CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Tzimas, Nikolaos |
|---|---|
| Title | FROM POLICY BATTLES TO POLITICAL DEFEAT: The "Defund the Police" Movement's Struggle to Challenge the Dominant Discourse on Public Safety 2020-2023 |
| Summary | In February 2021, Svante Myrick, mayor of Ithaca, N.Y., announced his intention of implementing a radical policy plan of replacing the existing police department with a “Department of Community Solutions and Public Safety”, that was expected to significantly reduce the interactions between citizens and armed police officers (Nast 2021). During the same year, an “Alternative Response Model to Armed Law Enforcement” was established in Oakland, along with the reallocation of financial resources from law enforcement towards social services (BondGraham 2021). Those attempts to provide policing alternatives were a part of a much wider public debate about the relation between race and policing in US after the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in May 2020. The nationwide movement that emerged demanded the “defunding” of police, along with the reallocation of recourses towards social services. But while the equilibrium of public discussion seemed to shift towards very radical approaches regarding policing in US, three wears later, not much seems to have changed. By focusing of different aspects of what constitutes success and failure in social movement studies, as well as the importance of the cultural elements for political change, this project compares the public safety policy changes after 2020 with the corresponding debate about policing in the public discourse and the battle over political meanings. By focusing on the “bottom-up” process of frame formation, it becomes possible to see that the new policies were not enacted despite the popularity of radical frames, but because of them. |
| Supervisor | Greskovits, Béla |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/tzimas_nikolaos.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University