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POLICY TRANSFERS FOR POLICE REFORM?

• Policy transfer as intentionally moving policies from one context to another to address a perceived policy need.• As a coercive enterprise?• Dependent and independent

variable?

• Policy transfers used to promote ‘Western’ models for ‘democratic policing ‘and ‘security sector reform’ in developing and transitional countries around the world.

• Critics argue these initiatives reflect donor interests (Ellison and Pino 2012); undermine political freedom and are undemocratic (Ryan 2011); and potentially contribute to harmful policy outcomes (Bowling 2012)

OR ‘POLICY TRANSLATION’?

• ‘Transfer’ as overly linear and deterministic (i.e. policy inputs ≠ policy outcomes)

Translation implies that actors and institutions act as policy mediators rather than intermediaries (Lendvai and Stubbs 2007; Latour 2005)

Implication = policy interpretation, transmission, adaptation and implementation structured by the interests of different stakeholders (e.g. ‘translators’)

Questions:

Can mediatory agents and organisations use policy translation to mitigate the potentially harmful effects of these reforms?

Can translation be used to foster more democratically responsive policing outcomes?

THE ABSENCE OF DEMOCRATICALLY RESPONSIVE POLICING IN BIH

History of Policing in BiH =

•Non-democratic policing in former Yugoslavia

•Anti-democratic policing during the Bosnian War

•IPTF’S progress towards ‘policing for democracy’

•EU and ‘glocally-responsive’ policing post 2004

• Democratically responsive policing as a desirable but problematic outcome for police reform processes in weak and structurally dependent countries like BiH (Aitchison and Blaustein 2012)

PILOTING ‘SAFER COMMUNITIES’

• UNDP uses seed funding to launch Safer Communities; provides technical assistance to five pilot forums beginning in 2009.

• Municipal-level ‘Citizen Security Forums’ (CSF) intended to complement community-based policing reforms through partnership and improved service delivery.

• Safer Communities team supports project activities through local CSFs that address local issues.• E.g. stray dogs, road safety, etc.

TRANSLATING ‘SAFER COMMUNITIES’

•Structural pressures for UNDP to align project with EU security interests to access non-core funding.

• social inclusion• crime control • Securitisation

• Reflexivity helped members of Safer Communities team to recognise risks of aligning the project with what it believed to be the EU’s interests in the region• Project temporarily sustained

through AVPP core funding which allowed it to retain capacity development focus

CONCLUSIONS

FURTHER READING

• Aitchison, A. and Blaustein, J. 2013. "Policing for Democracy or Democratically Responsive Policing? Examining the Limits of Externally Driven Police Reform" w. Andy Aitchison. European Journal of Criminology. (forthcoming)

• Blaustein, J. 2013. “The space between: negotiating the contours of security governance via ‘Safer Communities’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina”. Policing and Society: An International Journal of Research and Policy.  (forthcoming)