Suchergebnisse

While police and military typically are dealt with separately, even by separate specialists, in actual practice the role of the police is shaped by the role of the military. The reverse is also true: the role of the military is shaped by that assigned to the police. This is most clearly apparent in situations of domestic disorder. But it is not enough to trace the relations between the police and the military themselves. One must examine the anxieties and strategies of the central state elites, for their policies will determine what formula of police-military division of labor will be used to enhance state security. The history of Ireland and, more recently, of Ulster sheds light on this more general phenomenon. The very origins of the police in the United Kingdom can be found in the central government's desire to relieve the army of the burden (and risk) of internal order- keeping. But the police models created for Britain and Ireland were quite different. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the predecessor of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was designed to be a paramilitary force; that is, it was a police force intended to maintain the political order, not simply to protect citizen security. Since 1962, the division of labor between police and military once again has been reversed. The central state security planners were compelled to bring in the military when the RUC no longer could maintain that political order, due not only to escalating communal conflict, but also to weaknesses inherent in the RUC, especially its overwhelmingly Protestant com position. Today, however, London is trying to restore the security division of labor that it deems optimal. A key to that restoration is 'primacy of the police'. Whether citizen security will be thus enhanced, or merely state security bolstered by such a policy, is problematic at best.

The division of labor between a state's military & police force is dictated by fundamental state ideologies & resultant political strategies for creation & maintenance of a particular sociopolitical order. The division of labor consequently must be analyzed historically & concretely. Ulster is the focus for exploring this more general phenomenon. To explain Whitehall's current utilization of police & military, especially its push at present to replace the British Army with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, one must trace the evolution of the British state system as it affected Ulster back to the eighteenth century. What becomes clear is that the ethnic stratification system was the principal determinant of how the central state elites created & continually adjusted military-police relations in Ulster. Out of an analysis of changing police-military-ethnic relations in Ulster one gains a keener appreciation of the extent to which security protected in Northern Ireland is the security of the state. The security of ordinary Ulstermen is only secondary. AA.

Militaries and police forces are rarely neutral actors in ethnic conflicts. They are typically ethnically imbalanced as a result both of historical socioeconomic maldistributions of opportunities and of deliberate recruit ment strategies pursued by central government elites. The modernization and professionalization of security forces is no guarantee of their communal or political neutrality. Lasting resolution of inter-ethnic and ethnic-state conflicts require a reorganization of police and militaries thorough enough so that vulnerable communities' security is substantially enhanced.