, and to offer a sketch of the issues that must be addressed, and the criteria that might orientate us, in seeking to advance—in the policing domain—a project of postnational democracy