Good or Bad Cops? Police Assistance in Historical Perspective

... is the title of yet another paper out for discussion. Police assistance continues to be an overlooked part of U.S. and European foreign policy. This paper first of all aims to give a historical overview of the role of police in Western  foreign policy. It will start with the role of the police in the colonial empires as a tool to suppress anti-colonial resistance, continue with Cold War police assistance the crucial role it was given in defeating "Communist subversion" , and end with the post Cold War-era, where police training has become an important part of attempts to stabilize so-called failed states. 

Theoretically based on concepts of 'police' and 'police assistance' that draw on criminological understandings that define modern police police as a social institution safeguarding a particular (liberal) social order, the paper discusses the Janus-face of police assistance - that is that the export of liberal forms of order and its related coercive institutions might require (policing) practices that usually are regarded as being incompatible with the very type of (liberal) social order they claim to implant or protect.  

Download the paper here.

Policing Mars or Venus...

... is the title of a conference paper I wrote for a conference in Stockholm a few days ago. It tries to analyze European and U.S. approaches to police assistance through the lens of strategic culture analysis. I chose post-Taliban Afghanistan as my case study, because both actors, the EU and the U.S., have been simultaneously involved in reforming the Afghan National Police since 2002/ 03.


In the paper I argue that despite conceptual differences between Europe and the U.S. that seem to confirm Robert Kagans 'Mars-Venus dichotomy' (check out his famous article here), the two approaches are mutually reinforcing on the ground. This is not to say that differences with regard to the strategic cultures of the EU and the U.S. do not exist, but rather that they are often overemphasized to camouflage the convergence of policies on the ground. You can find my paper here. As this paper is but a preliminary result of a current research undertaking of mine, all comments are most welcome.

Book chapter on SSR in Indonesia...

I wrote a book chapter on "Sicherheitssektorreform im post-Suharto Indonesien" (Security Sector Reform in post-Suharto Indonesia) for an edited volume on Indonesia's democratization process. The edited volume has been published a couple of weeks ago. You can find some info on the edited volume here.

Welcome to my website...

here you can find information with regards to my research, teaching etc. I will also post news about new publications, research projects and other things I consider important on here.