Loader Ian

This author's articles

• Necessary Virtues:The Legitimate Place of the State in the Production of Security

  19 April 2005
  In their recent book Governing Security, Les Johnston and Clifford Shearing pinpoint what they see a significant shift in criminological writing about ‘the problem of the state’ (2003: 33-4). Three decades ago, they contend, ‘cutting-edge criminological theory’ posited the state as the ‘problem’ - structurally tied to class interests, systemically and unjustly directed towards coercing the poor and weak, incapable of defending public interests against narrowly drawn private ones. It was, as such, a force to be struggled against and, ultimately, transcended. Today, by contrast, such theory has come to invest in the state as ‘solution’ - a means of articulating and defending the ‘public interest’ in a market society whose neo-liberal champions triumphantly proclaim that no such thing exists. Johnston and Shearing describe this situation as a ‘strange paradox’ (2003: 34).

• WP1: The New State of Exception: The Political and Social Implications of Globalized Insecurities

  19 April 2005
  This workpackage draws on political and cultural theory, international relations, and criminology to develop an innovative theorisation of the nexus between security and liberty and its application to the European context. It specifically responds to characterisations of contemporary security practices in terms of «the state of exception», the spatio-temporal re-articulation of the exception in political practice, and the political and social implications of this re-articulation.

• Locating the Public interest in Transnational Policing

  19 April 2005
  We try in this paper to tackle what David Held (2004: 166) calls ‘one of the principal political questions of our time’- namely, that of ‘how global public goods’ - in the present case policing and security - ‘can best be provided’. We want, in particular, to specify the ways in which the idea of the public interest may be conceptually reworked and institutionally relocated within today’s pluralized transnational security configuration.

• Governing European Policing: some problems and prospects

  19 April 2005
  In this paper I address some of the ‘democratic deficits’ raised by the development of a cross-border policing capacity within the European Union and consider how these might best be made good. The argument unfolds in three parts. I seek, first of all, to clear a little ground by offering a critique of two currently prevalent and - in certain political quarters - appealing responses to European policing’s democratic shortcomings. Secondly, I identify some key properties of the European policing field that future regulatory strategies must take proper account of. I then outline a framework for regulating European policing networks in ways that sustain considerations of equity and democratic accountability and sketch some tentative institutional proposals that can advance such a ‘project’. A brief conclusion assesses the prospects for this project within contemporary European politics.

• Loader Ian : curriculum vitae

  18 April 2005
  Ian Loader is Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Criminology. He is author of Youth, Policing and Democracy(1996, Palgrave), Crime and Social Change in MiddleEngland (2000, Routledge, with E. Girling and R. Sparks) and Policing and the Condition of England: Memory, Politics and Culture(2003, Oxford, with A. Mulcahy), as well as several papers on contemporary transformations in policing and security. He is currently working in two broad fields: (i) the historical sociology of crime policy in England and Wales and its intersections with political ideologies and culture, and (ii) the relationship between security and political community. He is currently writing a book on the latter topic (with Neil Walker), provisionally entitled Civilizing Security: Policing and Political Community in a Global Era.

• Policing, Securitization and Democratization in Europe

  18 April 2005
  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 cooperation, 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?