© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com WE ARE GOING TO PROVE WE ARE A CIVIL AND DEVELOPED COUNTRY: THE CULTURAL PERFORMANCE OF POLICE LEGITIMACY AND EMPIRE IN THE IRAQI STATE JESSE S.G. WOZNIAK* Possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, police are central to the establishment of state legitimacy, especially in a nation experiencing a radical reconstruction. Employing a multi-method examination of a police training academy in Iraqi Kurdistan, this study investigates how a nascent state attempts to secure hegemony in a post-conlict environment. Drawing upon literature of state legitimacy and empire, indings suggest the reconstruction is better understood as a cultural per- formance designed to project legitimacy for an imperial client state, helping explain the continued instability of the state and rise of dangerous non-state actors. Key Words: Iraq, police reconstruction, imperialism, cultural performance Introduction Police are famously the actors in democratic society with a legitimate monopoly on the domestic use of force, occupying a central role in the maintenance of social order. Police ill a wide variety of important symbolic and material functions, and while many other actors can provide these, few other than a publicly accountable force are able to bring them together in the legitimized manner necessary for a constitutional democ- racy (Wiatrowski and Goldstone 2010; Jackson et al. 2014; Bradford et al. 2014). As such, an account of the police shows not only how a society is organized and managed but how a state develops and reproduces its power. The present study is a multi-method examination of police reconstruction in Iraqi Kurdistan, designed to expand upon the work of theorists who have pointed to the central role penality plays in organizing society, such as Garland (1990) who argues these institutions ‘play a key role in organizing ruling-class power’ (p. 87), and Gramsci (1971) who argues ‘every state tends to create and maintain a certain type of civiliza- tion and citizen … and to eliminate certain customs and attitudes and to disseminate others, [and] the law will be its instrument for this purpose’ (p. 246). Combined with an understanding of America’s imperial ambitions in the region (Harvey 2003; Gaddis 2004; Go 2007), this study seeks to understand how a state attempts to secure consent and legitimacy in the context of radical reconstruction. Findings suggest that within a context of limited planning, an unstable government and exploding crime rates, United States and coalition forces followed neither myriad theoretical nor practical lessons on police reconstruction, instead adopting a highly militarized cultural performance ( Garland 1990; Alexander et al. 2006; Kern 2009). Police in Iraqi Kurdistan attempt to secure legitimacy through the cultural perfor- mance of three overlapping tactics: instilling conidence through symbolic displays of militaristic discipline, motivating reticent recruits with an emphasis on protecting the * Department of Sociology and Anthropology, West Virginia University, 307 Knapp Hall, 29 Beechurst Ave, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA; jesse.wozniak@mail.wvu.edu. doi:10.1093/bjc/azw046 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL Page 1 of 18 British Journal of Criminology Advance Access published May 23, 2016 by guest on May 25, 2016 http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from