Exporting the UK Policing Brand 1989-2021 charts the history of UK international policing. Over time, UK policing has acquired a veritable brand value through the global commercialization and commodification of its policing activities in support of British soft power. Since 1989, the growth in international development and a period of post-cold war interventions brought international policing into sharper focus. This book explores the reputation of the UK police brand through hundreds of police practitioner oral testimonies and wide-ranging case studies including the Western Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste, and Libya.

Since the 1990s, international policing has become one of the key pillars within international security and development spaces, generating the rise in demand for UK police retirees in the corporate security industry. The UK police brand has continued to reshape through the 21st century within a post-Brexit Global Britain, as Scotland and Northern Ireland drive forward their own international agendas, and policing and defence engagement enters a period of uncertainty.

By weaving together the UK’s history of police internationalization, the rise and professionalization of the international development sector, and the privatization and commodification of policing, a story emerges of how and why the UK police brand has taken the form it does today.