Since the 1990s many authors observe a pluralisation of police functions in Europe. The paper shows that this trend is also recognisable in the city of Berlin. For example, private security companies have gained importance. Their presence may indicate an increasing intensity of formal social control. Prevention in a broach sense has become important for the Berlin State Police. However, policing in this city is also influenced by path-dependencies, going back to the specific situation of a divided city at the frontline of the east-west conflict before 1990 and to the transfer of federal government institutions to the city since the late 1990s. Specific patterns of the German administrative and legal system also influence policing at Berlin. Compared to the period before 1990 with the presence of the allied military forces and the powerful secret service (Staatssicherheit) in the Eastern part of the city, Berlin is probably less securitized today.

In this article, which is embedded in the special issue of the Journal which focuses on the comparative research project ‘Policing European Metropolises’, the general aim is to provide an answer to the research question: ‘Are underlying Anglo-American assumptions regarding trends towards plural policing recognisable in European local geographical settings’? Our underlying question in this article concerns whether or not the local empirical situation in Sofia differs from more general evolutions of policing in Europe. This article will inquire specifically about the (national) influence of a ‘country in transition’ (Bulgaria) on the territory of the city of Sofia. For reasons of feasibility the article is limited to an exploration of the organisation of Bulgarian police. The following main questions are answered in this article: (1) What is the nature of the division between the national police apparatus and local policing bodies?, (2) Are tendencies towards fragmentation and centralisation determined at the same time? and (3) Are tendencies towards private governance present within the public domain? Answering these questions requires an exploration of the historical and contextual background, so that insight into the related Bulgarian realities, particularly those of Sofia, might be gained. This article explores the official arrangements regarding the policing of crime and disorder in Sofia; it is based on desktop research, mostly internal research from the Ministry of the Interior. In the concluding section, the article summarises the different aspects of policing security in Sofia, framing the reality of this city within the article’s theoretical starting points regarding security governance and plural policing.

In support of the Policing European Metropolises Project and as a starting point for investigating such a complex and challenging subject as policing the global city of London, the article provides an exposition of the current agenda for policing and crime as advanced by the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), which assumed responsibility for police governance in January 2012. To justify this focus, the article draws upon distinctions made in urban regime theory about governing arrangements that seek to maintain, develop, reform or transform public policy agendas in the governance of cities. It uses these to question prospects for the MOPAC Policing and Crime Plan for 2013-16 and to provoke questions for further research into the lessons that can be drawn from this case for comparisons of policing in other European metropolises. In this regard, it is argued that the concept of the ‘metropolis’ implies an understanding of contemporary urban phenomena, such as crime and policing, as social products that have an integral relationship to a ‘world urban system’ of political, economic and cultural relations.

No scholar, policy-maker or practitioner of policing could be taken seriously who did not acknowledge and take into account the radical transformation which privatization and pluralisation has brought to the field of policing (Jones & Newburn, 2006). Nevertheless, this transformation is largely influenced by the nature of the policing tradition in each nation state. To illustrate this argument a descriptive analysis of plural policing in the metropolis Paris is presented. Being part of the Napoleonic policing tradition in France, Paris takes up a unique political and administrative position which affects its security architecture. It stands out as the most developed example of centralisation and the State’s wish to control its citizens. Despite the observed pluralisation in terms of privatization; Paris is still a ‘state’ in the state. Its Napoleonic tradition largely ‘suppresses’ civil non-commercial initiatives and influences the development of municipal police forces and other public uniformed surveillance agencies in Paris.

Many authors observe an increasing pluralisation of the police function. This pluralisation implies a growing dependency between different actors in the security domain, especially on the local level. The current theoretical insights from the sociology of urban governance of security were developed dominantly within an Anglo-American and British context. This article aims to test whether these Anglo-American underlying assumptions are recognisable in European local geographical settings, more precisely in Barcelona. The underlying question in this article is whether or not the local empirical situation in Barcelona differentiates along the same lines as the general theory suggests. The present article contributes to a European sociology of urban governance of security and our understanding of multi-layered social control theories (in)formalising in public space. The main questions we want to answer are consequently:

• Can a pluralisation of policing be observed in the metropolis of Barcelona and if so, is it a consequence of European trends or because of local changes or both?

• Do these changes suggest a growing attention towards public disorder (‘social disorder’, ‘incivilities’) maintenance, to the detriment of tackling (petty) crime?

• Are certain (so-called ‘anti-social’) behaviours increasingly sanctioned in an exclusively local (more precisely municipal) context? Is this sanctioned administratively by means of ‘by-law’ and no longer by means of traditional penal law?

These questions follow the logic mostly developed in Anglo-American and British context. What is the role of specific socio-political circumstances of the city and its regional and state context in the development of its current police model?