About the publication
The chapter offers an analysis of penal power when it is detached from its association with national justice and enters the realm of the international.
The focus remains though on the state’s penal power, its logics and rationalities when applying ‘penality’ – the whole of the penal complex, its laws, discourses, norms and practices – as solutions to norm violations in international society.
Specifically, the chapter contributes a comparative analysis of Nordic discourses driving penal power in two overlapping yet nonetheless distinct areas of transnational concern – namely the field of international criminal justice, and the prosecution of foreign fighters.
International criminal justice makes for an interesting case to study namely because it represents the primary example of punishment in international politics by constituting the international – rather than the nation state – as the site of crime and justice.
On the other hand, the issue of foreign fighters – especially in relation to the war in Syria – disrupts the national and international frame of justice and community alike, as it reveals the transnational and hybrid nature of contemporary forms of crime, punishment and social order.
It argues that whereas a humanitarian discourse drives the Nordic engagement in the larger field of international criminal justice, the discourse on foreign fighters is characterized by ‘securitization’ – transforming the prosecution of international crimes into a matter of national security.
The analysis raises interesting questions about penal logics in international politics, and about how penal power beyond the nation state remains receptive to securitization in spite of political support for an international system of criminal justice.
The chapter concludes by accentuating the need to ‘denationalize’ the sociology of punishment by positioning the study of punishment at the centre of study of international society, and sketches out a preliminary research agenda for bridging sociology of punishment with international relations.
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