Mega-events such as the Olympic Games, FĂ©dĂ©ration Internationale de Football Association World Cup finals and Group of eight/20 (G8 /20 ) international political summits are occasions of almost unparalleled economic, political and social significance for host nations. In recent years, much attention has been placed on securing mega-events, particularly sporting mega-events , which consistently involve the largest security operation for host nations or cities outside of wartime. As others have noted, the costs of the security operation and numbers of personnel have increased exponentially since 11 September 2001 and budget forecasts are consistently overrun (Bennett and Haggerty 2011b; Fussey et al. 2011; Jennings 2012b). The London 2012 Olympic Games , for example, involved over 80,000 police , military and private security personnel in an operation that is believed to have cost well over $1 billion United States dollar (Armstrong et al. 2017). With the event host being on the world stage, risk-based mentalities underpinned by worst-case scenarios have precipitated an ever-increasing number of new risks being imagined that then require some form of mitigation (Boyle and Haggerty 2009b; Jennings 2012a, 2017). The resulting constructions of mega-event âsecurityâ are amongst the most complex and far-reaching imaginable (Boyle et al. 2015; Coaffee et al. 2011), involving unprecedented coordination across multiple agencies and jurisdictions (Boyle 2012; Reese 2008), legal, technological and institutional transformations (Bennett and Haggerty 2011b; Monaghan and Walby 2012b; Poynter 2009), crowd management operations (Boykoff and Fussey 2014; Police Executive Research Forum 2011) and militarised public safety initiatives (Graham 2011).
This book examines in-depth the task of securing mega-events from the perspective of security actors involved across the planning lifecycle. Using the Group of Twenty (G20) Summit in Brisbane, Australia, November 2014 as a case study, along with international comparisons with sporting mega-events and other political summits , the principal objective of the book is to call attention to the various tensions that ensue within mega-event security networks as police and security actors interpret and approach âsecurityâ. In a similar way to others (e.g., Boyle and Haggerty 2009b; Coaffee and Wood 2006; Fussey et al. 2011), we suggest that security is an amorphous, âliquidâ (Zedner 2006) concept that can be imagined in quite different ways (Valverde 2011; Wood and Dupont 2006; Wood and Shearing 2007; Zedner 2009). By drawing on qualitative interviews with members of key agencies such as the Queensland Police Service (QPS) and Commonwealth G20 Taskforce âthe two main actors involved in securing Brisbane 2014âas well as a series of internal documents made available to the researchers, we focus on the internal properties and organisational dynamics underlying the security operation. We examine how these dynamics influence the design and operations of mega-event security networks and how different conceptions of security , ways of thinking and acting, impact security outcomes. We focus particularly on the underlying tensions involved in the design and implementation of mega-event security.
In this Introductory chapter, we focus on the question of how to interpret mega-event security and outline how our approach contributes to the extant literature. We then introduce the internal properties of security networks (Whelan and Dupont 2017) and argue for the need to better understand the tensions that emerge as police and security actors are brought together to design mega-event security. As large numbers of actors form networks, each with potentially quite different dispositions and imaginations of security , mega-event security is a contested construct. The âpursuitâ (Zedner 2009) of mega-event security, we suggest, is underpinned by tensions within a complex web of overlapping relationships that have a significant impact on security outcomes. We then outline our data and methods, incorporating a brief overview of the Brisbane 2014 G20 . Finally, we outline the structure of the book as we move from our analysis of the design and operations of new security nodes and networks, to questions of how these nodes and networks sought to construct mega-event security, including securing people and places. We should note at the outset that the approach we take in the book is to let our interviewees speak for themselves as much as possible, drawing heavily on their reflections regarding the construction of mega-event security .
Securing Mega-Events
While mega-events are widely recognised as monumental cultural spectacles that come with significant economic costs for host cities and nations, it is only recently that literature has attempted to clarify what constitutes a proper âmega-eventâ. In general, the term refers to fixed duration events that: (a) attract a large number of visitors; (b) have a large mediated reach; and (c) generate large amount of expenses and impacts on the built environment and population (Muller 2014; Roche 2000). Based on the size, scale , mediated reach and transformational impacts for institutions and host cities, a range of events can be included under this definition, including Olympic Games, World Cups , Commonwealth Games and international political summits . Mega-events are therefore differentiated from more regular large-scale events that routinely occur in most major cities and which are usually the responsibility of the relevant local police in conjunction with event promoters and operators (Muller 2014). Many similar one-off events may be referred to in different waysâsuch as âmegaâ or âmajorââbut we use the term mega-event throughout the book in line with existing literature (e.g., Bennett and Haggerty 2011b), and because we believe the term more accurately reflects the complex dynamics of large-scale international events.
Mega-events of all types have come to be recognised for their exceptional displays of security. With a premium placed by event hosts on âdestination marketingâ, untowar...