Bureaucratization, Politicization, and the Policing of Terrorism

Undercover Counter-Terrorism in Israel

Mathieu Deflem, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina. His research interests include counter-terrorism, international policing, abortion policy, sociological theory, comparative-historical sociology, and the sociological profession, amongst others. He teaches courses on social control, law, comparative-historical sociology, theory, terrorism, and crime. He is the author of Sociology of Law (2008) andPolicing World Society (2002), and the editor of Sociologists in a Global Age (2007),Sociological Theory and Criminological Research (2006), Habermas, Modernity and Law(1996), and Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (2004).

Jeudi 24 avril 2008 
11h45 à 13h00 
Pavillon Lionel Groulx, 3150 rue Jean-Brillant, salle C-4141

Résumé de la conférence : A study in the sociology of social control, I rely on the bureaucratization theory of policing to analyze the organization and strategies of the Yamas counter-terrorism units in the Israeli Border Guard Magav. On the basis of ethnographic data, interviews, and archival and online documents, my analysis shows that the specific development of the state of Israel has brought about strong political characteristics of counter-terrorist police work that are uncharacteristic of comparable police organizations in other industrialized states. More surprising, however, are the internal organizational dynamics of Israel's undercover counter-terrorism police that take place, even under conditions of an enduring process of politicization. This analysis should lend support to the notion that the manifold institutions and practices of counter-terrorism operate on the basis of relatively independent institutional logics, each of which has to be analyzed before a general theory of counter-terrorism can be formulated.