Between Frustration and Aggression: Legal Framing and the Policing of Public Disorder in Sweden and Denmark

Against the background of the European Union summits in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2001 and Copenhagen, Denmark in 2002, this article investigates the legal framing of police public order practices in conjunction with mass demonstrations and rioting in urban surroundings. Differences between legalistic and opportunistic ways of administering laws and regulations are illustrated, focusing on the policing of political disorder in two case studies with quite different outcomes. Theoretically, attention is also directed towards the notion of crisis, in terms of frustration and aggression. The basic argument is that the hyper-complexity of the legal framing in Sweden seems to have played an important, but unintended, role in the violent handling of the serious riots in Gothenburg; and that the legal powers in Denmark, in contrast, seems to have contributed to the less aggressive handling of the protest events during the European Union summit in Copenhagen. Keywords: PolicingLegal framingFrustration and aggressionDemocracySwedenDenmark The author wishes to thank colleagues at the Department of Sociology in Gothenburg, especially Abby Peterson; two anonymous reviewers for Policing & Society for helpful suggestions; and Janne Flyghed, James Sheptycki and David Waddington for encouraging comments on an earlier draft of the text. Notes 1. The distinction between substantial and formal law can also be described as a question of whether the law is to be considered the border of politics, surrounding its field of activity according to a classical power distribution model. Or, whether it should be seen as a kind of administration of politics, an extension of ideological manoeuvres. The division goes back to Max Weber's (Citation1978) sociology of law. 2. Differences in the case of Denmark and Sweden will not be attributed solely to legal causes. My focus lies there, but causal connections are always difficult to assess, depending on both empirical conditions and the choice of perspective. I cannot point to any extensive changes of law in the Danish case between 1993 and 2002 that would have been needed to strongly support a purely legal explanation. However, an important change of law has been carried out during the period from the riots at Nörrebro until the summit meeting in Copenhagen barely ten years later—namely, the ban on masks, to which I shall return. 3. There is reason to recall in this context that “law and order”, historically speaking, has not only been synonymous with a conservative slogan. The conjunction “and” refers to a distinction between the community's peace or social calm, on the one hand, and the republican state's evolution of rights, on the other. For further discussion, see Dahrendorf (Citation1985) or Small (Citation1923, Citation1924). See also Weber (Citation1994: 80–129). 4. Capricious whims of local party bosses, opinion among intellectuals, and/or emotional involvement among local police must not determine how the law is exercised. Weber (Citation1978: 976–978) uses the term for local Islamic courts of justice (“kadi”) to designate more inconsistent or ideological forms of legal application. 5. My research is based on the situation before the new police regulation of 6 September 2004 (Lov om politiets virksamhed). This, as far as I can see, makes no difference for the overall interpretation.