Police institutions in the Arab World: (re)-configurations and visibility – ArabPol

The ArabPol project studies police forces in Arab countries through a comparative lens, focusing on four specific cases: Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria. It seeks to fill a gap in research on policing institutions in the region, which are often overshadowed by studies on the military or intelligence services. The 2011 uprisings brought police forces into sharper focus, revealing their central role in maintaining political and social order. The project has four main objectives. First, it moves beyond culturalist assumptions that tend to homogenize Arab police forces by identifying their distinct configurations, practices, and ties to political power. Second, it examines police communication, both in terms of how police practices are presented and as a practice in itself, exploring its role in legitimizing power. The project questions why such significant investments in communication are made within authoritarian contexts where there is no formal obligation to engage the public. Third, it investigates police-community relations, taking into account perceptions, interactions, and forms of resistance. This includes social mobilizations, security responses, and practices of sousveillance, such as the public denunciation of police violence. Ethnographic fieldwork—made possible by prior research conducted by the team in more accessible contexts—will be supplemented by legal texts, statistical reports, police magazines, archives, and digital content, encompassing all four countries studied, including those where direct field access is limited. Finally, these multiple entry points into closed institutions prompt critical reflection on the methodological and documentary strategies available for studying policing and on how to rethink the possibilities of research itself. Through an interdisciplinary approach—drawing on sociology, political science, history, law, and anthropology—ArabPol aims to offer a renewed perspective on Arab police forces, going beyond reductive analyses of authoritarianism and contributing to the broader field of comparative sociology of policing systems.