International Prosecution and National Bureaucracy: The Contest to Define International Practices Within the Danish Prosecution Service

Abstract

This article explores how international ideals and practices of law enforcement come into conflict with national bureaucracies. Drawing on original interviews, the investigation demonstrates how the competition to define the role of international prosecution impacted career strategies as well as the actual administration of criminal law within the Danish Prosecution Service (DPS). The analysis shows that this competition is embodied in two competing groups of prosecutors situated in a wider national bureaucracy—itself subject to transformations that affect the very stakes of the contest to define the international. While the institutionalists build careers closely attuned to the systemic and increasingly lean-management-inspired requirements of the DPS, the dissident and consequently unsettled position of the activists leads them to craft alternative career strategies closely related to the emergence of new international fields of criminal law.