Who Governs Brexit? Assessing Struggles among Security Professionals and Professionals of Politics over Security Cooperation

The present proposal takes the case of security professionals and professionals of politics involved in the Brexit negotiations. Instead of attempting to predict whether the consequences of negotiations will lead either to a “hard” or “soft” Brexit, this proposal addresses the struggles between professionals over the definition of the security relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU after Brexit. Building upon an International Political Sociology, this proposal focuses on the practices of security professionals belonging to British police services and EU agencies specialized in law enforcement cooperation and both British and EU professionals of politics to assess their positioning strategies in how security cooperation should be best practiced in the EU. While professionals agree that security in Europe is the current main stake, professionals fight over the control on Europe according to their own terms. As far as security professionals are concerned, a specific group of heads of British police services are close to the position of heads of EU agencies in defending a specific way of doing police cooperation where legally-binding EU instruments are the most ‘efficient’ means of tackling crime collectively. In contrast, British professionals of politics are for European police cooperation on but for police cooperation which remains outside EU law and subject to national decision-making. The British government is against the control of the EU over police cooperation, in the name of national sovereignty. The political exigencies of the British government are, however, conflicting with the agenda of the EU commission. Results deriving from the analysis of individuals suggest to move away from the classical understanding of field theory to assess struggles among fields over the final say. Struggles among fields indicate that the stakes of a field of transnational security cooperation are defined through changes originating from struggles with the British political field.