The space between: negotiating the contours of nodal security governance through ‘Safer Communities’ in Bosnia–Herzegovina

Abstract

would like to acknowledge my doctoral supervisors Andy Aitchison and Alistair Henry and my reviewers for their valuable feedback. I would also like to thank UNDP in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Safer Communities team for their ongoing support and commitment to operational transparency.

Reflexivity and Participatory Policy Ethnography: Situating the Self in a Transnational Criminology of Harm Production

“…Finally, they must resist the temptation to construct a problem to solve simply because the occasion or an attractive template presents itself. justify the existence of the node to current and prospective donors facilitated a reflective dialogue regarding the aims and impact of the project (see Blaustein 2014).…”

“…The field work took place over a period of three months between January and April 2011 and my access agreement with UNDP in BiH afforded me the unique opportunity to overtly immerse myself in the institutional culture of a multi-lateral international development agency that was actively developing a 3 community safety project for transplant to BiH. Through my roles as a doctoral researcher and a 'Project Intern' with the Safer Communities team, I used overt participant observation, ethnographic interviewing and observational methods to interpret the power asymmetries affecting the police development assistance process and the mediatory capacity of various stakeholders including international development workers and local police officers (see Blaustein 2014).…”

Policing for democracy or democratically responsive policing? Examining the limits of externally driven police reform

“…In terms of democratically responsive policing, the gravitational force exerted by the EU provides a skewed distribution of power in which policing is overly responsive to one, external, actor. Blaustein (forthcoming) has identified elsewhere that, even when the EU does not actively seek to influence policing policy, domestic assumptions about EU preferences still shape decisions. 12…”

Community policing from the ‘bottom-up’ in Sarajevo Canton

“…Over the past two decades, 'community policing' has emerged as a popular template for police capacity-building in developing and transitional societies [(see Brogden and Nijhar 2005;Ellison 2007)]. Implicit in a growing body of scholarship on transnational policing is a recognition of the fact that the policy transfers associated with police reform projects constitute complex processes, the outputs of which are shaped by an interplay between structure and agency as well as international and local influences [(see Blaustein 2014;Ellison and Pino 2012;Ryan 2011)]. This article argues that local police officers represent important policy mediators who play an important part in determining the nature of policy outputs generated by police development assistance projects related to community policing.…”