Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Understanding the governance of security
- 1 Reflections on the refusal to acknowledge private governments
- 2 Transnational security governance
- 3 Two case studies of American anti-terrorism
- 4 Power struggles in the field of security: implications for democratic transformation
- 5 Policing and security as ‘club goods’: the new enclosures?
- 6 The state, the people and democratic policing: the case of South Africa
- 7 Necessary virtues: the legitimate place of the state in the production of security
- 8 From security to health
- 9 Research and innovation in the field of security: a nodal governance view
- Conclusion: The future of democracy
- References
- Index
Conclusion: The future of democracy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Understanding the governance of security
- 1 Reflections on the refusal to acknowledge private governments
- 2 Transnational security governance
- 3 Two case studies of American anti-terrorism
- 4 Power struggles in the field of security: implications for democratic transformation
- 5 Policing and security as ‘club goods’: the new enclosures?
- 6 The state, the people and democratic policing: the case of South Africa
- 7 Necessary virtues: the legitimate place of the state in the production of security
- 8 From security to health
- 9 Research and innovation in the field of security: a nodal governance view
- Conclusion: The future of democracy
- References
- Index
Summary
The diversity of contributions assembled in this book and their contrasted perspectives, as well as their implications for future research, highlight the stimulating challenges presented by our efforts to understand security: how it is experienced, produced, governed, and the price there is to pay for our insatiable need for it. This thriving area of inquiry is grounded, as Shearing reminds us, in an intellectual tradition which looks upon the state as the main provider of security. From Hobbes to Weber, the idea that a social contract binds citizens together and allows the state to devise, adjudicate and enforce rules in order to maintain good order and guarantee peace of mind has been prominent in post-feudal societies. The state is supposed to guarantee a universal coverage in exchange for a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive force. But everyday reality tends to be impervious to such political or philosophical considerations, and this book has highlighted the intrinsically plural nature of security governance.
The domination of philosophical and legal thought over matters pertaining to social control and policing has for a long time sustained the fiction of the monopoly of the monolithic state over the legitimate provision of security. However, recent historical and sociological discoveries have uncovered a complex web of private and hybrid agencies that have always co-existed with the state, exploiting the flexibility of the market to cater for unfulfilled needs (Morn 1982; Johnston 1992; Nadelmann 1993).
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- Information
- Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security , pp. 241 - 248Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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