Policing Protest in the Austerity-driven Slovenia
Policing Protest in the Austerity-driven Slovenia

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to evaluate protest policing in the austerity-driven Slovenia and verify the analytical effectiveness of a tool for measuring protest policing. Therefore, the paper critically discusses and modifies Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter’s theoretical framework consisting of the escalated force and negotiated management antinomic ideal types, and then applies it to examine the Slovenian case. The research draws on a qualitative method of sources analysis based on a conceptual qualitative content analysis to solve the problems of what was the Slovenian model of protest policing in times of austerity? And why did it have a particular shape? The study diagnoses Slovenia as having the negotiated management mode of protest policing with the elements of the escalated force model. This mode stems from the organizational dynamics of the Slovenian National Police which typifies with the dialectic of decentralization and hierarchical submission in police units, the effectively used possibilities to coordinate the different groups operating within protesting crowds, and certainty about the purposes of the intervention.

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