Institutions are the system of legal rules and social norms that enhance individual economic property rights. Individuals take them as exogenous, but they are endogenous to the entire system. Institutions are complicated distributions of economic property rights and are therefore the result of attempts to maximize wealth net of the transaction costs involved. This chapter defines institutions, relates them to property rights, reviews the literature, and provides numerous examples of institutions and their evolution.

Chapter 6 analyzes firm-level patterns of collective action and finds that law-abiding firms are more likely to experience collective action for interest-based demands. Using the strike map dataset of the China Labour Bulletin, it shows that interest-based protests are less likely to invite state repression, in part because they do not target state authorities. Contrary to the assumption that those protest that ask more than the legal minimum might be more politically threatening than law-based protests, the findings in this chapter demonstrate that interest-based protests rarely breach the physical boundary of individual firms.

The so-called ‘civil police’ which originated in London and then spread to the US and the rest of the world has been a crucial institution for maintaining the international order. This is because the civil police, unlike the army, is a coercive regime meant for ‘citizens’ rather than ‘foreigners’ or ‘subjects’. The civil police regulates ‘domestic’ space, while the military is oriented to ‘foreign’ or ‘international’ space. This essay examines the origins of this important institution in the United Kingdom and the United States and reveals its colonial genealogy. The first civil police, the London Metropolitan Police, founded in the nineteenth century, was modelled after a colonial counter-insurgency force, the Irish Constabulary. In the United States, the civil police was initially modelled after the London police but later, in the early twentieth century, appropriated a series of techniques and tactics from America’s colonial regime in the Philippines. The strategic operation of both civil police institutions has been to draw upon the colonial site while covering up its colonial counter-insurgency and militaristic origins.

The conclusion summarises the overall argument of the book and reflects on its contributions to different historical fields. It then takes the story forward in time. In several important ways, policing in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries developed along lines set down in the early modern period: separation of office from household, impersonal models of authority, and fraternal forms of official masculinity.

This chapter critically examines the history of Singapore’s policing system, and argues that while Singapore may be seen as an authoritarian state, its system of policing – save for the existence of preventive detention laws – is largely democratic. During the colonial period, the police force was always short of money and policemen poorly paid, inept, and corrupt. Notwithstanding various reforms, the colonial police were unable to deal with the secret societies – the biggest threat to public order and safety – and relied on a mix of welfare, cooperation, and selective coercion. It was only after Singapore’s independence that local politicians introduced draconian preventive detention laws that succeeded in breaking the backs of the secret societies. Even so, the state did not rely only on these laws to police the population but also invested heavily in strengthening and boosting the police force, reforming it towards a more community-oriented form of policing.

This chapter explores the contrast between Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement as a natural experiment in comparative policing. I look at the different roles played by police within the larger historical dynamics of these two events. My goal is to distinguish the democratic qualities of Taiwanese policing from the more authoritarian qualities evident in Hong Kong. I develop a theoretical framework for analyzing this distinction by combining Peter Manning’s idea of police dramaturgy with Victor Turner’s theory of social dramas and Carl von Clausewitz’ approach to violent politics. This perspective, I argue, helps illuminate how the democratic qualities of police action in response to unsettling events can influence the longer historical/structural patterns linking what comes after to what went before.

Political democratization does not necessarily lead to democratic policing; rather, authoritarian legacy always poses a challenge for the integration between democracy and coercive policing. This chapter presents a case study of Taiwan to unveil such authoritarian legacy. After its democratization in the late 1980s, Taiwan has been gradually transformed its authoritarian policing into democratic policing subject to judicial review. However, as Taiwan’s peaceful democratic transition did not come with radical political changes, authoritarian legacy persists and continues to affect policing practices. Nonetheless, throughout both authoritarian and democratic periods, the police in Taiwan have obtained strong legitimacy and been perceived as one of the most trustworthy government agencies. As such, questions to explore in this chapter include: Why has authoritarian policing been this adaptive in Taiwan? How has the coexistence between authoritarian legacy and liberal democracy been made possible? What are the impacts on democratic governance and efficacy of legal reforms?

It has been long recognised that there is an over-representation of those with severe mental illness (SMI) interacting with the Criminal Justice System (CJS). Consequently, those who work with people with SMI are likely at some stage to find themselves interacting with and receiving requests to share information by different authorities to inform the justice process (before, during and after) as well as to facilitate multi-agency risk management structures in the community. In this chapter we briefly review the policy context and development of Liaison and Diversion systems within England and Wales for both adults and young people. Following the pathway of a mentally disordered offender being arrested by the police, we describe the medico-legal frameworks whereby mentally disordered and increased-risk offenders can be dealt with by the courts and managed in the community. We also consider the particular differences that pertain when the individual is a child or young person (CYP), and broader fora wherein information sharing occurs for the purpose of public protection in the community context, especially within MAPPA and PREVENT panels. We also note the use of the National Referral Mechanism.

This chapter illustrates the disputes around the revolution frame discussed in Chapter 6 and the impact of these contests. Supplemented by interviews with government officials, police officers, soldiers, and other ex-combatants, this chapter examines the long-term effects of government framing strategies that demonize rebel actors who may later become political figures. In particular, this chapter looks at how the “narco-terrorist” framing utilizes women guerrillas in particular to discredit the FARC and ELN and positions the government as the savior for these women. But upon demobilization, decades of stigmatization from these framing contests mean that ex-combatant are in constant fear of being discovered and have to hide their pasts. Indeed, many of them have lost homes and jobs once “outed” as former rebels.

The eighteenth century saw a series of reforms in judicial structures and practices, including the creation of the Acordada and the division of the capital city into cuarteles. These reforms may have contributed to more draconian approaches to justice in New Spain, as evidenced by an increasing number of corporal punishment sentences in the late 1780s and a peak in executions in 1790. This year also represents a watershed in the history of the Novohispanic judiciary due to the creation of Mexico’s first salaried corps of nightwatchmen. Arguably, the shock of the Dongo massacre motivated Revillagigedo to create this new institution.

This conclusion ranges across time, but focuses on the theme of death as carried out as a state-sanctioned public spectacle in one space – the Sacred Precinct/Plaza Mayor/Zócalo of Mexico City. The association between Mexico and death grows steadily with images seen in popular culture and the ever-increasing interest in the Day of the Dead – to the point that Posada-style calavera makeup has become a tired cliché like so many other Halloween costumes. This book has attempted to analyze death in Mexico to juxtapose criminalized murders with ceremonial killing rituals.

In early 1959, Kanyama Chiume escaped arrest during the Nyasaland Emergency. Chapter 4 follows him in his period of exile, focusing on two pamphlets he wrote in London. These pamphlets provide a way to assess the limits of the newly internationalised global anticolonial world of the late 1950s for this regional-generational cohort. These activists honed their vision of publicity and of the party publicity officer by drawing on the regional specificities of the late colonial state in East and Central Africa. Gender and form were of critical importance to this vision. This cohort joined the conversation around colonial violence in the context of the Algerian War of Independence, discussing ideas about permits, police and imprisonment in and beyond the region, in correspondence, conferences and publications. Charting the development of their ideas about totalitarianism at this apparent turning point helps to explain why the UN was largely out of reach, why activists continued to formulate their critiques in terms that echoed the early 1950s and why they increasingly doubted the efficacy and legitimacy of world public opinion.