This timely volume provides a critical analysis of the most comprehensive and least comprehended of state powers, the power to police, broadly understood as the power to maximize public welfare—or, more colorfully, its "peace, order, and good government."


Featuring contributions by leading scholars from several countries working in a variety of fields, including law, criminology, political science, history, sociology, and social theory, The New Police Science examines the power to police as a basic technology of modern government that appears in a vast array of sites of governance, including not only the state, but also the household, the factory, the military, and—most recently—the global realm of war, police actions, and peacekeeping. This volume resurrects and radically re-envisions the once thriving study of police science as a comprehensive critical inquiry into the nature of governance.