ABSTRACT

As a standard operating backdrop in the United Kingdom, for more than a decade austerity has become an increasingly dominant logic as to how policing can be delivered and (re)configured to do ‘more with less’. Yet beyond simple rationalisation of public policing in line with market principles, a more complex and long-standing trajectory underpins relations between the police and commercial ‘others’ set within this climate. With austerity as a guiding ‘code’, it has accelerated rather than punctuated the evolution of public policing dispersal. Using path dependency theory, the paper argues that change across both law and policy via different forms of critical juncture has embedded commercial principles, while simultaneously reconfiguring the symbolic (and operational) status of the police and their relationship with the public. In turn, the paper highlights that such pluralisation, in a genealogical sense, has tilted police authority away from central state control to a more dispersed and commercial model – but on a long-term trajectory which long precedes austerity as part of path-dependent change.

摘要

作为英国的标准运营背景，十多年来，关于如何交付和（重新）配置警务以“事半功倍”，紧缩政策已成为一种日益占主导地位的逻辑。然而，除了根据市场原则对公共警务进行简单的合理化之外，在这种环境下，警察与商业“其他人”之间的关系还具有更复杂和长期存在的轨迹。以紧缩作为指导“守则”，它加速而不是打断公共警务分散的演变。使用路径依赖从理论上讲，该论文认为，通过不同形式的关键时刻改变法律和政策已经嵌入了商业原则，同时重新配置了警察的象征性（和操作性）地位及其与公众的关系。反过来，该论文强调，从谱系学的角度来看，这种多元化已经使警察权力从中央国家控制转向更加分散和商业化的模式——但在长期轨道上，作为路径依赖型变革的一部分，紧缩政策早在紧缩之前.