Maintaining Law and Order in a Democratic and Pilarised country: the Belgian Gendarmerie between 1918 and 1957
Résumé
The gendarmerie is a national armed force entrusted with judicial, administrative and military police missions. Consequently, gendarmes are deeply linked with the political ideology of the State and the Nation they serve. In this paper, the goal is to analyse the gendarme’s policing in Belgium, in the framework of keeping and restoring public order during the first half of the 20th century (1918 – 1957). During this period, Belgium defined itself as a democratic and pillarised country. The country was successively characterised by a period of reconstruction marked by deep economic and social progress, followed by an economic crisis, which was aggravated when parliamentary democracy was jeopardised. After the Second World War, it was necessary to rebuild the State, to deal with the Collaboration and with the Royal Question. In this context, we analyse both gendarmes’ rules and practices to characterise the construction and the transformation of public security in Western Europe.