* I am grateful
to Gary Marx, Fred Pampel, Kirk Williams, Jessica Kelley-Moore, Kevin Dougherty,
and Richard Featherstone for their helpful comments. An earlier version
was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association,
Chicago, 1999. This paper draws from selected chapters of my doctoral dissertation
(Deflem 1996a), from which I am currently finalizing a book
manuscript. All translations are mine. Research was supported by a doctoral
dissertation grant from the National Science Foundation (#SBR-9411478).
Opinions and statements do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.
Ours is not a political
but a cultural goal... It only concerns the fight against
the common enemy of humankind:
the ordinary criminal.
— Vienna Police President Hans Schober, 1923.
They don’t know what we are
doing... We do the work.
— New York City Police Commissioner Richard Enright, 1923.
A steady road leads...to
the current position of the policeman as
the "representative of God
on earth."
— Max Weber.
Abstract
I employ a theoretical framework
developed on the basis of the writings of Max Weber to analyze historical
developments in the formation of international police organizations. I
rely on a comparative analysis of selected cases of international police
networks and centrally focus on the most famous and enduring of such structures,
the International Criminal Police Commission, the forerunner of the organization
since 1956 known as ‘Interpol.’ Using a Weberian perspective of bureaucratization,
I maintain that the formation of international police organizations was
historically made possible when public police institutions were sufficiently
detached from the political centers of their respective states to function
autonomously as expert bureaucracies. Under such circumstances of institutional
autonomy, police bureaucracies fostered practices of collaboration across
the borders of their respective national jurisdictions because and when
they were motivated by a professionally defined interest in the fight against
international crime. In conclusion to this analysis, I argue for the value
of sociological perspectives of social control that are not reductionist,
but that instead bring out the specific, socially and sociologically significant
dimensions of control mechanisms.
Introduction
In this article, a study
in the sociology of social control, I use a theoretical model based on
the work of Max Weber to account for the development of international police
organizations from the middle of the 19th until the early 20th century.
Although much sociological research has been devoted to the study of police
(e.g., Bittner 1970; Black 1980; Marx 1988; Skolnick 1966), it remains
a truism, as Jacobs and O’Brien (1998) argue, that many dimensions of police
and policing remain conspicuously understudied by sociologists. It is remarkable
that political sociologists have for the most part neglected to study police
institutions, especially when we consider that Max Weber related his famous
conception of the state explicitly to the institutionalized means of force.
Recall that Weber defined the state as "that human community which within
a certain territory...claims for itself (with success) a monopoly of legitimate
physical coercion" (Weber 1919:506; see also Weber 1922:514-540, 566-567,
815-868). And when Weber specified the functions of the modern state, he
explicitly included "the protection of personal security and public order
(police)" (Weber 1922:516).
Yet, despite Weber’s reference
to the institution of police, sociologists have mostly been interested
in the state as the center of power over a territory, rather than in the
bureaucratic apparatuses of legitimate force the state has at its disposal.
I demonstrate that it makes sound sociological sense to study police as
a force in and of itself, eventhough it is not unrelated to other dimensions
of society.1 Specifically, I investigate dimensions of
the internationalization of police, defined as that institution formally
charged to lawfully execute the state’s monopoly over the means of coercion
(Bittner 1970; Manning 1977:105). Hence, this analysis is not about the
police (in the plural) as a force of law-enforcement officials, but about
police (in the singular) as an institution sanctioned by states. Specifically,
I will undertake an historical study of several international organizations
of police that were formed since the middle of the 19th century. [*741]
International dimensions
of police have been of growing concern in recent years (e.g., Deflem 1996a;
Huggins 1998; Marx 1997; McDonald 1997; Nadelmann 1993; Sheptycki 1995).
From a sociological viewpoint, the internationalization of the police function
is particularly puzzling because public police agencies are central organs
of national states that claim and are willing to protect at large costs
their jurisdictional sovereignty. Cooperation among public police institutions
at an international level, therefore, seems to be inherently paradoxical
to their nation-bound function, acutely posing the question of why police
nonetheless cooperate across national boundaries.
The centerpiece of my analysis
is the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), the forerunner
of Interpol, which, founded in Vienna in 1923, is among the most enduring,
and in this sense successful, international police organizations. The origins
of the ICPC provide a useful case that can be comparatively examined in
relation to other international police initiatives that for various reasons
were not successful. Of these, I will discuss the Police Union of German
States formed in 1851, the First Congress of International Criminal Police
organized in Monaco in 1914, and the International Police Conference held
in New York in 1922.
On the basis of Max Weber’s
theories of bureaucracy, the central argument of my analysis is that international
police organizations with broad international representation could only
be formed when police institutions were sufficiently autonomous from the
political centers of their respective national states to function as relatively
independent bureaucracies. When this structural condition of institutional
autonomy was fulfilled, I further maintain, police institutions would collaborate
across the borders of their respective national jurisdictions on the basis
of a shared system of knowledge concerning the development and enforcement
of international crime. In the discussion, I will focus on the theoretical
implications of this analysis and bring out the merits of a Weberian perspective
of social control.
International Police and
Bureaucratization
Weber’s theories of bureaucracy
have not been very influential in the sociology of social control. Studies
of police bureaucracies mostly focus on only one organization or aspect
of policing (e.g., Ethington 1987; Ng-Quinn 1990; Theoharis 1992), while
other studies criticize the Weberian preoccupation with formal rationality
(e.g., Herbert 1998; Heyman 1995). Relatedly, studies of social control
that use a bureaucracy perspective tend to emphasize the dangers involved
when state agencies operate without sufficient democratic control (e.g.,
Benson, Rasmussen, & Sollars 1995; O’Reilly 1987; Gamson & Yuchtman
1977; Useem 1997). [*742] The relevance of these studies cannot be denied,
but based on the notion that critique cannot be constitutive of analysis,
I follow a different route and develop a Weberian framework to empirically
uncover historical developments of police. Let me first briefly repeat
the key elements of Weber’s perspective of bureaucracy.2
Bureaucracy and the State
of Police
Corresponding to Weber’s
suggestion that societal rationalization has gone in the direction of an
increasing reliance on principles of efficiency in terms of a calculation
of means (Weber 1922:514-516), Weber considered the modern state bureaucracy
to be the most quintessential expression of formally rationalized societies
(Weber 1922:551-579). In fact, Weber went as far as to equate bureaucracy
with modern power: "domination (Herrschaft) is in everyday life
primarily administration (Verwaltung)" (Weber 1922:126). As institutions
in charge of implementing policies decided upon in the polity, state bureaucracies
operate on the basis of an organizational design that includes that they
are: subject to a principle of jurisdiction; hierarchically ordered; operating
on the basis of files; separated from private households; relying on specialized
training; employing a full-time staff; and guided by general rules (Weber
1922:551-554). Most critically, Weber observed, the modern bureaucracy
operates on the basis of a "formalistic impersonality" oriented at employing
the most efficient, and only the most efficient means, given certain goals
(Weber 1922:128). Efficiency and specialization also enhance bureaucratic
knowledge, including technical know-how (expertise) and information (accumulated
in the exercise of official business) (Weber 1918:352-354).
Among the social consequences
of bureaucratization, Weber found most significant the trend toward bureaucratic
autonomy, that is, the gradual formation of a bureaucratic machinery that
is relatively autonomous from political and popular control. Weber discussed
the societal conditions under which bureaucracies were formed (Weber 1922:556-566),
but he argued that such external influences were "not indispensable" preconditions
and that they could not account for bureaucratic activity (Weber 1922:558).
Instead, it was the technical superiority of the bureaucracy "without regard
for the person" that Weber regarded as "the decisive factor" for the spread
of bureaucracy as the most dominant form of organization (Weber 1922:562,
561). The sole regard for a purposive-rational execution in the modern
bureaucracy is what Weber argued to account [*743] for the drift of bureaucracy
toward independence beyond and possibly even against political control
(Weber 1919:541-542).
Rationalization processes
have historically influenced a bureaucratization of the modern police function
across Western societies (Bayley 1985:23-52; Manning 1977:41-71).3
Notwithstanding national variations, police development has gone in the
direction of the creation of a specialized bureaucratic apparatus, in both
functional and organizational respects (Bayley 1985:12-14; Manning 1977:109-111;
Skolnick 1966:235-239). Functionally, public police institutions have gradually
come to be responsible for order maintenance and crime control, tasks for
which police can legitimately resort to force. Organizationally, police
bureaucratization is reflected in characteristics which closely follow
Weber’s typology: police bureaucracies are hierarchically-ordered with
a clear chain of command (discipline); agents are formally trained experts
who, as full-time appointed officials (professionalization), perform specialized
duties (division of labor); and policework follows set rules and procedures
(professionalism) and is driven toward the use of technically efficient
means, such as secrecy and force (purposive rationality).
Before I elaborate a bureaucratization
model of international police on the basis of Weber, I wish to acknowledge
that a similar perspective is founded in Michel Foucault’s theories of
discipline and governmentality (Foucault 1975, 1978). These studies conceive
of social control as the management of a depoliticized society of living
subjects (e.g., Simon 1988; Stenson 1993). Such a Foucauldian model can
usefully bring out aspects of a technology of policing and its internal
dynamics, but it has also been criticized because it cannot satisfactorily
deal with the ambivalent developments of law and social control in terms
of justice as well as coercion (Habermas 1985:279-343) and because it neglects
the embeddedness of punishment and control in a broader societal context
(Lacombe 1996). Althoughthere may be debate on the validity of these criticisms
against Foucault (Deflem 1997; Garland 1990, 1997), these concerns were
of key significance to Weber, for his perspective took into account the
external conditions that favored the bureaucratization process without
neglecting its internal logic (Albrow 1970:45-49; Page 1985:162-171). Thus,
although a Foucauldian perspective can surely be complementary to a Weberian
analysis, the hypotheses advanced in this article take advantage of Weber’s
theory to focus attention on the dynamics that work toward bureaucratic
autonomy without neglecting the external contexts in which bureaucratization
takes place. [*744]
A Weberian Model of International
Police Cooperation
Applying Weber’s perspective
of bureaucracy, I outline a two-layer model of international policing that
differentiates between structural conditions and operational motives. Structural
conditions ensure that national police agencies are in a position to move
beyond the confines of their respective national jurisdictions. These conditions
are necessary but insufficient for police agencies to engage in international
cooperation. When structural conditions are met, international police organizations
need an additional motivational basis to become operational. Relying on
Weber, I specify the structural conditions and operational motives of international
policework in terms of two aspects of bureaucratic autonomy: 1) As a structural
condition for cooperation across national jurisdictions, police institutions
must have gained a sufficient degree of independence as specialized bureaucracies
from their respective governments; and 2) International policework can
be actualized when police institutions share a system of knowledge and
expertise on international crime.
My first hypothesis relates
to the necessary conditions that need to be fulfilled to create a structural
opportunity for international policework. Sociologist Peter Blau (1964:64-68)
has specified conditions for exchange among collectivities by suggesting
that interorganizational exchange can occur when organizations are interdependent
in terms of tasks or objectives. Absent supranational enforcement duties,
police bureaucracies cannot be interdependent in terms of a functional
division of labor. However, given similarity in the institutional position
of police bureaucracies across nations, formal congruence in positions
can be considered a condition for interorganizational cooperation across
national jurisdictions. In other words, police institutions can engage
in cooperation with similarly bureaucratic police agencies from other nation-states,
because of their comparable autonomy relative to the political centers
of their respective states. If such autonomy is not achieved, police cooperation
will remain limited in scope of international participation and cannot
extend beyond the confines of politically akin states, i.e. national states
that resemble one another in ideological respects and/or entertain close
ties in international relations.
The introduced notion of
autonomy does not imply an absolute independence or detachment of police
from the state. On the contrary, public police institutions are always
agents of state control and as public police institutions they can derive
their legitimacy only from states. Autonomy of police, therefore, remains
a matter of degree relative to the (historically variable) control from
national governments. Yet, with these qualifications in mind, the conditions
of police autonomy from the political [*745] powerholders of the state
relate to the fact that police bureaucracies rely on a means-ends rationality
to employ what are held to be the technically most efficient, not necessarily
the politically most opportune means given set goals. The irony is that
police institutions can then perform state-sanctioned enforcement duties
in a manner that is no longer bound to the state. My fist hypothesis, then,
can be stated as follows:
Hypothesis 1: The greater
the extent to which national police institutions have successfully gained
a position of institutional independence from their respective political
centers, the greater is the chance that those institutions are in a position
to engage in international cooperation.
An alternative way of formulating
this hypothesis is that police institutions are in a position to cooperate
internationally when they have gained bureaucratic independence from the
political centers of their respective states (formal bureaucratic autonomy).
Or, conversely, a lack of institutional autonomy will impede the formation
of international police structures. Police institutions that remain tied
to the political centers of their states will either insulate themselves
from international duties to stay within the boundaries of their national
jurisdictions, or will engage in transnational activities that are intimately
related to national tasks. International activities under these circumstances
will not go beyond unilaterally conducted policework abroad, temporary
bilateral cooperation for specific duties, or limited multilateral forms
among police of politically like-minded states.
Beyond favorable structural
conditions, police agencies must also develop certain operational motives
to form a new field of activities that transcends the borders of national
jurisdictions. In this respect, I rely on Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) suggestion
that the operational rules of bureaucratic organizations function as myths
that define problems and specify solutions in terms framed by and for the
bureaucracy. It is useful to call these cultural systems of knowledge myths,
not to convey the notion that they are empirically false but that it is
not primarily relevant whether they are. Together with the level of organizational
efficiency, these myths influence the organization’s legitimacy, activities,
and resources, while minimizing external inspection and control.4
The organizationally defined myth that motivates international police collaboration
is provided by a professional conception and interest in the control of
international crime. The reason police can lay claim to define, and offer
solutions to, the international crime problem relates to the fact that
police institutions, [*746] as Weber (1918: 352-354) argued about bureaucracies
in general, can accumulate specialized knowledge, including official information
about the extent of, and expertise to deal with, international crime. Such
systems of knowledge have operational consequences across national jurisdictions
to the extent that they are shared among national police institutions.
Hypothesis 2: The greater
the extent to which national police institutions can rely on a common organizational
interest in the fight against international crime, the greater is the chance
that those institutions will collaborate in international policework.
Alternatively formulated
this hypothesis states that international cooperation of police can be
achieved when police institutions have established specialized systems
of expert knowledge related to the fight against international crime (operational
bureaucratic autonomy). Or, conversely, international police cooperation
is unlikely to succeed —even despite favorable structural conditions— when
participating agencies do not share an agenda on international crime.
In the next sections, I analyze
selected cases in the history of international police cooperation on the
basis of the suggested hypotheses. The centerpiece of my investigations
is the International Criminal Police Commission, but I expand the case
of the ICPC with cross-sectional data on three relatively unsuccessful
attempts to formalize international policework from the middle of the 19th
century onward to show how conditions and outcomes combined under varying
historical circumstances. Since the history of international policing is
relatively unknown, I first present a brief descriptive sketch of the development
of international policework from the 19th century onwards.
The Internationalization
of the Police Function and the Origins of Interpol (1851-1923)
The formation of the International
Criminal Police Commission in 1923 is historically rooted in a long series
of efforts aimed at fostering police cooperation across the jurisdictions
of national states. Among the antecedents of international police cooperation
are various forms of international policework throughout the 19th century,
particularly in Europe, that were designed to protect established autocratic
political regimes (Bayley 1975; Busch 1995:255-264; Fijnaut 1979:107-145).
These international forms, indeed, primarily concerned political police
activities, as the targets of such initiatives were typically the presumed
opponents of conservative governments, such as anarchists, social democrats,
and the growing labor movements. Most of these cooperation efforts were
not formally structured in a permanent international organization but occurred
on the basis of specific needs and would be terminated once those needs
were met. Yet, [*747] at times steps were taken to create more organized
and permanent organizational structures of international police. The Police
Union of German States, formed in 1851, was such an organization, bringing
together police from various German-speaking states to control political
activities. Similar plans of a political nature would still be taken during
the latter half of the 19th century. As late as 1898, for instance, Italian
authorities organized the ‘Anti-Anarchist Conference of Rome,’ which was
attended by representatives of 21 European countries, in an attempt to
formally structure the international policing of the anarchist movement
(Jensen 1981; Fijnaut 1979:930-933). Although a follow-up meeting was held
in St. Petersburg in 1904, these efforts yielded few practical results.
In the early decades of the
20th century, the number of international police initiatives sharply increased.
Most of the these plans were not successful, but the remarkable increase
in attempts to structure international policework clearly manifests a more
general globalization in cultural and organizational respects that took
place in various institutional domains (Boli & Thomas 1997; Meyer et
al. 1997). At this time, also, international police cooperation gradually
de-politicized in terms of goals and became more formalized in organizational
respects. The first 20th-century initiative to organize international enforcement
against crimes of a non-political nature was taken at the First Congress
of International Criminal Police in Monaco in 1914. Such attempts to formalize
multilateral police organizations were dominated by police from Europe
and rarely extended beyond the continent.
The main counterpart to European
police cooperation in the early 20th century originated in Latin America,
where (unsuccessful) plans to establish international police cooperation
were voiced at international police conferences in Buenos Aires in 1905,
in Sao Paolo in 1912, and in Buenos Aires in 1920 (Marabuto 1935:26-27).
U.S. police agencies were at this time more concerned with the federalization
of police in matters of inter-state commerce. In the United States no international
police cooperation plans were initiated until the International Police
Conference in New York in 1922. Clearly, then, when the International Criminal
Police Commission was founded in Vienna in 1923, it represented the culmination
of an internationalization of police that had been set in motion since
at least the 19th-century consolidation of national states. Unlike many
of its predecessors, moreover, the ICPC was successful in establishing
an enduring structure with wide international representation, the conditions
of which I analyze in the following sections. [*748]
Institutional Autonomy
and the Structural Conditions of International Police Cooperation
The Police Union of German
States (1851-1866) and the Failure of an International Political Police
in 19th-Century Europe
My first hypothesis states
that police agencies must be in a sufficiently autonomous position from
the political centers of their states for there to be a structural condition
under which police cooperation across national jurisdictions becomes possible
beyond the confines of politically akin national states. The negative case
of this hypothesis is presented by the failure of 19th-century attempts
to forge police cooperation by means of a more or less permanent organization
on a European-wide basis. Indeed, most international police efforts in
19th-century Europe were not of a cooperative kind; furthermore, initiated
cooperative forms were limited to temporary arrangements and/or to organizations
with relatively restricted participation by police of politically similar
or unified national states.
In 1848, various outbursts
of popular unrest across Europe aimed to overturn the dictatorial rules
of autocratic governments. Established regimes responded harshly and, in
consequence, also strengthened their police institutions (Fijnaut 1979:107-145;
Liang 1992:18-82). This led to reforms of various national police powers,
which brought about a factual harmonization of police organizations across
Europe. Additionally, the revolutionary year 1848 also served as a catalyst
for the internationalization of the police function, leading to an increase
of international police activities with distinctly political objectives.5
These international political police activities occurred in the form of
intelligence work abroad and/or by means of increased cooperation for shared
purposes of political suppression (Fijnaut 1987:33-35). Covert political
policework abroad was by its very nature typically unilaterally instigated
without the knowledge of police or other authorities of the country where
the activity took place. Unlike this trans-national policework, inter-national
police cooperation involved bilateral and multilateral efforts to organize
information exchange, either through establishing contacts among police
officials (the so-called personal correspondence system) or through the
distribution of printed information on wanted suspects (published in search
bulletins). Whereas the correspondence system was initiated ad hoc
by a particular police institution on the basis of a specific need for
[*749] assistance (e.g., following an assassination attempt on a monarch
or statesman), the system of printed bulletins represented a more permanent
form of international information exchange (Deflem 1996b). For example,
the Viennese police since the 1850s published a two-weekly ‘Central Police
Bulletin’ (Central-Polizei-Blatt) which provided printed information
on wanted suspects (Deflem 1996a:41-42). From the 1860s onward, copies
of the Austrian bulletins were regularly sent to police in Prussia, and,
by the 1880s, they were distributed throughout Europe (Liang 1992:32).
Among the most ambitious
attempts to formalize international police cooperation in the middle of
the 19th century was the Police Union of German States, which was founded
in 1851 by police of Prussia, Austria, and the German territories of Sachsen,
Hanover, Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria (Deflem 1996b). The Union
established various modes of direct information exchange, particularly
police meetings and a system of printed magazines. Operative until 1866,
the Union was conceived in opposition to individuals and organizations
that were thought to threaten the stability of the established political
regimes of Europe’s national states. Because some political dissenters
(especially communists) were believed to be conspiring from London, Paris,
and other capital cities in Europe, the Union particularly devoted efforts
to enhance international cooperation among police.
However, despite various
efforts to formally structure international policework throughout the 19th
century, these attempts by and large failed and were operative only temporarily
or on a restricted international basis. The majority of these international
police operations remained unilaterally transnational (without foreign
cooperation) or of a cooperative kind that was limited in functional respects
(initiated for a specific purpose and terminated after it was achieved)
and/or limited in international scope (bilaterally or multilaterally among
police of politically akin states) (Fijnaut 1979:798-843; Liang 1992:18-19,
33-34). The widespread practice of transnational and limited cooperative
policework testifies to the critical concerns over sovereignty in 19th-century
Europe and the related antagonisms and fragile coalitions that marked the
international relationships among states. Such socio-political conditions
also influenced the fact that efforts to establish international cooperation
among police on a broader multilateral basis failed.
The Police Union is in this
respect no exception, for the organization remained very limited in international
appeal, with a restricted membership of police from seven German-language
states that were united in the German Confederation, a federal political
union that existed from 1815 until 1866. The Union could not count on the
support of police from France, Italy, and other European countries, even
[*750] though they were often as committed to maintaining conservative
rule through the policing of politics. And Union agents stationed abroad
were mostly involved in secretively conducted transnational operations
(Deflem 1996b:48-49). National differences in political-ideological respects
combined with sovereignty concerns to make political police cooperation
with broad international representation impossible. Therefore, also, it
is no surprise that with the rise of Bismarck and his uncompromising foreign
policy, the Police Union’s activities gradually began to decline, until
the Union was finally disbanded when war broke out between Prussia and
Austria (the Seven-Weeks War of 1866).
In sum, reflecting the dynamics
of national and international political conditions, police institutions
during the 19th century were intimately related with the quest of national
autocratic governments to consolidate conservative political rule. As such,
it is clear that although police agencies were institutionally separated
from the military, they were closely aligned as the two central organs
of state coercion (Fijnaut 1979:127-130). The relevant conclusion is that
police institutions during the 19th century remained intimately linked
to the political dictates of national-state governments and had not yet
sufficiently developed as bureaucratic expert institutions that could claim
independence from national (and international) political affairs.
The First Congress of
International Criminal Police (1914) and the Rise of European Police Culture
Although 19th-century international
political police operations were dominated by the dictates of national
governments, they contained the origins of a bureaucratic autonomy of police
that would characterize later developments of international policing beyond
state control. The main reason for this peculiar development is that although
political police objectives were determined by the autocratic governments
of national states, police agencies were charged to arrange and execute
all necessary measures independently. As a result of this autonomy granted
to police at the administrative level, police officials cooperating across
national borders would gradually also begin to develop a common culture
that would further cement and build international relations among police
institutions irrespective of the dictates of political governments. In
the second half of the 19th century, strong political antagonisms and nationalist
sentiments still hindered efforts to organize international police cooperation.
Indicative is the failure of the participants of the anti-anarchist conferences
of Rome and St. Petersburg to set up a central intelligence bureau and
to have appropriate legislation enacted in the various participating countries
(Jensen 1981:340). Ideological differences and political antagonism [*751]
among the countries of Europe, then, not only prevented legislation
being passed at the national levels, but also posed limits to international
police cooperation for political purposes.
However, the various efforts
that were taken in international police matters since the middle of the
19th century did lead to the gradual formation of a European police culture
that by the beginning of the 20th century would have matured into a non-political
system of shared values oriented at fostering cooperation across national
borders. In the first instance the administrative autonomy granted to police
involved the elaboration of appropriate means of policework. This elaboration
involved primarily the institution of various modes of information exchange,
such as the bulletin and correspondence systems. Besides transmitting information
for investigative purposes, what these systems also accomplished was to
establish and cement relationships among police across national jurisdictions
at a personal level. In fact, as early as 1851, when von Hinckeldey invited
police across Europe to form the Police Union, he already envisioned a
conference of "men.... who in their difficult profession know one other
as reliable and have learned to appreciate one another" (in Beck &
Schmidt 1993:5). Similarly, at the anti-anarchist conference of Rome, a
British representative of Scotland Yard acknowledged that the meetings
were beneficial "by forming reciprocal friendships leading to greater cooperation"
(in Jensen 1981:332). These professional contacts for investigative purposes
were further enhanced by courtesy visits among police officials that were
conducted for reasons of training and professional diplomacy (Liang 1992:151-155).
During such moments of contact, the professionals of policing began to
recognize one another as fellow experts of law enforcement and, in consequence,
formed "a fraternity which felt it had a moral purpose, a mission, to perform
for the good of society" (Fijnaut 1997:111). From then on, a shared police
culture based on professional expertise in matters of the proper means
of policing could be extended to also include the appropriate objectives
of policing. The development of a depoliticized criminological knowledge
was nurtured and found much favor in the modern institutions of police
(Deflem 1997). As one important element of these new sciences of crime,
there would also be expressed, time and time again from the mid-19th century
onwards, the idea that international crime was on the rise as a consequence
of a general modernization of social life. In 1893, the German criminologist
Franz von Liszt, for instance, expressed the idea that criminals specializing
in monetary crimes had begun to roam the world and that the police response
against them should be internationally coordinated (Marabuto 1935:15).
Under such circumstances of a developing [*752] police culture it would
become possible for police authorities to independently organize international
police cooperation on a multilateral basis.
With the development of a
European police culture in mind, it will become clear why the First Congress
of International Criminal Police (Premier Congrès de Police judiciaire
internationale), held in Monaco in 1914, would fail in instituting
an international police organization. Attended by some 300 magistrates,
diplomats, academicians, and police officials from 24 countries, the Congress
decided to establish and enhance means to improve international police
cooperation, including the organization of international police communications
by telegraph and telephone (Roux 1914). A next meeting was to be held in
Bucharest in 1916, but the beginning of World War I prevented any practical
implications of the Monaco Congress. However, despite the fact that the
outbreak of World War I effectively meant the failure of the Monaco Congress,
I argue that the effort could not have succeeded because the manner in
which the meeting conceived of the organization of international policework
did not take into account developments in police bureaucratization and
instead still relied on an out-dated model of international policing inherited
from the 19th century. In particular, although, as I earlier described,
police experts had by the early 20th century already developed a common
culture on the means and goals of professional policing, the Monaco Congress
was still rooted in principles of national politics and formal systems
of law. This can be seen, first of all, from the fact that the Congress
was from its inception not an undertaking organized by police officials.
Instead, the initiative to organize the Congress was taken by Albert I,
Prince of Monaco. The meeting may have been an attempt by the Prince to
enhance Monaco’s international prestige in world affairs (Bresler 1992:18-20),
or it may have been inspired by the Prince’s awareness of the status of
the principality as a resort for the wealthy, posing particular issues
of property crimes (Walther 1968:11). But regardless of the Prince’s motives
and despite the Congress’s explicit focus on criminal and not political
police tasks, the plan was in any case not instigated by police bureaucrats.
And despite the explicit focus of the Congress on cooperation among police,
indeed, most attendants in Monaco were magistrates and government representatives,
not police officials.
Furthermore, because of the
over-representation of legal experts and diplomats, the discussions at
the Congress took largely place within a legal framework, debating formal
arrangements of international law, such as extradition procedures, and
proposing police measures only in function thereof. The Congress devoted
attention to international measures of police, but only as one and the
least discussed of four conference themes (Roux 1914:66-198). The Congress
so worked on the basis of a [753] model of formal systems of law that could
only mirror the many differences that existed between the various national
jurisdictions. Recognizing existing variations between national legal systems
across Europe (and the world), the attendants at the Congress suggested
that all participating countries were to adopt one national police system,
in
casu that of France, to be used in all international policework. Relatedly,
the influential criminalist R.A. Reiss of the Police-Technical Institute
at Lausanne suggested the creation of an international police bureau that
would not only collect information about international criminals but also
have at its disposal an international mobile police force. Although Reiss’s
suggestion was not approved, other participants at the Congress spoke very
favorably about instituting French systems of criminal identification and
investigation at the international level. Eventually, the Congress decided,
for example, that the Paris criminal identification service would serve
as central international bureau and that French was to be used in international
police communications (Roux 1914:200-201). These arrangements evidently
placed the French participation in international policework center stage.
Not surprisingly, the French delegates at the Congress by far outnumbered
the representatives of other nations (Roux 1914:4-5). And while French-speaking
delegates attended the Congress as official government representatives,
the governments of other countries, including, most notably, Germany, Austria-Hungary,
Great Britain, and the United States, did not send official representatives
(delegates from those countries were privately present as observers and
did not take part in the discussions).
The negative implications
of the international design suggested at the Monaco Congress are particularly
manifested in the critical reactions the meeting received from the two
German attendants (Finger 1914; Heindl 1914a, b). The German delegates
bemoaned the fact that the Congress was primarily an affair of "Latin"
countries and, relatedly, that it had decided to adopt the anthropometric
system of identification in international policework (Finger 1914:268;
Heindl 1914a:649). These criticisms betray deep-seated German-French antagonisms
of police technique and administration, because the anthropometric bertillonage
system of criminal identification (measuring characteristics of the body)
was nationally implemented in France, whereas the dactyloscopic system
(of fingerprinting) was used in Germany. Therefore, the choice over which
identification system would be adopted at the international level was not
a mere technical matter, but would necessitate the reorganization of other
participating national police systems. At the root of the problem, the
German delegates argued, was the intent of the Congress to establish a
supranational police instead of instituting a cooperative network among
police institutions that would preserve their respective [*754] national
traits. A decade later, when the ICPC would successfully establish such
a cooperative model, one of the German attendants again dismissed the Monaco
meeting as "dangerous dreams! Congressional fantasies! Springtime ravings
at the Côte d’Azur" (Heindl 1924:20).
In sum, the failure of the
Monaco Congress to establish an international police organization can be
attributed to the fact that the meeting did not take into account the development
of police bureaucracies and their attained level of autonomy from the political
centers of national states at the turn of the 20th century. The Congress
was still conceived on the basis of a model of formal law and politics
that was rooted in 19th-century conceptions of sovereignty and national
jurisdiction. It thereby conflicted with police institutions that were
already prepared for the 20th century by having developed conceptions of
the expert means and goals of policing, nationally as well as internationally.
As discussed earlier, evolved European police culture had developed conceptions
of the proper means and goals of policing in terms no longer based on legality
but on professional expertise and knowledge. This also implied a mutual
recognition among police officials that the only viable form of international
police cooperation with broad participation could not have political objectives
and not aim to institute a supranational police but instead design a cooperative
criminal police organization. Such a non-political and cooperative structure
was precisely what the International Criminal Police Commission successfully
introduced in 1923. It was no coincidence, therefore, that the meeting
that founded the ICPC was by its organizers not conceived as a re-organization
of the Monaco Congress. And even though the ICPC would also go through
the turmoils of a world war and other periods of international political
antagonism, the organization would remain in existence until today.
The ICPC and the Organization
of "Purely Technical Matters"
The International Criminal
Police Commission was founded in Vienna in 1923 to provide mutual assistance
among national police institutions within the frameworks of the laws of
their respective states on matters of ordinary crime, i.e. violations
of criminal law (Internationale Kriminalpolizeiliche Kommission [hereafter
IKK] 1923). The Commission’s headquarters were established in Vienna, and
in the years to come, the ICPC gradually expanded its membership and organizational
facilities. The membership grew from 22 representatives at the time of
the Commission’s founding to 58 members by 1934. Almost all European countries
were represented, as were police from Egypt, China, and Japan. The United
States became an official member of the Commission in June of 1938 when
President Roosevelt enacted a bill to that effect.
Organizationally, the ICPC
headquarters in Vienna occupied a strategic place for they centralized
information on a variety of police matters, especially notices of wanted
criminals, received from the participating police institutions. Next to
the headquarters, various means to enhance direct police-to-police communication
constituted the most important achievement of the ICPC in its formative
years. These included coded telegraphic communications, a radio network,
printed publications, and meetings. The Commission’s most tangible realizations
were the monthly periodical International Public Safety (Internationale
Öffentliche Sicherheit), containing data on international crime
and information on wanted suspects, and the international meetings, fourteen
of which took place in various European capitals before World War II.
In relation to my first hypothesis
on the necessary conditions of international police cooperation, a variety
of circumstances surrounding the formation of the ICPC indicate that a
condition of institutional independence was achieved and explicitly relied
upon. There is first of all the fact that ICPC was formed at a meeting
convened independently by police officials, not as the result of a diplomatic
initiative. It was but five years after the end of World War I that the
congress was organized by Johannes Schober, the Police President of Vienna,
who became the first President of the ICPC from 1923 until his death in
1932. At the Vienna Congress, Schober stated that he had first developed
the plan to establish international police collaboration about a year after
the end of the World War (IKK 1923:8-10). But at that time Schober felt
that so close after the fall of the Hungarian-Austrian empire Vienna could
not be suitable for such an important task and that the initiative should
be left to police captain M.C. van Houten from the "neutral" Netherlands
(IKK 1923:8). Van Houten of the Dutch criminal police had indeed as early
as December 1919 contacted police across Europe to establish an international
police office (van Houten 1923). But, too soon after the war, van Houten’s
initiative did not produce the desired results. Four years later, Schober
still realized the boldness of the plan but nonetheless hoped that "even
in the midst of oppositions between the nations of the earth" the Vienna
Congress would unite police "above the political battle," for police cooperation,
he argued, was "not a political but a cultural goal" (IKK 1923:1,9,2).
The delayed gathering of
the Vienna Congress after World War I demonstrates that the degree of institutional
independence of police bureaucracies is affected by broader societal developments.
Indeed, the immediate political implications of the war were obviously
considered too weighty to allow for international [*756] police cooperation.
But by 1923, circumstances had changed. Among the conditions that then
favored police institutions to take advantage of their acquired formal
bureaucratic autonomy is particularly to be mentioned the period of relative
tranquillity and pacification in world affairs that was set in after World
War I. Of course, as history would dramatically show, this condition of
stability was more presumed than real, but it was nonetheless of sufficient
reality in perception that it effectively enabled police institutions to
expand and take advantage of structural conditions that allowed them to
engage in international cooperation. Importantly, the acquired independence
of police institutions participating in the ICPC did not imply a surrender
of national sovereignty. On the contrary, the ICPC was explicitly set up
(and Interpol today still operates) not as a supranational force but as
an international network of national systems of police (Anderson 1989:168-185).
As ICPC President Schober emphasized, the Commission would not strive for
"something impossible" as "supranationality" and instead would "hold on
to the national individuality of all participating states" (in Archiv für
Kriminologie 1925:72). Sensitivity about nationality questions was also
reflected in the composition of the ICPC executive committee, where the
various posts rotated from one country to another. The only imbalance in
terms of nationality was the placement of the ICPC headquarters and the
appointment of the Presidency of the Commission with the Viennese criminal
police.
The reasons why this Austrian
advantage was acceptable among the ICPC membership relate to the fact that
Austrian police systems and organization were particularly well advanced,
especially in technical respects. As I indicated before, the Austrian police
had indeed a long-standing history with collecting files on, and specializing
in the fight against, international criminals, particularly in developing
systems of information exchange (Liang 1992:18-34). In fact, dating back
to the days of the Habsburg dynasty, several attempts had been initiated
by Austrian authorities to establish a European police system. Throughout
the 1860s, for instance, Austrian police authorities were attempting to
expand the membership of the Police Union and form a European-wide police
organization (Liang 1992:151-153). Similarly, after the assassination of
Empress Elisabeth of Austria in September 1898, the Austrian foreign minister
called for the creation of an international police league (Liang 1992:160).
While these plans were unsuccessful, they do indicate the special preoccupation
of Austria in international policework. The acquired expertise, means and
technical prowess of Austrian involvement in international policework could
now be put to good use, especially for criminal (not political) police
matters. The technically dominant position of the Viennese police in the
ICPC was also accepted because police from [*757] the smaller European
countries lacked the necessary resources to maintain an international office
and because police from Germany and France, though both participants in
the ICPC, were unacceptable in any leadership position given their antagonistic
positions during and after World War I. Moreover, to secure the sovereignty
of the individual nationalities, the Vienna headquarters were so designed
that they enabled participation of national police systems without amalgamation.
The headquarters only collected information forwarded by participating
police institutions and passed on requests from one national police to
another. As such, the headquarters did not initiate any investigations
but functioned as a mere facilitator of police communications between national
systems (Anderson 1989:168-185). International communication technologies
by radio and telegraph likewise facilitated interaction among police, as
did the meetings, without the formation of a supranational force.
Perhaps most clearly indicating
an independence from politics is that the ICPC was established without
the signing of an international treaty or legal document. All ICPC activities
were planned (mostly at the meetings and through personal correspondence)
and executed by and for participating police without input or control from
their respective governments. In fact, the Commission had no internationally
recognized legal status and no legal procedure was ever formalized to acquire
membership in the ICPC. The Commission did strive for governmental and
legal recognition of its established structures and appealed for formal
sanctioning from the League of Nations, inviting representatives of the
League to the ICPC meetings (Palitzsch 1927; Skubl 1937). But, importantly,
this appeal for political-legal approval occurred after the Commission
was developed and its structures were already in place, for, as van Houten
expressed, the League of Nations was not considered capable to handle "such
purely technical matters" (van Houten 1923:46).
As a non-governmental organization,
the ICPC was never very successful in having its activities formally sanctioned
by the League of Nations, in part because the League independently organized
various aspects of policework, especially in matters of white slavery,
narcotics, and falsifications of currencies, themes on which the League
held several meetings and passed international resolutions throughout the
1920s and 1930s (Marabuto 1935:113-149). More successful, however, was
the ICPC's pursuit of approval from the national governments of the various
participating police agencies. Specified in one of the resolutions at the
Vienna Congress as a desirable goal of cooperation (IKK 1923:201), by the
1930s nearly all ICPC members were officially sanctioned by their respective
governments and could often rely on additional funds and personnel to set
up specialized offices (the so-called National Central Bureaus) needed
[*758] to maintain international communications with the Vienna headquarters.
As such, what is witnessed is an international police network seeking to
obtain legal and governmental approval after the organization had already
been established and elaborated independently on the basis of professional
police conceptions and without regard for political and legal considerations.
The Myth of International
Crime and the Motives of International Police Cooperation
The International Police
Conference (New York, 1922) and the Limits of International Crime
My second hypothesis states
that once structural conditions of institutional independence are fulfilled,
international police cooperation can become operational when participating
police agencies have successfully developed a common organizational interest
in the fight against international crime. The negative case of this hypothesis
is presented by the International Police Conference, the first effort that
was taken to formalize international police cooperation after World War
I. The International Police Conference was organized at a meeting of police
in New York in September 1922 (International Police Conference [hereafter:
IPC] 1923; Enright 1925; Welzel 1925). Although the meeting attracted only
five foreign delegates, it established the International Police Conference
(IPC) as a permanent organization to promote and facilitate international
cooperation among police. However, in terms of membership and operations,
the Conference was to be a predominantly American organization and mostly
promoted a coordination of local U.S. law enforcement agencies, with some
additional participation from Canadian law enforcement. The most tangible
attempt to make good on the international aspirations of the Conference
occurred when a joint meeting was organized with the International Criminal
Police Commission in Paris in 1931. There it was decided to set up an international
police bureau in the United States and to discuss at a next joint meeting
the creation of a ‘World Organization of Police.’ But the international
bureau was never established and no additional joint meetings were held.
In 1932, the IPC was brought under the direction of Barron Collier, a wealthy
retired businessman who cultivated a keen interest in international police
cooperation (Nadelmann 1993:90-91). Collier tried to put new life in the
organization, but apart from meetings in Chicago in 1933 and in Montreal
in 1937, the organization ceased to exist.
Although the International
Police Conference was not a successful organization, it was created under
structural conditions [*759] favorable for international cooperation. The
Conference was independently organized by police agencies, especially the
New York City Police and its commissioner Richard Enright, that were sufficiently
professionalized to operate independently from governmental control. As
Enright remarked at the IPC founding meeting, police professionals were
in charge of "the work" in law enforcement whereas the politicians were
unknowledgeable (IPC 1923:341). Police cooperation in the IPC was also
aspired to be formalized without the signing of a legally binding document,
although the Conference did strive for legal-political recognition once
formed. The Conference’s plan to establish a central bureau, in particular,
was to be approved through appropriate federal legislation, and bills to
that effect were (unsuccessfully) entered in U.S. Congress in 1922 and
1923 (National Archives, Record Group 165, 2045-739/3).
Structural conditions for
international cooperation were in terms of formal bureaucratic independence
as favorable in 1922 in the United States as they would be a year later
in Europe when the ICPC was formed. Yet what the International Police Conference
missed was a practical playing field on which to effectively organize the
fight against international crime. The self-stated motives of the organizers
of the IPC were clear: the organization had to reach beyond national jurisdiction
because "the enemies of society, organized or otherwise, are international
in their scope" (Enright 1925:89). The internationalization of crime, furthermore,
was believed to have been brought about by the rapid social changes after
World War I (IPC 1923:14-15; Hart 1925:54). However, an internationalization
of crime with sufficient implications for the development of a professional
myth that would justify the creation of an international police organization
was at this time still missing in the United States.
To be sure, U.S. law enforcement
to some extent had been involved in international tasks for many years
(Nadelmann 1993:15-102). Early on since the founding of the Union, for
example, a high premium was placed on customs regulations and the revenue
that could be derived from their enforcement. Not surprisingly, the U.S.
Customs Service was among the first federal U.S. police forces to be created
in 1789 and Treasury agents were among the first to work internationally
through cooperation with foreign police or by being stationed abroad (Nadelmann
1993:22-31). But because of the geographical distance with Europe and in
the absence of a well developed federal police, law enforcement agencies
in the United States remained relatively insulated from the rest of the
world. Also, technological means of communication and transportation were
until the mid-20th century not sufficiently developed for there to be any
real concern of international criminality between the United States and
Europe. Police tasks that related to an increasing [*760] mobility in social
life were either handled locally (e.g., the policing of immigrant groups)
or remained mostly restricted to inter-state matters (e.g., white slavery).
From the late 19th-century onwards these duties were handled by federal
U.S. law enforcement agencies, especially the investigative force in the
U.S. Justice Department which since 1935 has been called the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI).
Why then was it that the
IPC was nonetheless established with the intent on fostering cooperation
across national states? Rather than viewing the formation of the International
Police Conference in terms of an organizational myth responding to an internationalization
of crime, the IPC should be considered in terms of certain internal police
developments in the United States, particularly the police reform movement
that sought to fight off political partisanship and corruption and enhance
professionalism in policework (Walker 1977). This increasing quest for
professionalism also entailed an effort to improve police relations, primarily
with the public, but also with police of other nations. Publicly, the IPC
presented itself as "the premier police association of the world" (Hart
1925:55) and promoted international cooperation, but not so as to respond
to any growing concern over an increase in international crime. In fact,
there is no empirical evidence that any international investigation ever
originated from the IPC. Striking also is that between May 1924 and October
1925 the IPC published a monthly periodical, the Police Magazine
(later renamed Police Stories) that covered several articles on
foreign police systems but no investigative information of any kind. Instead
of oriented at fighting international crime, the formation of the IPC served
as an organizational presentation of self relative to other professional
police forces across the world, especially in Europe. For this reason,
it was important for founder Enright to argue that the IPC brought together
police from all "civilized nations, states, and municipalities of the world"
(IPC 1923:15), even though an overwhelming majority of the organization’s
membership was from the United States (Deflem 1996a:152). As a professional
association, the IPC could not compete with the International Association
of Chiefs of Police (IACP), an organization that since 1893 had contributed
to advance professionalism among local U.S. police agencies (Deflem 1996a:68-70;
Nadelmann 1993:84-91). There was in fact some competition between the IPC
and the IACP, as the result of inter-agency conflict between the New York
City Police, which founded the IPC, and local and federal law enforcement
agencies in Washington, D.C., which controlled the IACP. Having positioned
itself explicitly as an advocacy group, the IACP could make good on its
ambitions of professionalism much more readily than the IPC on its aspirations
to fight international crime. The fate of the IPC was sealed in the absence
of any [*761] significant concerns over an internationalization of crime
that would justify a transatlantic police organization, while in terms
of concerns over inter-state crimes within the United States as well as
with respect to the forms of international crime that at this time occupied
U.S. law enforcement, the IPC could not compete in any significant way
with the United States’ expanding federal police agencies, in particular
the FBI. Especially during the 1930s, the FBI would under direction of
its famed Director, J. Edgar Hoover, indeed successfully gather the means,
personnel, and budget to virtually monopolize all international law enforcement
duties emanating from the United States (Deflem 1996a:187-189).
The ICPC and the Fight
Against "The Common Enemy of Human Society"
Whereas the International
Police Conference in the United States could not successfully develop a
myth of international crime, the International Criminal Police Commission
in Europe was in this respect successful. The motivational basis of the
ICPC was in the first instance provided by a cross-national rise and internationalization
of crime which police officials argued to have taken place after World
War I and which was seen as necessitating expanded control across national
borders. This operational myth for international cooperation was formed
on the basis of a specialized knowledge on the internationalization of
crime as well as the professional means to deal with it. Moreover, knowledge
and skills were justified in terms of an expertise that sidestepped legal
arrangements and focused not on violations of a political nature but the
ordinary or common criminal (IKK 1923:1).
Regardless of whether the
view of a spectacular crime wave at the end of World War I is empirically
valid, the notion that it had occurred and that it should serve as a catalyst
for international police cooperation corresponds to the self-declared motives
of participating police. To some extent, police knowledge on the development
of international crime was surely founded in actual developments, but the
vigor and intensity with which the notion was defended betrays a reality
different than what statistics could support. First, there was the widespread
and consequential idea among police authorities that the level of crime
had increased dramatically after the war. The Dutchman Captain van Houten
had already expressed the notion of a spectacular influx in crime in many
nations at War’s end to justify his initiative in 1919 (van Houten 1923)
and Schober reiterated the theme at the Vienna Congress (IKK 1923:8-10).
The reports and statistics officials from participating nations provided
at the Congress confirmed the necessity of an adequate police response
and the commonality [*762] of the task among European police. Second, there
was also believed to have occurred an epidemic spread of a new class of
criminals that abused the modernization of social life and the increase
in mobility after the war. They were the money swindlers, the passport,
check and currency forgers, the hotel and railway thieves, the white slave
traders and the drug traffickers (IKK 1934:82-129). With the latest technologies
of communication and transportation at their disposal, these criminals
had in common a unique capacity to transcend the boundaries of time and
space in disregard of the national jurisdictions police institutions were
traditionally subject to. The preoccupation in the ICPC with these technologically
influenced crimes is well shown from the fact that a separate division
on the falsification of currencies was already created at the first meeting
and that later meetings continued separate discussions on these and other
typically modern crimes (Deflem 1996a:120-126).
Thus, what police officials
organizing the ICPC argued to justify collaboration across national borders
was a new class of criminals appearing in all countries undergoing rapid
social change and technological progress, including particularly mobile
criminals transcending nation-state borders. The adequate police response
was conceived as a well-organized international network that would foster
cooperation as an efficient means of enforcement. That these conceptions
of international crime and their proper enforcement were not just a matter
of discourse among police officials is clear from a closer look at the
organizational innovations the ICPC introduced.
Primarily, the ICPC was concerned
with a coordination of investigative information as well as of technical
know-how through a variety of newly instituted means of information exchange.
The Commission established new systems of technologically advanced means
for international communication, specifically a telegraphic code and a
system of wireless (radio) communications (Deflem 1996a:129-130). Additionally,
printed publications and annual meetings served to function as efficient
means of direct international cooperation, unhindered by legal procedure
and diplomatic formalities. The ICPC publications contained information
and identifying data on wanted criminals and suspects and various articles
on the latest police techniques, written by police professionals in the
various participating states. The meetings were likewise planned and attended
by police officials and criminalistics experts, rather than by political
dignitaries or judicial administrators. The primary concern for an efficiency
of means in international policework is also well reflected in the organization
of the international headquarters at Vienna. By 1934, the headquarters
included a specialized divisions on the falsification of passport, checks
and currencies, on fingerprints and photographs, and on fugitives from
justice and ‘Persons Dangerous [*763] to Society’ (Deflem 1996a:126-131;
Marabuto 1935:91-101). The organization of the ICPC headquarters, in other
words, was based on expert police knowledge, not on categories of criminal
law, and reflected technical know-how on the goals and means of policing,
not procedures of international law or politics.
Perhaps most clearly exemplifying
the impact of a professional understanding of international policing beyond
politics and legality were the criticisms among ICPC members against existing
political-legal controls of international crime, the most prototypical
expression of which was extradition. Extradition was indeed by far the
most addressed issue the ICPC dealt with in its formative years. Particularly
criticized were the many formalities involved with, and the slowness of,
official extradition procedures. At the Vienna Congress in 1923, the Commission
had already decided that participating police should develop measures to
expedite extradition procedures and that under some circumstances police
could exchange suspects without formal governmental approval (IKK 1923:200-201).
At later meetings, the Commission members similarly lamented extradition
as an inadequate tool in the fight against international crime (Deflem
1996a:121-125). The procedure was not criticized in terms of jurisdictional
sovereignty but because of its inefficiency in fighting international crime,
which, as an ICPC resolution of 1928 declared, had been developing "in
a manner alarming to mankind as a whole" (IKK 1928). At an ICPC meeting
in 1930, the Commission eventually determined to bypass extradition procedures
altogether, deciding that ICPC members could make provisional arrests of
suspects on the basis of information in the ICPC periodical, even in the
absence of an international treaty that sanctioned this provision (Deflem
1996a:136-137). Lamenting extradition as an inefficient tool of international
policework, what the ICPC in its place suggested were various expert police
means to efficiently tackle the international crime problem. As the resolutions
at the Vienna Congress specified (IKK 1923:197-202), the facilitation of
direct police-to-police communications and a swifter exchange of information
were the primary tools for cooperation across national borders. Considerations
of efficiency dominated in the choice of adequate police techniques, not
concerns over legality or justice. Instead of trying to construct an internationally
valid legal definition of crime and international crime, the ICPC organized
the international headquarters in Vienna on the basis of practical matters
of crime detection and international policework and sophisticated means
of police technique and identification, such as fingerprints and photographs.
For similar reasons also instituted were communication systems through
telegraph, radio, and printed documents, while meetings were organized
for police to interact on a person-to-person basis. [*764]
In sum, just as the increase
in international crime was among the ICPC membership understood in expert
terms, the means to handle the problem were professionally conceived on
the basis of a purposive-rational efficiency. Technological developments,
ironically, were instrumental in both stimulating concerns over international
crime as well as enhancing the means of its enforcement. For while technological
progress brought about increasing opportunities for cross-border criminality,
it also led to a growing expertise in the means of policing and criminalistics.
Thus, technically sophisticated means of crime detection were important
factors that enabled police bureaucracies to effectively develop a myth
of international crime that went beyond a mere discourse among experts.
Bureaucratic Autonomy
and the Internationalization of Police
I have explained the formation
of the International Criminal Police Commission in 1923 and the failure
of selected other attempts to organize international police cooperation
since the middle of the 19th century on the basis of a model of bureaucratic
autonomy inspired by Max Weber. I argued that police institutions must
have attained a degree of separation from their respective governments
so that a structural condition of institutional independence is created.
Furthermore, an organizational myth of international crime has to be developed
among police of different nations to function as a motivational basis around
which to crystallize cooperative work. In this discussion I wish to move
beyond the historical-empirical evidence on the immediate cases at hand
and argue for the sociological relevance and strength of a Weberian perspective
of social control.
The Politics of Police
In terms of my first hypothesis,
I argued for the relevance of the structural condition of formal bureaucratic
autonomy of police institutions participating in international efforts.
In the case of the ICPC, formal bureaucratic autonomy is most clearly evinced
from the fact that the organization was established independently at the
initiative of police officials. Earlier 19th-century efforts to organize
police cooperation could not rely on police institutions sufficiently detached
from their respective political centers and therefore remained restricted
in terms of international scope and participation. The Monaco Congress
of 1914 did not take accomplished developments in the bureaucratization
of the police function into account and was doomed to fail because the
initiative was taken by politicians and magistrates who relied on dated
models of legality and international law. [*765] Positing the relevance
of the structural condition of institutional independence, I did not deny
the significance of external factors on the development of police institutions.
On the contrary, like Weber suggested with respect to the bureaucratization
process in general (Weber 1922:556-566), certain societal presuppositions
had to be met for police institutions to become detached from their political
centers. In the case of the ICPC, I mentioned political conditions of pacification
that enabled the trend toward bureaucratic autonomy of police in the interbellum
decades of the 1920s and 1930s. The model of bureaucratization I developed
from Weber as such takes into account the influence from societal conditions
that may enable or impede police institutions to acquire independence.
My thesis on formal bureaucratic
autonomy underscores the argument that structural differences in independence
from politics accounted for the fact that some national police systems
could and others could not participate in international police organizations
such as the ICPC. This suggests that formal bureaucratic autonomy is a
determining factor of police internationalization irrespective of the political
ideologies of the nations involved and irrespective of the nature of their
relationships in matters of foreign policy. This thesis contradicts perspectives
that suggest that the ICPC and other international police organizations
are to be explained primarily as efforts to advance the political goals
of certain powerful states. Authors defending such perspectives have in
the case of the International Criminal Police Commission alluded to the
ideological persuasion of the police officials who founded and participated
in the ICPC and, relatedly, the political objectives the ICPC was to accomplish
under the guise of crime control (Bresler 1992:21-52; Busch 1995:264-274;
Greilsamer 1986:21-52). Political motivations would be most clearly revealed
in the case of Johannes Schober, the initiator and first president of the
ICPC, who was also Chancellor of Austria on two occasions, in 1921 and
1929, and served as Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1930 to 1932
(Hubert 1990). Given the ambitions of Schober in matters of international
politics, it has been suggested that he founded the ICPC as an instrument
of Austrian foreign policy, particularly a tool to revive Austria’s international
prestige after the country had been left in a state of instability since
the war. Relatedly, it is argued that the ICPC served as an organizational
bastion to fight the spread of communism, the fear of which had taken hold
of political elites in Europe (and the United States) since the Russian
revolution of 1917 (Bresler 1992:21-26). The fact that police from Russia
and, later, the Soviet Union did not participate in the ICPC is advanced
as the strongest indicator of this perspective. [*766]
However, evidence indicates
that such political perspectives have serious flaws in accounting for the
formation of the International Criminal Police Commission. Specifically,
what a state-centered approach cannot account for is that the ICPC not
only explicitly dealt with criminal, not political activities, but that
any preoccupation with political issues at this time actually prevented
various efforts to foster police cooperation across national borders. Indeed,
during much of the 19th century police institutions were representative
of conservative political regimes and, hence, international police cooperation,
especially in Europe, was primarily targeted at the politically suspect
opponents of established governments (Bayley 1975; Liang 1992). But by
the early decades of the 20th century such political ambitions were delegated
to separate intelligence forces and no longer guided the international
organization of bureaucratic police institutions. It is true that in the
years between the two world wars there were still attempts to foster international
policework with explicitly political goals —especially with the purpose
of controlling communist movements— and that some of these political ideals
were also defended among certain members of the ICPC (Fijnaut 1997). Yet,
strikingly, these political policing efforts were never successfully implemented
in an international organization. For instance, a 1920 meeting in Munich,
Germany, attended by police from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany,
and Austria, discussed but failed to establish a joint police intelligence
network for the suppression of communism (National Archives, Record Group
165, 10058-L-36/1-3). In the late 1930s, other international police meetings
with explicit political objectives —including efforts to establish anti-communist
police cooperation organized by police from South-America, Nazi Germany,
and fascist Italy— were likewise not successful (National Archives, Record
Group 242, 21/2525789). The only international police efforts with a political
motive that were successful in the first half of the 20th century were
instigated unilaterally by national police institutions operating secretively
abroad, or involved cooperation that remained at a bilateral or restricted
multilateral level.
Against state-centered interpretations
of international police, therefore, I suggest that certain police institutions,
including those of Communist Russia, could not cooperate in the ICPC not
because of any political motivations among the membership of the ICPC —however
real political antagonisms were at the level of national governments— but
because of the structural condition that those non-participating institutions
remained too closely linked to their respective political centers. Not
the ideological nature of the political regime, but the formal separation
of police bureaucracies from their governments (whatever their ideological
disposition) enabled police bureaucracies to cooperate in international
organizations. This explains that police [*767] from Russia did not take
part in the ICPC because of its strong attachment to the Communist dictatorship,
but also that police from other nations could and did participate in a
common structure although they too were not closely akin in ideological
respects and entertained anything but amicable political relationships.
The strongest evidence supporting this argument is the cooperation in the
ICPC of police from countries that were as politically hostile during the
here considered years as France, England, Italy, and Germany. Political
processes, then, cannot be considered constitutive of international policework,
although the structural condition of bureaucratic autonomy is influenced
by historically variable circumstances. And, indeed, political conditions
are often seen to impede police from attaining or maintaining formal bureaucratic
independence. Most clearly in the case of the ICPC, severe difficulties
in upholding professional police relationships mounted by the late 1930s,
especially after the Nazi invasion of Poland signaled the prelude to World
War II and, even more so, when the United States joined the war effort.
Under the extreme condition of warfare, a bureaucratic independence of
police cannot be maintained. Hence, international cooperation among police
of hostile states was virtually non-existent during the war, although the
practical implications of the war-time ICPC —the headquarters of which
had fallen under Nazi control— are not entirely clear (Deflem 1996a:248-258).
Among the implications of
the fact that police institutions are in a position to cooperate internationally
once they have gained formal bureaucratic autonomy is that cooperation
can take place among police of national states that may be very different
in political, legal, and other respects. The strength of survival of the
ICPC is in this respect remarkable considering the great political and
cultural heterogeneity that marks the European continent, dividing the
region for hundreds of years. But putting aside any divisive issues, national
police institutions participating in the ICPC could cooperate because of
shared professional standards and objectives beyond state politics. This
absence of state-control only refers to a formal separation of police from
the governments of states and is not meant to imply that police institutions
are not related to the power and might of states. On the contrary, formally
sanctioned with the tasks of order maintenance and crime control, police
institutions are arguably the most visible and concrete expression of the
state’s legitimate monopoly over the (internal) means of coercion (Bittner
1970; see generally Melossi 1990). In that sense, police is always related
to power and force and as such political (Reiner 1985). In fact, the proclaimed
reliance of police institutions and other bureaucracies on principles of
efficiency and their presentation in strictly professional terms are {*768}
themselves important strategies of domination (Weber 1922:122-130).
My point here, therefore,
is not to argue that the state and public institutions of social control
are not related, nor that formal bureaucracies of social control are not
a critical component of state power, but only that the structures and mechanisms
of (international) police organizations are not exhausted with reference
to the ideological dictates of the political center of states. An alternative
perspective could hold that the formation of the ICPC was enabled by agreements
between states over the politically recognized utility of an international
police organization, but evidence shows that such agreements only came
after police experts had already formed such an organization with means
and goals they had decided upon without political control.
The thesis of bureaucratic
independence harmonizes with Weber’s observation that bureaucracies can
keep on functioning regardless of whether a society is organized along
capitalist or socialist lines and regardless of the nature of the political
regime (Weber 1922:128-130, 560-579). Indeed, as this analysis showed,
once a police institution is sufficiently independent from its political
center, it can function as an expert apparatus that can engage in collaborative
work with other, likewise independent police bureaucracies. Institutional
independence accounts for the fundamental irony of international police
cooperation: that police institutions transcend national jurisdictional
competence and move beyond the function assigned to them by their respective
political centers.
The Laws of International
Police
With the structural conditions
for police cooperation fulfilled, the motivational basis that operationalized
international policework in the case of the ICPC was a professional myth
of a cross-national rise and internationalization of crime since the end
of World War I. Accompanying the expert conceptions of the goals of international
policework, the means to deal with the problem of international crime were
likewise subject to professional police judgment. With its emphasis on
technically sophisticated means of policing, exemplified by the functionally
specialized headquarters and instituted mechanisms of police-to-police
communications, the ICPC —unlike the International Police Conference— so
accomplished what Weber with a witty snap at Marx once called a "concentration
of the means of administration" (Weber 1922:567).
Based on the myth of international
crime, the elaboration of the ICPC implies a rationalization as a systematic
organization in terms of instrumental efficiency (Smelser 1998:2). However,
as there has been some confusion on the issue of efficiency in the [*769]
reception of Weber’s work (Clegg 1994:66-67) as well as the ideal-typical
status of Weber’s terminology (Albrow 1970:61-66), my analysis implies
no conclusions on whether rationalized policework is more efficient or
effective. I do not argue that the ICPC was a more efficient instrument
in the control of international crime, but instead that it was motivated
by, and explicitly designed to accommodate, a professional conception of
efficiency. In fact, evidence indicates that the ICPC was not very effective
in terms of handling international crime. Based on the minimal evidence
available, the ICPC possessed some 7,000 fingerprints between 1922 and
1927, and the International Bureau in Vienna had by 1936 reportedly collected
information on 3,724 suspects (Bresler 1992:40; Leibig 1936:266). Those
numbers are not impressive compared to the information collected by most
other participating and comparable national police systems at the time.
The FBI, for instance, already possessed over 1 million fingerprints as
early as 1926 (and about 5 million in 1935). The relative ineffectiveness
of the ICPC in investigative respects harmonizes with Weber’s insight that
the actual power of a bureaucracy in influencing the social structure it
acts upon is empirically variable (Weber 1922:572). Instead of effectiveness
in investigations, the fostering of professional relationships among police
officials, especially through the meetings, may well have been among the
ICPC’s most concrete realizations. These personal contacts, moreover, may
also have fueled additional bilateral cooperation among police complementary
to the structures of the ICPC. The notion that the ICPC primarily enhanced
cooperation through personal contacts parallels Peter Blau’s famous study
of informalism in organizations (Blau 1955).
Regardless of effectiveness,
however, it is significant that the organizational structure of the ICPC
was developed on the basis of systems of knowledge shared by police professionals.
Weber recognized very well the relevance of knowledge for bureaucratic
power and ultimately even defined bureaucracy as "domination through knowledge"
(Weber 1922:129). Foucauldian studies of crime control and police, similarly,
have indicated the relevance of expert knowledge cultures in terms of a
tripartite relationship between theory (criminology), empirical knowledge
(criminal statistics), and instrument of control (police) (Foucault 1978;
see Deflem 1997). Recent scholarship on police cooperation has also argued
for the relevance of knowledge systems for the diffusion of police objectives
and police technique in international partnerships (e.g., Deflem 1996b;
Nadelmann 1993; Sheptycki 1995). James Sheptycki (1998a,b) has usefully
described these shared knowledge systems in terms of a transnational occupational
subculture that police across nations have come to develop through information
exchange and practical arrangements of cross-border policework. Sheptycki
argues [*770] that such cross-border arrangements among police defy clear-cut
categorization, particularly when one is assessing the rise of transnational
policing in terms of a diminishing or strengthening of state power. However,
increased complexity in the internationalization of policing need not imply
that its historical antecedents cannot be empirically traced and its various
components unraveled in terms of a theoretically founded comprehensive
approach.
Thus, the bureaucracy perspective
reveals that cultural forces of expert police myths on international crime
fostered international cooperation practices, demonstrating that bureaucracies
are significantly driven by internal dynamics related to organizational
strength. Structural conditions of bureaucratic autonomy may furthermore
have been strengthened by cultural developments of the expert knowledge
systems on international crime, dialectically reinforcing developments
originally enabled by the condition of institutional independence. Sociologists
of formal organizations have in similar terms argued for the relevance
of these developments in the broader context of societal bureaucratization.
Comparative sociologist S.N. Eisenstadt (1956:69), for instance, explains
the drift toward bureaucratic independence from political rulers in terms
of the officials’ expertise and successful claim to a "professional morale."
Wolfgang Mommsen (1989:112) likewise speaks of an "inherent dynamism of
bureaucratic institutions" that results in a "self-propelling process"
which further accelerates what Henry Jacoby (1969:156) calls the bureaucratic
"will to do everything." Indeed, it was because of an organizationally
developed system of knowledge on the cross-national rise and internationalization
of crime that the ICPC could found and expand its organizational structure
and facilities, despite the fact even that among the Commission members
no clear-cut definition of international crime was ever attained.
What did matter and what
did operationalize the ICPC was the notion —undisputed among police— that
crime was on the rise across the world and that it was more and more of
an international nature. This entails no functionalist argument that international
police cooperation is necessitated by an internationalization of crime,
for it is not relevant whether these views on the nature and level of criminality
were empirically accurate, but that they were accepted to be valid by police
officials and therefore effectively motivated international cooperation.
In the case of the ICPC, a myth of international crime enabled police institutions
to form an international network based on professional expert conceptions
irrespective of political and legal concerns and without prior government
approval. For as Blau and Meyer (1971:50-59) argue, bureaucratic myths
not only mobilize members around organizationally [*771] defined causes,
they also insulate the organization from control and criticism. This also
confirms, as Weber maintained, that state and market do not determine the
relative strength of the bureaucracy versus the political rulers (Weber
1922:128-130, 615). Instead, it is the level of technical expertise attained
by the officials that can propel the bureaucracy to take on a course of
its own. The functioning of the ICPC on the basis of professional expertise
harmonizes with Weber’s view of the bureaucratic apparatus as an "almost
unbreakable formation" that functions "as a machine" and is "capable of
universal application" (Weber 1922:570, 561, 126). Importantly, this does
not mean that international police organizations can totally insulate themselves
from concerns over legality and rights. On the contrary, as much as I argued
that the development and presentation of international police practices
in terms of professional expertise is itself political, so should it be
noted that international policing is subject to criticisms in normative
terms, especially with respect to finding new ways to guarantee human rights
and democratic accountability in the global age (Deflem 1999).
Importantly, expert systems
of police knowledge emphasize a particular conception of, and an efficiency
to control, international crime in extra-legal terms. In fact, police officials
in the Commission criticized legal conceptions of crime and existing arrangements
of international law, because they remained bound to national jurisdictions
and were time-consuming and inefficient. What the members of the ICPC instead
emphasized were developments in crime influenced by societal factors (modernization,
technological progress), not violations of formal legal systems. In terms
of means, also, it was a strong emphasis on efficiency in the Weberian
sense of purposive rationality that led to the establishment and elaboration
of the ICPC’s organizational facilities and accelerated its progression
regardless of legal arrangements and without supervision from political
authority. This confirms the Weberian viewpoint that relative to the expertise
and know-how of the bureaucrat, the political officeholder is always in
the position of "a dilettante" (Weber 1922:572). Hence, Weber (1918:32)
argued that "in the modern state real authority...rests necessarily and
unavoidably in the hands of the bureaucracy." The ICPC facilities and activities
were indeed planned to be as technologically sophisticated as the feats
of their targets. And only after the structures of international policing
were already in place, were appeals made to sanction what expert police
bureaucracies had already established. The case of the ICPC so illustrates
Weber’s (1922:128-129) argument that control of a bureaucracy is "only
limitedly possible for the non-specialist: the specialist is in the long
run frequently superior to the non-specialist in getting his will done."
[*772]
Conclusion
I have relied on the sociology
of Max Weber to defend a perspective of social control that accounts for
the formation of international police organizations on the basis of a two-fold
model of bureaucratic autonomy. I argued that the fact that national police
institutions have acquired institutional independence creates structural
conditions favorable for international cooperation, regardless of whether
the states of those police institutions approximate one another in political,
legal, and other respects. This perspective recognizes the embeddedness
of police institutions in broader societal contexts without surrendering
to all too readily accepted assumptions about the explanatory powers of
state and market. I thus am led to a rejection of such state-centered and/or
neo-Marxist arguments, not a priori, but because of their clear
shortcomings with respect to empirical adequacy requirements. For although
certain societal preconditions were significant in influencing bureaucratic
police autonomy, they cannot be considered constitutive of the dynamics
of international policework. Instead, expert knowledge systems about a
cross-national rise and internationalization of crime provided the motivational
basis for an operationalization of international policework.
The paradoxical implication
of my theoretical model, then, can be summarized as follows: certain social
preconditions favored a trend toward a bureaucratization process which
itself implied increasing independence on the basis of specialized skills
and expertise. As such, in this article I have empirically grounded a Weberian
perspective of international policing that is not reductionist in terms
of developments of state politics and formal law, for what my analysis
has shown is that international police organizations were not reflective
of political and legal developments and did not target international criminals
as political opponents or legal subjects. On the contrary, the cross-national
rise and internationalization of crime as the central motivator of international
policing was constructed beyond, even against, national politics and law.
Only after police officials had established professional structures and
facilities of international policework did they appeal to national and
international bodies of government to formally sanction what had already
been created under conditions of bureaucratic autonomy.
I have in this study strengthened
the empirical foundations of my theoretical arguments by broadening the
scope of investigation to comparatively research several instances of international
police cooperation, but my perspective needs further corroboration from
additional studies. In terms of the internationalization of social control
as a broader phenomenon, this study has focused on selected historical
instances of international collaboration between public police institutions
and have not concentrated [*773] on the manifold contemporary dimensions
of international policing. I can here not decide as to whether my conclusions
may need to be qualified when considering other aspects of social control
besides those involving public police institutions and late-20th century
developments of international police cooperation that may be qualitatively
different from its historical antecedents. Although I have elsewhere applied
the Weberian model to aspects of international police today (Deflem 1999),
other scholars have defended competing theoretical models in their research
on punishment (e.g., Goldstone & Useem 1999; Hochstetler & Shover
1997), the police use of force (e.g., Jacobs & O’Brien 1998; Jacobs
& Helms 1997), and dimensions of international police today (e.g.,
Dunn 1996; Gilboy 1997; Huggins 1998). The intention of my study, however,
was to show that for certain developments of social control, in casu
the historical origins of international police organizations, a Weberian
model of social control may be more valuable. This would offer support
to the notion that, as some experts have argued (Marx 1995:329; Nadelmann
1993:466), the theme of international police is too wide and varied to
be captured by one simple proposition. Paralleling observations on the
multi-dimensional nature of international processes in general (Kettner
1997), international policing covers many different dimensions —from bilateral
and temporary practices to multilateral and relatively stable organizations;
from developments during the 19th-century formation of national states
to the present high-tech age of cyberspace— that may defy a single propositional
explanation.
I hope that this analysis
has demonstrated the value of a sociological approach that transcends narrow
perspectives of police in terms of the enforcement of laws or the control
of crime. Gary Marx (1981) once astutely described such legalistic outlooks
as ‘trampoline-models’ that view of social control exclusively in reaction
to violations of formal laws and that so fail to account for the many sociologically
relevant complexities of social control. Whereas much of Marx’s work unravels
the ironic nature of social control in terms of the characteristics of
the situational interaction between rule-violator and rule-enforcer (e.g.,
Marx 1988), the here presented study argues for a similar inherent dynamics
at the organizational level of police institutions and the relationships
between them. The bureaucratic model of police which I developed in this
article shows that international police can indeed not be viewed in terms
of an enforcement of legal norms. On the contrary, international police
organizations relied on expert systems of knowledge formulated beyond the
realm of state-proclaimed laws. A theoretically founded approach beyond
formal legality is precisely, I believe, what should be emphasized by sociological
perspectives of police and social control. Such an approach is readily
counter-intuitive to an [*774] everyday understanding of police (as law
enforcement) and rectifies scholarly accounts that are dominated by such
a misconception. The task for sociologists of social control is to develop
and test theories that are analytically rooted in the sociological imagination
in order to show the specific role played by police institutions in the
reproduction of social order.
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Endnotes
1 Relatedly,
the gradual delineation of social control as a separate theme of reflection
has been the central development in sociological theorizing on the matter
over the past decades (Coser 1982; Deflem 1994; Liska 1997). Whereas the
concept of social control was in the 19th century virtually synonymous
with social order, since the 1950s it has come to be conceived more narrowly
in relation to deviance and crime. Social control has become a mainstay
in the more restricted meaning, referring to social processes and structures
that —corresponding to the three dominant sociological theory groups— redress,
create, or reproduce more than, crime and/or deviant behavior (see Cohen
1985; Cohen & Scull 1985; Marx 1981).
2 My
reading of Weber’s perspective of bureaucracy relies on the relevant sections
from the posthumously published Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and
Society) (especially Weber 1922:551-579, 815-837) and some additional writings
on bureaucracy in Germany (Weber 1918) and the political profession (Weber
1919). English translations can be found in Weber 1958, 1978.
3
Weber himself introduced the conception of police as bureaucracy when he
discussed as a condition favorable to bureaucratization “the increasing
need, in a society accustomed to pacification, for order and protection
(‘police’) in all areas” (Weber 1922:561).
4 This
resonates with a central theme addressed in the work of organizational
theorists. Mary Douglas (1986), for instance, argues that an institution
acquires legitimacy by showing how its own rules and practices are the
only answer to a problem it had itself formulated. In the case of police
bureaucracies, Jerome Skolnick (1966:238) similarly speaks of “organizational
interests” and “official innovation” to indicate the tendency of modern
police to set its own agenda of activities.
5
In the period before 1848, there had also been attempts —largely unsuccessful—
to structure European-wide systems of international political policing.
Mention can be made of attempts to organize European police systems during
the Napoleonic reign in France and the Metternich regime in the Hungarian-Austrian
monarchy (Fijnaut 1979:798-843; Liang 1992:18-19, 33-34).