ABSTRACT
Keywords: Security networks; Governance of security; Local security networks; Institutional security networks; International security networks; Informational security networks; Social, cultural, political, economic and symbolic capitals
In phase with modern theories that chart the decline of vertical hierarchical social structures and the concomitant rise of horizontal networks (Castells, 1996, 2000; Rhodes, 1997; Friedman, 1999; Wellman, 1999), a number of commentators are reconceptualizing our ways of thinking about policing and security. The seminal report written by Bayley and Shearing (2001) for the National Institute of Justice has, for example, introduced the term "multilateralization" to describe the growing array of auspices and providers-demand and supply-that constitute the modern security assemblage, eschewing the traditional one-dimensional public/private dichotomy. In other texts, Shearing and his colleagues (Shearing & Wood, 2000; Johnston & Shearing, 2003) have developed the concept of "nodal governance" to convey the idea that policing functions and their different organizing modes can now be
characterized as plural. This line of enquiry is not limited to the authors cited so far, and discrete terminologies notwithstanding, many others have come to similar or related conclusions while examining diverse cultural and geographical contexts (Findlay & Zvekic, 1993; Crawford, 2002; Favarel-Garrigues & Le Huerou in this special issue). Others, while acknowledging the importance of those changes, have questioned to what extent they can be interpreted as a qualitative break with the past, or even as global in reach (Jones & Newburn, 2002a).
