(Northern) Irish Policing & The ‘Sticky’ Police-Craft of COIN

• In Event: Global Webs of Counterinsurgency Policing

Abstract

Policing from the island of Ireland has exercised disproportionate influence within the global making of policing that belies its population and size. This is especially true as regards counterinsurgency (COIN) policing that has been applied and refined, co-constituted and exported, reformed and revived, across a series of temporal waves. An important thread within global policing entanglements, (Northern) Irish COIN policing experience has proved externally appealing, and particularly sticky domestically. Charting how expertise from this island has shape-shifted and been transplanted to ensure continued relevance amidst fluid local/global security environments, this paper examines the enduring appeal of COIN policing; a policing model that looks out for new legitimising threats and that has proved difficult to shift. Whilst recent scholarship on global policing has explored possibilities for a unifying ‘constabulary ethic’ towards more democratic policing, this paper articulates a parallel and comparatively neglected global paradigm of COIN policing with coercion and dubious action at its core. Through the lens of the (Northern) Irish experience, this article advances much deeper conceptual appreciation of the global mainstreaming of COIN policing.

Author

• Conor O'Reilly, University of Leeds