A case for trans-local police governance

Introduction

Policing, indeed, is a response to the need to create a sense of order that transcends the local neighbourhood, blood kin-based community, and obligations. (Manning, 2010: 72)

Our article argues for a mode of police governance that looks beyond local contexts, communities and practices in its mode of operating, value orientation and standards of evaluation. For us, such a mode of governance builds upon on increasingly universalistic aspirations, general principles and encompassing perspectives. Therefore, it tends to represent an outward and a worldly orientation often characterized by an antagonistic relationship to the issues and things called ‘local’. Our aim is to articulate its strengths, pinpoint its essential features and argue for it as most capable in solving security problems as well as coordinating such efforts in all different scales, fields and levels.

Police services around the world have been in turmoil at the beginning of the 21st century. Politicians and technocrats have remodelled police governance systems and organizations, tightened budgets and expressed general concerns regarding the prevailing approaches to policing (for example, Devroe et al., 2017; Fyfe et al., 2013). Evidence-based and intelligence-led policing, often in conjunction with ambitions to upgrade police education and move towards professionalism, have captivated reformers all over (for example, Den Boer, 2014). In many places, the public police appears to be gradually losing its traditional hegemonic position to private security companies, voluntary organizations and collaborative arrangements delivering security services to their customers and neighbourhoods. Researchers have used the concepts of pluralistic systems and nodal governance networks to capture the situation. Many scholars see these emerging systems and networks as more agile, less costly and more responsive in resolving global and local security problems than the old bureaucratic and centralized forms of the public police. However, there have also been critical voices (see, for example, Frevel and Rogers, 2016; Hoogenboom, 2010; Loader, 2010; Loader and Walker, 2007; Loader et al., 2014; Shearing, 2005; Shearing and Johnston, 2010; White, 2011).

Being attentive to the security needs of local people is essential (see Jones and Lister and Henry et al., 2019) but, without coordination and oversight, private security contractors, voluntary associations and fragmented police forces are liable to lose sight of the wider political community and serve only the narrow interests of their local customers. In this article, we argue that this plurality risks undermining the more universal goals and ideals of a larger political community and the character of security as a public good. If the local security providers are accountable only to their local clients and paying customers, this can undermine the legitimate interests and fundamental rights of other members of the political community. Moreover, nodal governance of security and plural policing without unifying principles and effective oversight at the level of a wider political community may increase societal inequalities and injustices (Harkin and Fitz-Gibbon, 2017; Marks and Wood, 2010).

Our argument for wider forms of accountability and governance comes close to that of Loader and Walker (2007; Loader 2010), who have suggested that only the state can advance public interests and be morally just and socially responsible, and it should therefore oversee the plurality in policing and security (White, 2011: 93). Loader (2010) argues that the existing institutional arrangements are ineffective in keeping multiple types of policing activities under democratic control and sustaining equity and human rights. Therefore, he suggests a number of new mechanisms that would exercise oversight and be able to hold various security delivering agencies accountable for legitimacy and effectiveness.

We extend this to argue that coordinated police governance and accountability require spatially extensive and socially inclusive collective representations that are constitutive of a wider political community, which is essentially ‘trans-local’ covering all particular orders. Our use of ‘trans-local’ is rather atypical. For us trans-local does not mean relationships, interconnections, networks or forms of exchange between different places and people, but rather means collective representations transcending localities. Such collective representations point to universal principles, norms, values and conceptions rather than local idiosyncrasies. For instance, the principles of democracy and equality are meaningful when they are both socially and spatially extensive and possible to actualize in all localities. The perpetuation and advancement of increasingly universal principles binding all subordinate orders within the political community defines the role of each governing body on the next more encompassing level. Indeed, modern governance consists in a layered structure with multiple levels, including sub- and supra-state arrangements.

Representations are ideations, however, and are therefore not alone sufficient for self-realization. Spatially extensive and socially inclusive collective representations are effective and widely shared only when they are supported and sustained by relatively favourable social conditions and institutions. By several objective measures, welfare states seem to fare better in this respect than the authoritarian or neo-liberal states. We do not argue that such an outcome is possible only when the state has a strong role in delivering welfare and security services. Yet, empirical research indicates that welfare states are strong in supporting justice and equity (Greve, 2007; Kettunen, 2014; OECD, 2016).

The final ingredient in our argument underlines the importance of skilled professionals. Socially inclusive and spatially extensive representations can be most effectively and equitably put into practice by members of a professional group who embrace general and uniform professional competencies and ethics. Although professional practice occurs in space and time, and professionals solve particular problems, professionalism is premised on the application of general methods and standards that are valid over space and time. Hence, the police must treat all people equally and fairly, and work effectively regardless of the particular location or case. People tend to trust the police, or any other agent, if their conduct is professional, equitable and effective (for example, Tyler, 1990). Unethical and unprofessional measures, targeted disproportionately towards certain communities or groups, undermine collective representations of democracy, equality and fairness.

The three points that we bring forward – collective representations, social conditions and professionalism – have received scant attention and, consequently, properly theoretically anchored analyses stand out as missing links in current discussions. Nordic welfare states offer good examples of relatively equal and fair societies and therefore we use these countries to illustrate the favourable social conditions for universalism. We start with a section where we outline some key features of such conditions and, through the example of Finland, locate police and police governance in this context.

The Nordic welfare state and policing

Although there is not one uniform ‘Nordic model’, certain common features across Nordic countries support their categorization as ‘Nordic welfare states’ (see, for example, Esping-Andersen, 1997; Kuisma, 2017). The best-known elements of the model are a large public sector and widely available tax-financed welfare benefits and services. The Nordic model supposes that a major precondition for the legitimacy of representative democracy is the reinforcement of social cohesion by promoting citizens’ participation and civil society engagement. The aim of the (welfare) state is not to suffocate or repress individuals or communities, but rather to help all residents achieve autonomy and, despite their differences, fulfil their social, cultural and economic potentials as members of the political community in the face of markets and other social forces (Kettunen, 2014). In this framework, the state is just one, albeit strong, provider of welfare services. Other providers range from religious to secular, private to public, voluntary to obligatory, and local to national (Kettunen, 2014: 97). The principle of universal social rights to health, social care and education associated with citizenship defines the organization of welfare (Kettunen, 2014: 100). According to Kettunen (2014: 97), this model came into being through the recognition of conflicting interests and power asymmetries between labour and capital. In addition, collective action organized by unionized workers and farmers developed the idea of social citizenship and social solidarity through high taxes, public social security and public social services (see also Baldwin, 1990).

Major societal transformations, such as the increasing global character of the economy and an ageing population, challenge the viability and legitimacy of the Nordic welfare state. Koch (2008) points out that, on the one hand, the state authority in public regulation is increasingly taken over by supranational bodies such as the European Union (EU), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank, and, on the other hand, authority is delegated to experts, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private bodies. Moreover, private firms and NGOs produce services for markets where the states increasingly operate as purchasers. These changes are often seen as an alteration from ‘government’ to ‘governance’. Yet, rather than fading away, the Nordic model shows institutional continuity and adaptation (Esping-Andersen, 1997). Some researchers argue that the Nordic model for risk-sharing succeeds in global economic competition because it sustains competitive advantages. There is, indeed, a new consensus around maintaining this competitive edge in knowledge, innovation and education that social security, public services and labour market agreements provide. (Antikainen, 2008; Kettunen, 2014) Moreover, the welfare state remains very popular among citizens, and drastic socio-political deregulation based on neo-liberal ideology would be unlikely to get wide support in the elections, and so is not on the agenda. As Kettunen put it (2014: 108), people still tend to ‘trust in a virtuous circle between economic growth, widening democracy and increased equality’.

In comparative policing research, Nordic countries are commonly regarded as constituting a distinctive policing system or regime (Devroe et al., 2017; Virta and Taponen, 2017; Virta and Suve, 2016). Devroe and Ponsaers (2017) argue that public police systems express the state structure where they function. They call Nordic public police a ‘unified police system’, setting it apart from the ‘territorially divided systems’ of England and Wales, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, and the ‘historically diverse police systems’ of France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. In Nordic countries, police forces are national with a civilian outlook and state responsibility for the control and financing of the police to the degree that local politics does not have an influence on the general objectives or the allocation of finances of the police. Nonetheless, local police districts maintain strong links with other agencies, private partners and civil society (Virta and Taponen, 2017). Police reforms in Finland and other Nordic countries have been gradual and in line with wider public sector reforms, the general trend being the reduction of the number of police departments by merging them into larger units. The intention has been to reduce administrative costs without compromising the level and quality of service, and to maintain equal access to police services (Haraholma and Houtsonen, 2013; Holmberg and Balvig, 2013; Virta and Taponen, 2017; Wennström, 2013). Studies immediately after the police reforms showed that some citizens, stakeholders and police officers, especially in peripheral, rural and sparsely populated areas, perceived deteriorations in the police’s knowledge of local issues and their capacity to serve citizens and cooperate with local stakeholders (Haraholma and Houtsonen, 2013; Holmberg and Balvig, 2013; Wennström, 2013). However, the latest survey (n = 1096) in Finland (Vuorensyrjä and Fagerlund, 2018) indicates that the police has succeeded in its operational work and citizens’ trust in the police remains high. Around 95 percent of the people, aged 15–79, surveyed stated that they trust the police ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’. (Vuorensyrjä and Fagerlund, 2018; see also Kääriäinen, 2007; Kääriäinen and Sirén, 2012).

We take it that this trust in the police is a feature of wider social cohesion and public trust in the social institutions and systems of government, which has remained high across Nordic states despite adjustments made in the face of societal transformations (Greve, 2007). The public police is embedded in the Nordic welfare state model, which strongly supports citizens’ universal rights and social equality.

The Nordic model rests on a viable combination of a strong and politically accountable central government and relatively autonomous local and operational decision-making. In Finland, this means that the police is politically and financially accountable to the government. The government steers the police through policy and strategic goals introduced in Government Programmes and through Government Resolutions. Financing, targets and indicators flow mostly top down from the Ministry of the Interior via the National Police Board (NPB), directed by the National Police Commissioner, to local police districts. The local police can introduce their own priorities when negotiating on the annual performance contract with the NPB. The NPB also represents the needs of the police to the Ministry, the parliament and policy makers (Virta and Taponen, 2017). It seems on the surface that the system is greatly centralized and, in setting goals and priorities, local participation at the level of municipalities and regions is limited or formally non-existent. Yet the Police Act (287/2011) highlights police cooperation with other agencies, communities and citizens. In addition, national-level security strategies and policies such as the Governmental Resolution on Internal Security (Sisäministeriö, 2017) are constructed through very broad collaboration engaging public agencies, communities, civic associations, businesses and industry all over the country.

The local police has dense informal and formal networks with other agencies, private partners and civil society. Local safety planning in municipalities and regions brings stakeholders together. The plans define internal security comprehensively, not only being dependent on the control exercised by the police but also requiring the prevention of marginality, unemployment, inequality and discrimination. For instance, the plan produced by the city of Helsinki links security to the annual welfare strategy, rendering social work, health care and schools as crucial agents in the prevention of exclusion, substance abuse and violence and in the protection of children and the youth. The local security plan provides the basis for partnerships and cooperation with agencies, associations and professions. Plans define security goals, programmes, projects, cooperative forms and specific methods, such as multi-professional teams. However, there is no local political steering of policing and no standardized forms of participation (Virta and Taponen, 2017).

In the Nordic model of police governance, central steering and oversight are an essential element in maintaining a spatially extensive framework of professional, fair and equal policing. We do not want to generalize too far based on the Nordic experience, because the collective representations behind the Nordic model that derive from the underlying social conditions, mechanisms and dynamics are possibly unique to this corner of the world. Yet, we argue that the centralized police governance, at least in the context of the Nordic welfare state, strongly supports a political community where citizens have universal rights and which aims at equality and fairness. In such conditions, centralized governance does not make the police a repressive tool for the political elite, the ruling class or a dictator. To explicate the assumptions underlining our argument, we next examine the linkages between spatial representations, people, the idea of universality and the modes of governance.

People, governance and socio-political order

A spatial dimension is a fundamental aspect of all truly collective representations in any political community. The modern differentiated society presupposes representations of spatiality and belongingness that are inclusive rather than exclusive, universal rather than particular, and thus, we claim, trans-local rather than local. In the case of policing governance, we argue that the rule of law, human rights, democracy and knowledge based on increasingly universal principles steer policing towards a uniform approach, general professional competencies and a general professional ethos.

Modern individuals, assuming they are politically active, economically rational and socially responsible, are not only less constrained by traditional identities, roles and modes of engagement, but also less restricted in their comings and goings by regional or national borders. Modern people are on the move. Individuals are seeking the best life conditions. Earners are calculating a competitive price for their labour. Entrepreneurs are searching for new market opportunities. Consumers are looking for the best deals in increasingly global markets. Active citizens are educating themselves. Volunteers are concerned about the well-being of others, both near and far. Already this short list shows how people increasingly reflect and reconstruct memberships and identities anew on the world scale. When the membership of various communities becomes fluid, temporary, imagined or overlapping, not only the effectiveness of governance but also the way we have come to understand the first principles underlying governance, the very subsistence of a community and the people, seem blurred (see Näsström, 2007: 638, 645). What is the ‘local’ and who are the ‘locals’?

Even if we could agree on the people, the structures and processes of governance seem to be without a fixed centre and without an overarching and unifying collective representation. The various uses of the concept of governance try to characterize the new socio-political order where traditional public agencies – especially the state as the foremost source of authority and control – are gradually losing their position and traditional legitimacy with the emergence of new supra-state modes of governance. In post-sovereign society, new agents emerge that have novel recipes for how to address important social issues and meet the challenges deriving from the rapid and often unexpected unfolding of events and developments (Gibson, 2011; Osborne, 2010). This lack of a shared framework is associated with the concern that unambiguous criteria for determining the values, rights and obligations that bind together the members of society and their interactions are lost.

Democratic processes and accountability become obscure in the governance of political communities consisting of a multilevel structure with crisscrossing local, provincial, national and international agencies, organizations and arrangements (Stephenson, 2013; see also Loader, 2010). Some writers suggest that the concept of multilevel governance highlights these complexities, scopes and levels of authority and control (Baldacchino, 2014: 5; Stubbs, 2005: 67). These scholars apply the concept of multilevel governance to situations where authority consists of a number of levels, each characterized by some degree of independence, agency or competence of its own (for example, Schakel, 2016). The decision-making authority should rest on the most appropriate level of governance.

Should we grant more power to the nodes in the security networks to steer and control policing services provided by public, private and voluntary agencies? Alternatively, should we regard security as such a valuable public good that the state should have a prominent role in maintaining democratic oversight and accountability? We are inclined to think that, in order to create and maintain an inclusive political community, we need public institutions for democratic discussion, coordination of actions and mobilization of resources and knowledge (Loader, 2010). Inclusive political community requires collective representations that socially and mentally transcend the limits of local communities and particular nodes and orders. In the following section, we discuss the relevance of encompassing spatial representation as the foundation for police governance.

The relevance of representations of space for police governance

Territory is typically understood in terms of territorial jurisdiction, an area of land defined by the boundaries over which some legal entity such as the state has exclusive authority. Building the state’s authority and making it real in its consequences through its administrative bureaucracy is a centripetal process that standardizes and nationalizes territory and the identity of the people within its borders. The state, with its legal-formal force, is a supreme classifier that can provide individuals with official and institutional, and hence legitimate, identities and entitlements. The state’s body of law promises equal public protection for every person, yet, at the same time, every person is subordinate to the state’s jurisdiction. The person entering a state’s territory must accept the terms to which it is subject (Sassen, 2013; Stilz, 2009: 193, 205). However, Sassen (2013) argues that the grip of national legislative jurisdictions and the state’s formal power has been loosened in a number of their traditional domains. On the one hand, the authority has been internally challenged by those nations without a sovereign state of their own, whose imagined homeland is under the jurisdiction of another nation state. On the other hand, the authority has been adjusted to the needs of globalization, global transactions and the emergence of international institutions and transnational organizations. Universal principles, such as fundamental human rights, carry extensive and inclusive representations of space that can render states as local orders that respect or disrespect universal principles. Therefore, the dichotomy between the universal and the particular, or between the central and the local, is not equivalent to the dichotomy between the state and the province (or municipality), or between the supranational and the state. Universal and central are relative properties that imply spatial representations. The same object is seen as universal or particular depending on one’s perspective and the frame of reference.

Human beings have the capability to transform boundless space into a concrete or imagined territory. Territories, whether states, provinces, towns, villages or other areas of land, exist on different scales and scopes, and they are under constant creation and re-creation (Brighenti, 2010: 54). One can demarcate and differentiate any space by various boundaries. One can link multiple names to the same physical space or geographical area (Fuller and Löw, 2017). When a territory is defined and cut from a space, it can be then further divided hierarchically and vertically – into global, continental, national, regional, local space and so on (Sassen, 2013: 29).

From one perspective, the larger territorial entities appear to be nothing but a compilation of the smaller units. ‘Smaller’ or ‘local’ units are often seen as more grounded and authentic. These are qualities that the larger aggregates should retain and truthfully represent. The local is thus given a prominent role: the larger trans-local territory is just an aggregation of the local units. Alternatively, the more encompassing territory can be regarded as an entity that has emergent properties that are qualitatively different from those of its local components. Hence, the larger territory appears to be more general and to represent more universal values than any of its local elements. From this perspective, the local often appears parochial and reluctant to change in order to keep up with the times.

Because space can be scaled, extended or contracted by multiple representations, so too are individuals, citizens and civil servants alike all subject to multiple spatial orders. Consequently, there is not one coherent sphere for public life, and spatial identity is open to multiple interpretations (see Barnett, 1999: 399). Spatial representations define a distinctive position, the rights, the obligations and the status of groups and individuals who reside somewhere in some spatial order. Although there may be substantial changes in that territorial nexus during a person’s lifetime, it is likely to outlive its individual bearers. As physical beings, people are bound to exist in a certain place, at a particular time. However, their subsistence becomes very much characterized by the territorial nexuses that cross that physical spot. Alternatively, individuals and social groups can also be imagined, for example on tribal, kinship, religious or professional bases, that stretch over several territories. In the global world where people and ideas circulate, these other sources of identity and solidarity may be inconsistent with more universal and encompassing representations of the state or some supra-state entity.

Territories are not only symbolic and cognitive, but can become effective because they are transformed into repositories of valuable resources and assets by human work. Many acts derive their legitimacy, significance and value from a territory and are accomplished in the name of a territory: enforcing, defending, serving, being proud of, escaping from, returning to territory, to name just a few such acts. Territory as a representation of space is a paramount reality (see Miller, 2006: 459) that is not personal experience but an impersonal frame, a collective representation much like a calendar, without which we cannot even imagine certain actors, actions, relations and events. Human beings do not usually reflect on spatial collective representation or spatial aspects of collective representations that almost automatically structure human perceptions, evaluations and actions.

The collective representations that differentiate space into territorial scopes and scales is objectified in maps, texts, laws, buildings, uniforms and artefacts. In addition, they are also embodied in individual minds and bodies.

[Collective representations] … orient our feelings of belongingness. They are certainly also the source of oppositions between one’s own identity and those of the others, the outsiders. Moreover, they are connected with feelings of commitment and solidarity. (Berting, 2016: 125)

Embodied territorial orders can function as disciplinary regimes that govern conduct at a distance through self-regulation and self-motivation.

In a world where people are constantly moving around, entering and exiting, although permanent residents are bounded by a certain local order, once they leave it and enter another territory they become subject to that other local order. However, both localities can be bounded by a larger territorial whole, such as a state or supra-state entity. The larger territorial unit not only extends local space physically, but also transcends the local order symbolically as a more comprehensive representation. These more encompassing spatial orderings also set criteria for local conduct by imposing themselves upon the latter as representations that are more powerful. Systems of knowledge and morals also have the spatial aspect to constitute regulatory regimes that are claimed to be more general (abstract), rational (timeless), higher (ethical), fundamental (deeper) or valid (agreed upon) orderings. At the same time, encompassing representations are inclusive, highlighting affinities and the things that people share.

The legally constituted territory of the state provides the foundation for a political community, which establishes rights and obligations for the types of agent (for example, rights granted by citizenship or professional jurisdictions) and the relationships between the types of agent (for example, the police’s duty to investigate and the citizen’s right to security) (Barnett, 1999: 380; Brighenti, 2010: 57). In modern states, laws are expressed in abstract terms that encompass all geographical localities rather than in sociocultural terms – for example, tribe, clan, kinship, ethnicity or religion. An agency remains a pure possibility until a representation of space creates a territory within which the agency is given an official position. Once embodied, an agency with an official position transforms human potentiality into a socially understood purpose and practice. The rule of law is silent without there being professional agents or public servants (such as police officers, judges and lawyers) that feel themselves entitled and obligated to put these universal principles into practice trans-locally. The public police ensures that everyone can enjoy the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the rule of law. And it is precisely the rule of law that contains the most universal spatial representation. Being impersonal, the rule of law considers all individuals of the territory – citizens, policy makers, legislators and law enforcement officers alike – to be equally subject to the law of the territory. Law, as a collective representation, stands for common interests that are equally given to all. Therefore, to belong to a state constituted by the rule of law, citizens are given the widest possible spatial representation (Berger, 2015). By definition, the state does not approve of competing legal systems or spatial representations within the same territory. Nevertheless, states have yielded to universal principles maintained by many international and transnational bodies.

Which entity or body has interests in maintaining and moving towards these more encompassing representations? In the following sections, we expand upon, and advocate for, a strong trans-local or centralized element in police governance to protect and deliver universal values associated with democracy, equality and justice.

Trans-local dimensions in police governance

In a democratic political community founded on the rule of law, respect for justice and human rights, trans-locally organized governance and accountability mechanisms establish measures against the abuses of power. Trans-locality provides the means through which similar cases, events and actors are treated with homogeneous criteria throughout the political community. This condition is achievable through central steering and supervision, together with internal and external inspections and legality controls located at the central and local levels. In addition, central steering requires that local units have relative autonomy in decision-making and that the staff are technically and ethically competent (see, for example, Loader, 2010; Marks and Wood, 2010).

Formal authority relationships coordinate and control activities, decision-making and the exchange of information within and between organizations at different levels of hierarchy. Often various mixtures of market mechanisms, negotiation, bargaining and even voting complement formal authority relations. Depending on the national context and historical development, the application of these coordinating mechanisms varies. It is important that the local decision-makers can make decisions based on local information, but the criteria and standards that they use to handle the information and reach conclusions cannot be local. Rather they must be trans-local, covering the entire political community, or even universally binding all of humanity. The local (subordinate) organization is best placed to make local operational decisions, but the central (superior) organization is best placed to direct premises and criteria for decision-making at the lower level. Similarly, police bureaucracies can decentralize decision-making by giving due value to local information and acts without paralysing the whole system (Simon, 1996: 41).

The central organization and the local organizations are concerned with different ‘realities’. The central organization is accountable to the entire political community, consisting of citizens, the parliament, the government and the legal system. The political community can be a state, but it could also be a province or, in some cases, a supra-state body such as the EU. The central organization ensures, through policies, directives, guidelines, contracts, reports and inspections, that all local entities are democratically, legally and economically accountable throughout the territory. In addition to this, the central organization represents and defends the needs of the entire administrative sector to the political community, for instance by making statements in law drafting and negotiating the budget. Local organizations conduct the policing in practice, collaborate with the ‘local’ stakeholders, but do not decide the general criteria for governance and accountability. This certainly raises the question of how to ensure that the local security providers identify with the goals of the central organization and the political community as a whole. More effective than external control and steering is to feed motivation and to develop and maintain a shared point of view and uniform practices through education and training (Simon, 1996: 43–4). It is also important that the local agents have opportunities to participate and voice their concerns when general policies and rules are formulated. Excessive centralization produces an authoritarian system that shrinks local motivation and responsibility and overlooks local problems.

A position that makes trans-local police governance exercised by some central agency an irreplaceable element in the pursuit and promotion of higher social and humane ideals of justice, freedom and rights on a large scale potentially also makes it a potential vehicle for mass-scale surveillance, political oppression and misuse of power. Yet centrally managed policing governance is not equivalent to undemocratic totalitarianism, as the Nordic welfare states clearly show. Formally and substantially rational central governance can effectively strengthen the rule of law, democracy, fairness and effectiveness, as is well evidenced in Nordic conditions.

Local modes of police governance, on the other hand, appear to be less capable of standing up to political pressure, more predisposed to put those pressures into policing policies and less likely to protect the interests of citizens without political power. Local policing governance is thus more likely to reflect local biases and parochial interests, and it risks the more general policing goals of the political community being co-opted (see, for example, Aitchison, 2007).

We argue that a mode of policing built upon collective representations, which stand for larger territorial entities, universal principles and inclusive political communities, is superior in securing equal rights for all individuals inhabiting or crossing the same territorial and temporal location and having various reasons and interests for being there at that time. The increasing movement of people means that only some individuals are local residents; others may be students, visitors, seasonal workers, asylum seekers or tourists. Such fluid, blurred or fragmented conditions do not only challenge the effectiveness of governance, but the very subsistence of a community, the people, comes under strain (Näsström, 2007).

In such conditions, policing and the governance of policing should be characteristically trans-local in their orientation, having their point of reference somewhere beyond local idiosyncrasies. Moreover, the preferable mode of police governance would be based on general types rather than concrete cases. It would thus take its ideals from a trans-local repository, expressed in relatively abstract and general terms. Therefore, the mission of policing practice is typically to materialize locally something that is essentially trans-local and valid across different localities. Police conduct should be evaluated using these trans-local, more general, even universal criteria. However, this does not mean that the police does not hear local people. Rather the governance structures ensure the police is attentive to all people in all localities within the political community.

When it comes to the governance of the police, the orientation should similarly reflect inclusive norms based on general types rather than local cases, general or universal principles rather than local habits, professional standards rather than local ways of life. If the task of the police is primarily to enforce something that is deemed to be good across different localities or even globally and not a local way of life, or local criteria or mores, this task is better promoted, supervised and accomplished by police which are trans-locally or centrally governed. The advantages of trans-local forms of police governance can be articulated in terms of the following four dimensions: maintenance of the rule of law versus local order; approaching security problems uniformly versus ‘tinkering’ to produce customized solutions to them; developing professional competence versus competence in local brokering; and driven by an esprit de corps versus an ethos of local engagement.

Conclusion

Policing and police governance, if not constituted and regulated by trans-local, universal, criteria, appear as a potential security hazard. Even if the local nodes were given power to steer, this steering should be organized under the control of trans-local criteria of a larger political community. Full membership of a political community does not emerge by subjects becoming gradually and increasingly aware of themselves as independent loci of agency. It rather reflects growing awareness of being subject to something that spans space and functions as a source of shared identity, joint rights, mutual obligations and trust in the institutions and agencies of the political community. Such a political community is constituted and regulated by the principles and practices of democracy and the rule of law, which are secular and universal, representing space as a territory that encompasses all localities and surpasses other ‘constitutions’, such as those based on religious traditions, local customs or ethnicity.

A person is a bearer of a combination of features that give that person a certain outlook (for example, traditionalist, cosmopolitan, local, nationalist, fundamentalist), which define the person as a unique person with her or his own values, beliefs and inclinations. In their very uniqueness, each person is also the same as everyone else. If becoming a subject is a necessary counterpoint to life lived with others, there is a need for practices that span territories, making everyone a subject in the same sense – citizens equally subject to certain laws and juridical practices, endowed with certain general, equally empowering rights, while burdened with some binding normative expectations, enforced uniformly within a territory.

Humanity as a political community needs sources of identity that are not limited to a certain place, but carry over and across them – identifying characteristics that we share with others (instead of underlining features that make others different, foreign or even alien, not local, to us) to function as a source of common rights, shared obligations and mutual trust. This means shared beliefs and essentially common or uniform practices, the foremost of those being policing.

For this, we require agencies such as the police that enforce the shared rules enacted through democratic processes and control the members of the political community, but are at the same time governed by the political community. The rule of law, equally enforced by the police across its territory, makes a political community and offers everyone within its territory protection against harm, violence and theft. The political community endows people living in that territory with the freedoms they are entitled to and the obligations that bind them. However, the political community, its institutions and its agencies are likely to fail and lose their legitimacy if the practices of the agencies are not uniform, effective and ethically acceptable, and if general social conditions do not support the equity and participation of all members. This is an antidote to xenophobic and racist right-wing nationalism, fundamentalist religions and high-level political corruption.

We argue that in the present conditions we should build police practice, governance and accountability upon increasingly universal and inclusive criteria, rather than on some local idiosyncrasies. ‘Nodal governance’ and ‘anchored pluralism’ appear too simple as remedies for police legitimacy and accountability because they might predispose the police and other security service providers to unprofessionalism and heterogeneity of standards, making them vulnerable to co-optation by local and particular interests. As the ‘collective’ in collective representations has become more and more inclusive and spatially extended, the local models of governance have been forced to yield to modes of governance that are increasingly trans-local, even global. The modern nation-states, including Nordic countries, have not been an exception to this development. The accompanying extensive representations have forced nation-states to check and re-evaluate the universality of their own principles within this new order. Policing is an essential site for these processes and can be guided by the principles we have set out here.