Plural policing in Paris: variations and pitfalls of cooperation between national and municipal police forces Jacques de Maillard a,b * and Mathieu Zagrodzki c a Institut Universitaire de France; b University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, CESDIP, Guyancourt, France; c University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, CESDIP, Guyancourt, France (Received 1 September 2014; accepted 27 April 2015) The city of Paris, which epitomises the French tendency towards centralisation, has not escaped the global trend towards a pluralisation of policing. Parisian streets, parks and gardens and social estates are now being patrolled by a variety of uniformed professionals. This article aims to analyse the issues raised by the process of coordinating multiple actors. First, these non-police officers patrolling the streets are mapped in order to define their identities. Next, cooperative relationships and rivalries between these various actors are analysed, highlighting the differentiated configura- tions of the Parisian plural policing complex. We stress the differentiated nature of the regulation of plural policing in Paris and the importance of interindividual relations as a driver for cooperation. We also emphasise the pitfalls of coordination, in a context marked by several layers of cooperation and conflicting professional priorities. Keywords: plural policing; Paris; public police; cooperation 1. Introduction Paris is a very specific case in the French context, the role of the State being even more central there than anywhere else. As is the case in any other capital, the interests of the central State are at stake in terms of public order. Moreover, the international visibility of Paris has always fed the concerns of central State officials on public order issues. Consequently, Paris is characterised by a special status which stems back to the Napoleonic era and restricts the mayor’ s policing powers. nineteenth century uprisings (1830, 1848, 1871) have only served to reinforce the wariness of officials towards the potential overthrowing of the regime by Parisian masses. The fact that Paris did not have a mayor at all from 1871 to 1977 is a clear sign of this stronghold of the central State on the capital city. The mayor of Paris enjoys very limited powers in terms of security (more so than mayors of other French cities) and the key figure of policing in the capital of France is the Préfet de Police, a high-ranking civil servant who heads the Prefecture of police [Préfecture de police (PP)] and is directly appointed by the President of the Republic. The PP itself epitomises the power of the central state over the capital city (Renaudie 2008, Mouhanna 2010, Mouhanna and Easton 2014), in so far as all legal and human policing resources in Paris are concentrated there (see below). 1 However, changes undertaken since the early 2000s have strengthened the position of the mayor in matters of parking and traffic regulation, as well as in the fight against noise *Corresponding author. Email: demaillard@cesdip.fr Policing and Society, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2015.1046454 © 2015 Taylor & Francis