Normalising the Exceptional: The Case of Political Violence

The article addresses the tension between effectively combating crime and the protection of civil rights and individual integrity. It asks what level of infringements on civil liberties is acceptable in order to keep criminal public order disturbances within reasonable limits. These questions are of special interest when it comes to violence with political overtones. Political violence has become subject to scrutiny in Europe after the top-summits in Prague, Nice, Gothenburg and Genoa. Audiences witnessed both police and demonstrators engaging in a succession of acts of political violence that were quite exceptional. Few would question the political nature of the demonstrators' violence, but it should not escape notice that the exercise of state violence through the use of police force is also political, since its objective is the maintenance of the order and security associated with a particular power structure. The article argues that the policing of protest in these cities in the recent past indicates that both the arsenal of instruments employed by the police and the number of areas where their use is deemed appropriate are expanding. This shift can be termed the normalisation of the exceptional . In this process, new coercive measures are first introduced in order to counteract serious and very uncommon forms of crime, often in quite exceptional circumstances. Once introduced there follows a slide towards their employment in connection with common and perhaps more minor offences. The normalisation of the exceptional comprises two principle processes: the normalisation of perceived threats and the normalisation of the means of response . Four actors are identified with important roles in the process of expanding the use of coercive measures: the police, politicians, the control industry and the media. The article provides an account of the, very often, ad hoc processes underlying processes which enable the continual expansion of coercive police powers.