Affiliations: [a] Institut de Govern i Polítiques
Públiques (IGOP-UAB), Autonomous University of Barcelona, Mòdul
de Recerca A, Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems are a growing phenomenon in
most Western countries and a fixed item on security agendas in urban
environments around the world. But while several authors have studied the
proliferation of CCTV from a comparative perspective, in most cases the
analysis is focused at the national level, assuming that local processes are no
more than the locus of implementation of national agendas. Moreover, issues
related to political configurations and reconfigurations, historical factors
and internal dynamics of power have seldom been tackled, and some of the
assumptions about proliferation patterns in the most widely researched areas
have become general assumptions. The new empirical research findings presented
in this article offer a detailed and empirically evidenced account of the
political and policy environment surrounding the uptake of video surveillance
in Catalonia and suggests that zooming in on local processes adds complexity to
the understanding of the process of CCTV proliferation at the global level.
Specifically, the article addresses: the role of local/global interaction in
the emergence of CCTV as a new orthodoxy, the relationship between video
surveillance and economic and commercial pressures on urban restructuring, the
role of party politics and political ideologies in surveillance policy, and the
specific articulation of the interaction between video surveillance and urban
disorder. The article ends by exploring both local narratives and global-local
policy dynamics, concluding that there is a need to conduct further research on
the specific ways in which CCTV policy travels through borders and between the
scales of government, and the processes by which it becomes embedded in diverse
geographic, political and institutional settings.
Keywords: CCTV, urban policy, policy transfer, Barcelona
