Security and the Division of Powers in Federations

The modern state is premised on a social contract to provide citizens with pub­lic goods in the form of security, law, public order and basic services in return for taxation. It does so by maintaining effective and legitimate institutions of government that preserve and enforce the monopoly over the use of violence within a given territory (Althusser 1976; Bayley 1983; Bittner 1979).

Jean-Paul Brodeur (1983) famously distinguishes between ‘high' and ‘low' policing. The term ‘high policing' refers to policing that benefits elite interests of the government rather than local or community interests. In this context, national security is premised on high policing: centralized norms, interests and priorities. Low policing is concentrated on law enforcement (setting aside the overlaps between security services and police and the gathering of intelli­gence and taking action). In Federalist Paper 17, Alexander Hamilton observed that federal arrangements attribute powers over local interests to federated entities, and powers over general matters and matters that are more remote from the immediate interests of citizens to the central government. On the one hand, economies of scale may be harnessed through coordination and centralization. On the other hand, local communities are best positioned to make credible commitments under conditions where the efficient delivery of services has to reflect and reconcile different values, interests and preferences.

Federal countries have tasked a plethora of agencies and institutions at dif­ferent levels of government with enforcement and security functions. Security agencies with national mandates tend to fall under federal jurisdiction: the armed forces, customs, immigration, coastguard, federal police, security and intelligence services and criminal investigation agencies. Constituent units, meanwhile, are likely to have their own civilian police service, special police or militia forces (Sheptycki 2011). In general, federalism offers an approach to security that is close to local communities while optimizing for delivery of a public good across different levels of government that have autonomy within their realm of constitutional jurisdiction. The ensuing constitutional and leg­islative arrangements require constituent governments that make up a feder­ation to coordinate among themselves. Intergovernmental relations facilitate cooperative policy making among different levels of government, but their relations are shaped by specific characteristics and differ across federations (Saunders, Poirier and Kincaid 2016).

The delivery and administration of security to the satisfaction of all mem­bers of a federal community is predicated on an appropriate balance between shared rule and self-rule in federal governance arrangements (Elazar 1987). Shared rule thus effectively amounts to sharing not only the state's monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order, but also the constitutional framework and rule of law that govern its use, and the abil­ity to hold security actors to account.

Moreover, security is the result of a political process that requires the sup­port of a social collective that acknowledges a threat and the need for deci­sive action to deter, contain or eliminate it. (Buzan, Wiever and de Wilde 1998) Threats may be defined by the central state, but not necessarily. In fact, different actors prioritize security threats differently across a broad geo­graphic spectrum.

The way the USA and Canada commonly understand security is broadly steeped in the prevailing approach of neorealism, where the role of state institutions places the armed forces in particular and security institutions in general—such as intelligence and law enforcement—at the core of security policy. While security is commonly understood as the actual services the state provides, such as law enforcement, safety is commonly associated with the broader role and obligations that the institutions of the state have in fostering an environment where citizens and organizations, as well as private and non­governmental institutions, can flourish and prosper.

In Europe, by contrast, security tends to be understood as more multi­faceted and complex, and dependent on a much wider range of bureaucracies than the armed forces, law enforcement and intelligence services, to include health, infrastructure and social development. So there are important nuances in what security means in a particular political, social, institutional, histori­cal and discursive context. Ergo, spatial security strategies differ among fed­erations and their sub-state governments, and police activities are necessarily a function of territorial specificities. The larger a country, the more likely it is that its population faces different circumstances that give rise to different characteristics and interests. Federal territory and institutions thus constrain and enable police competencies and activities.

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