Police and the Liberal State advances a broad interdisciplinary and international project to refocus attention on the scope and function of modern governance through the lens of the police power in its multiple manifestations—from the family to the police station and the prison, and from municipal government to state sovereignty and global security—and techniques—surveillance, control, and licensing, as well as ordinances, regulations, and administrative, constitutional, and criminal law.


In the contributions to this volume, police power emerges as a rich and flexible concept that offers a broader functional context to explain the operation of governmental institutions. The essays reveal connections across the history of government, across systems of government within a particular state, and comparatively, across different states and levels of government. The comprehensive scope and boundless ambition of police power, the very characteristics that rest uneasily with traditional conceptions of the liberal state, make it a uniquely useful platform for interdisciplinary and international inquiries into fundamental questions of government and law.