INTERNATIONAL POLICE COOPERATION: EMERGING ISSUES, THEORY AND PRACTICE

摘要

International Police Cooperation is a timely collection that should achieve that often rare feat of appealing to both prac titioners and academics. The collection is divided into four sections: conceptual issues in police cooperation, recent initiat ives and their limitations within specific contexts, current and future challenges in specific regional contexts, and issues of accountability and effectiveness. The book commences with a thorough and detailed outline of the scholarship on international police cooperation and the issues both scholars and practitioners are currently confronting. For those unfamiliar with the area, the introduction provides a sound basis on which to contextualise the individual chapters that follow. The volume then moves to the excellent empirically based chapter of Laure Guille, which documents the continuing importance of bilateral and informal networks on the ground within the European Union. Guille concludes that centralised and formalised instruments should be improved and promoted, while recognising the continued import ance that bilateral and informal connections are likely to have in successful cooperation. Gerspacher and Lemieux address similar themes in their analysis of Europol. Noting the expanding role of Europol, the authors suggest the 'police entrepreneurs' of Europol have become knowledge brokers. Rather than simply responding to demands from member states, such entrepreneurs create a market for information.