Vol. 21 No. 7 (July, 2011) pp.398-401
THE POLICING OF TERRORISM: ORGANIZATIONAL AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES, by Mathieu
Deflem.
New York: Routledge, 2009. 230pp. Hardback $140.00. ISBN 9780415875394. ISBN
9780415875400. Paper $41.95. ISBN:
9780415875400. eBook.
$39.95. ISBN: 9780203860380.
Reviewed by William R. Wood, University of Auckland, Department of Sociology.
Email: w.wood [at] auckland.ac.nz.
In the decade since September 11th, there has been a deluge of works on the
political responses to terrorism in the United States. The bulk of these works
have focused on how the U.S. has responded rightly, or wrongly, to terrorism
since this time. Mathieu Deflem’s THE POLICING OF TERRORISM is not one of these
works. Indeed, on the surface it does not take an overt position regarding what
some see as the massive blunders of the Bush administration’s political response
to September 11th, and others see as a largely successful response to terrorism
that prevented further large-scale terrorist attacks in the United States.
Deflem does not ignore these debates, and mentions them in several places though
his work. However, his primary focus is rather on the question of how policing
agencies in the United States, Europe, Israel, and elsewhere are organized to
respond to terrorism, and under what auspices such agencies function. The bulk
of Deflem’s book thus involves a thorough overview of the organization and
strategies of counterterrorism by policing agencies in the United States and
globally. Deflem devotes significant attention to the policing of terrorism in
the United States, particularly following September 11th, but he also gives
ample attention to policing efforts in other countries (in particular Israel,
Iraq and Afghanistan), as well as to international policing organizations, such
as Interpol involved in counterterrorism.
However, it would be a mistake to read Deflem’s book simply as a thorough
description of the policing of terrorism in these regions, even though many will
undoubtedly find the book useful on this account alone. Rather, THE POLICING OF
TERRORISM represents a continuation of Deflem’s earlier works, in particular his
POLICING WORLD SOCIETY (2002), where Deflem has developed his theory of the
“bureaucratization of police” as a means by which to both understand the
historical emergence of modern police organizations, as well as a means by which
to sociologically analyze their functions and actions within modern states. In
the case of terrorism specifically, Deflem (p.19) argues, “Following the work of
Max Weber (1922), the bureaucratization theory holds that modern
counterterrorist police efforts are autonomously conducted on the basis of
professional standards regarding the means and objectives of counterterrorism.”
In this regard, Deflem’s argument in setting forth the need for a sociological
investigation of the policing of terrorism is that policing agencies in
industrial, democratic countries such as the United States [*399] function as
more than simply an arm of political administrations or legislatures. “These
policing activities take place even where political leaders and legislatures are
unable to implement concrete counterterrorism measures,” argues Deflem (p.4),
and it is inaccurate to simply read the “war on terror” as an amalgamation of
military, intelligence, and policing agencies. Rather, Deflem (p.5) argues that
a sociological approach to the analysis of the policing of terrorism “can
elucidate what is important and peculiar about police work against terrorism
relative to other efforts in the wider constellation of counterterrorism.”
It is within this theoretical lens that Deflem seeks to explain not only how
different countries and regions have developed different approaches to the
policing of terrorism, but why. His argument broadly is that “variable legal and
political contexts are seen to bring about differences and similarities in the
policing of terrorism worldwide. In autocratic and highly centralized states,
counterterrorism policing is generally subsumed under a national security
regime, whereas more autonomy is afforded to police in democratic states”
(p.186). Within the policing of terrorism, policing organizations in countries
such as the U.S. “have attained a level of bureaucratic and professional
expertise that is unprecedented in scale and can, therefore, resist external
pressures,” notes Deflem (p.60), including the pressures of politicizing
policing activities and techniques geared towards counterterrorism.
Following this argument, roughly half of Deflem’s book is directly focused on
changes in the policing of terrorism that have occurred in the United States and
internationally as a result of the September 11th attacks. In the case of the
U.S., Deflem’s work provides a thoroughly descriptive overview of the dizzying
array of changes to existing agencies such as the FBI, as well as the creation
of new agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security. He is careful to
point out, however, that much of what we think of as new in the so-called “war
on terror” post-September 11th, for example, significant provisions in the
Patriot Act (first passed in 2001) is rather an extension and broadening of
earlier laws and policing activities. In particular, Deflem notes that the FBI’s
use of National Security Letters (NSL) and the use of electronic surveillance
under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in particular were in use
long before September 11th. What changed, argues Deflem, was rather the scope
and use of these provisions.
Deflem’s overview of the policing of terrorism in the U.S. is exceedingly
thorough, but he also assesses policing of terrorism in countries other than the
United States, as well as international efforts. He devotes a chapter to the
policing of terrorism in Israel, a chapter to Europe, a chapter to Iraq and
Afghanistan, a chapter to Interpol, and a chapter to the globalization of police
counterterrorism. For experts in these areas, Deflem’s work will not likely
offer anything new, but for the general reader they provide a good overview of
the strategies of police counterterrorism in these countries and agencies. As
with his discussion of the U.S., however, Deflem’s discussion of these countries
is informed by his theory of the bureaucratization of the police. He [*400]
argues for example under Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi police functioned largely as
an enforcement mechanism for Hussein and his family. Following the invasion of
Iraq, the U.S. government sought to train and implement a civilian police force,
relying heavily on private contractors from the U.S. to train Iraqi police in
modern policing strategies and techniques. That this attempt met with little
success is hardly surprising to Deflem (p.181), who argues that “societies that
have not reached a degree of pacification are unlikely to develop a regular
police force.”
In this regard, the strength of this book, beyond its thorough description of
the policing of terrorism, is the fact that it lays out a theory of policing
within the context of terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st century. If it
is the case that degrees of autonomy and professionalism of policing
organizations are reflective of relative levels of democracy, using these
indicators one should be able in some sense to “measure” gradients of autocracy
or democracy according to the levels at which policing organizations are able to
resist or operate independently of political and other “external” pressures. It
is within this context that much of Delfem’s descriptive work takes on a more
nuanced and sometimes ambiguous reading.
That the U.S. is an example of this relative autonomy and professionalism of
policing organizations involved in counterterrorism is made clear throughout the
book. What is less clear is whether this autonomy is not in fact being
challenged, usurped, or simply replaced, particularly following September 11th.
For example, Deflem notes that while the FBI took on many of the domestic
surveillance responsibilities in its enhanced focus on counterterrorism
following September 11th, he also notes that the Bush Administration authorized
the use of a secret domestic surveillance program under the National Security
Agency beginning in 2002. This so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” was
not only later found to be unconstitutional in 2006, more to the point it
represented a displacement of the traditional role of policing agencies in
conducting domestic surveillance in lieu of that of an intelligence agency more
directly beholden to the executive branch of government.
Indeed, embedded through Deflem’s book are references to laws, policies, and
practices in counterterrorism where policing agencies have been displaced, or
alternatively where their roles have been expanded to such a degree that it
begins to blur the line between civilian and military and foreign intelligence
roles. For example, Deflem (p.39) notes the litany of “counterterrorism measures
initiated by the executive branch . . . [lacking] congressional oversight”
including the authorization for the use of “coercive interrogation techniques,”
particularly for prisoners transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Elsewhere, Deflem
(p.76) notes that “The NYPD also assisted in interrogations of detainees in
Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan.” How then does this speak to Deflem’s thesis
as to the autonomy and professionalization of policing agencies?
In this regard, Deflem’s argument about the bureaucratization of police is more
[*401] convincing insofar as he suggests that such organizations strive for
autonomy, but this does not mean that policing agencies are not beholden to
political and ideological precepts at the risk of professionalism or law.
Indeed, while his work suggests that policing organizations in democratic
societies are more able to resist political pressures, he does not provide many
concrete examples of how or where policing organizations (particularly in the
U.S.) have actually parted ways with political pressures. It was surprising, for
example, that Deflem did not discuss the complaints by FBI agents regarding
their observed abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay by military interrogators.
Similar examples of policing agencies parting ways with “political pressures” in
the context of the “war on terror” exist, and Deflem should have investigated
these further in light of his theory.
On the other hand, Deflem does mention examples where policing organizations
have in fact put politics before professionalism in systematic ways. The
Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) of the FBI between 1956 and 1971
illegally monitored and infiltrated a variety of political and social movements,
including the Civil Rights Movement. The U.S. Senate’s “Church Committee” (1976)
later found that “COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with
Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government’s power to proceed overtly against
dissident groups.”
To be clear, Deflem hardly defends COINTELPRO, Guantanamo Bay, or other examples
of police activity that may constitute (in his term) “extra-legal” activities.
The larger ambiguity, and perhaps what makes this work both engaging and
problematic, is that Deflem provides or alludes to examples where policing
organizations are not autonomous or professional, particularly following
September 11th. Can we infer from this that the U.S. is in some sense becoming
more authoritarian or less democratic? Deflem does not answer this question, but
his thesis leaves room for this possibility.
REFERENCES:
Deflem, Mathieu. 2002.
POLICING WORLD SOCIETY. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
United States Senate. 1976. “Final
report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.” United States Senate Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence
Activities. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Weber, Max. 1922. WIRTSCHAFT UND GESELLSCHAFT: GRUNDISS DER VERSTEHEN
SOZIOLOGIE. Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr.
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© Copyright 2011 by the author, William R. Wood