Magnus Hörnqvist

The Birth of Public Order Policy

Over the last twenty years, the nature of the rule of law and the basis on which nation states employ force has been changing fundamentally. The distinction between what is criminal, to be dealt with by the legal and justice system, and what creates a ‘perception of insecurity’ - formerly to be dealt with by social policy - is being eroded at both the macro (‘war on terror’) and micro (‘public order’) levels. This paves the way for the unbridled use of state force, in the first instance, and the criminalisation of behaviours that are not necessarily illegal, in the second. Fear becomes a controlling mechanism for the maintenance of the social order and any element of non-conformity is construed as a threat.

Risk Assessments and Public Order Disturbances: New European Guidelines for the Use of Force?

Over the last twenty years, the prison system, border controls, crime prevention programmes, anti‐terror measures and private security companies have expanded within Europe. This article discusses some of the implications. It will be argued that we are witnessing a paradigmatic shift in the manner in which state‐sanctioned force is employed. The distinction between what is criminal, to be dealt with by the justice system, and what creates a ‘perception of security’—formerly to be dealt with by social policy—is being eroded at both macro‐ (‘war on terror’) and micro‐ (‘public order’) levels. The rule of law is giving way to a security mentality, where force is employed on the basis of risk assessments. Social problems are re‐interpreted as security threats, and met with measures recreating the original threats. This gives the policy field a distinctive rationality of its own.

Exclusion or culture? The rise and the ambiguity of the radicalisation debate

The years 2005–2010 saw a sudden interest in the phenomenon of radicalisation. Terrorism was treated as the end result of a process of radicalisation and, as such, a reflection of broad social changes. In the discussion surrounding this phenomenon, radicalisation has not functioned as a homogenous analytical category. We analyse leading academic and administrative texts and identify two fundamentally different perspectives. One of these perspectives locates the causes of terrorism in alien cultures and identity clashes, while the other proceeds from socio-economic conditions and sees the threat as coming from increasing levels of social exclusion. The two perspectives are incompatible but nonetheless co-exist in practice, making terrorism a projection screen for an array of ambitions and fears. The emphasis on radicalisation has further become tied to policy preferences which have affected the Muslim community in quite different ways.

Repositioning sovereignty? Sovereign encounters with organized crime and money laundering in the realm of accountants

This article repositions sovereignty on the basis of a study of recent regulatory approaches to organized crime and money laundering. The spread of techniques across administrative domains is traced through organizational documents and interviews with practitioners, and related to an observed trend toward integration between policing research and regulation research. The same trend, however, assigns sovereignty to the periphery. A richer notion of sovereignty is recovered through a reading of the classical theorists, and used to tease out the articulation of sovereignty in current state strategies. Theorizing ‘sovereignty at the center’ as opposed to ‘sovereignty at the periphery’ challenges basic assumptions about the relationship between the state and economic activity, and in particular about the utility-oriented character of state violence.

Riots in the welfare state: The contours of a modern-day moral economy

This article accounts for the tacit politics of the 2013 Stockholm riots. Based on interviews with local residents and a study of the parliamentary debate, it is suggested that the post-war Swedish welfare state generated commonly shared conceptions, which ascribed a temporary legitimacy to the riots within the community by conceptualizing poor living conditions and police racism as government infractions. The modern moral economy was endorsed by the political establishment, with a cynical twist. For future studies of similar riots, it is argued that, although the classical notion of moral economy successfully directs attention to the normative conceptions that propel riots, the notion must be extended with a racialized dimension, the concept of citizenship, and new incarnations of government infraction.