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Exporting American-Style "Law and Order" to Imploded Postcolonial Cities, Haiti and Beyond

By Jonathan Simor

In his request to Congress to authorize American entry into World War I, Woodrow Wilson cast the war as a crusade "to make the world safe for democracy." A century later, this sort of rationale is an old standby for Presidents seeking to justify muscular calls for "law and order" both abroad and at home (tellingly, Wilson also called D.W. Griffith's paeans to the Ku Klux Klan as champions of law and order "history writ with lightning"). Some might argue that we?ve come a long way since Nixon?s (or Reagan?s) Southern Strategy, though cloaked racial appeals live on in talk of "real Americans" and have played a role in popular perceptions of the ongoing catastrophe in Haiti. Any time that the problems of urban marginality are publicly exhibited, calls for self-critique and aid are soon drowned out by a clamor for ?law and order? and ruthless crackdowns on miscreants (typically portrayed as poor, hostile, and dark-skinned) perceived to threaten order...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on February 23, 2010 (boomark / email).