ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book forms a part of a broader, ongoing research project, the 'Policing European Metropolises Project' (PEMP). It elaborates suggested conceptual framework for comparison, which understands metropolitan policing strategies as the outcome of influences from multiple, intersecting, 'fields of internal security'. It also considers the continued significance of the national contexts of metropolitan policing, which are often neglected in accounts of transnational and supra-national internal security fields. The book focuses on the national realities that clearly dominate the formulation of metropolitan policing agendas. It includes contributions that distinguish metropolitan-specific effects on policing from national effects. Here metropolises are actively encouraged to pursue their own policing agendas through city-regional policies. The chapter elicits theoretical propositions from contributions, which are capable of explaining processes of convergence and divergence in metropolitan policing.
