The Order for Freedom – New Edition

New edition January 2020, including texts on the Yellow Vests crisis.
Public order is a core sovereign function, the exercise of which has always guaranteed the stability of states and the cohesion of nations. Once entrusted to praetorian troops, public order maintenance — whose importance had gradually been lost sight of — was progressively delegated to troops not specialised in this field, an amateurism with damaging consequences both for the durability of incumbent regimes and for the physical integrity of demonstrators of the time. In France, it was not until the early twentieth century that professional units specialised in the exercise of public order were finally established. This field has since then constituted a genuine profession, one that modern demands make ever more complex. Indeed, expertise in public order maintenance is intricate, since this cross-cutting function, civilian in essence, is practised both in peacetime and in times of crisis on the national territory, but also in times of crisis or even war on overseas operations. It therefore encompasses two fields of application, civil and military. Indeed, the comprehensive approach to armed conflicts now leads commanders of large-scale military operations to frequently incorporate into their force structure a component dedicated solely to public order maintenance.
Against a backdrop of globalisation, the emergence and gradual universality of the rule of law makes this function even more important today, as its exercise directly conditions the freedom of expression and enterprise of the modern individual. Yet, very paradoxically, this subject is still little studied, except sometimes through the overly reductive lenses of legalism and technicality alone.
In this context, Philippe Cholous's work finds its full place. He offers here an initial in-depth reflection which, combining a philosophical approach to public order maintenance with cross-cutting military and police expertise in operations and a posteriori analyses of numerous lived engagements, considers the art of public order maintenance in all its breadth and complexity. Opening a new field of reflection, his treatise will undoubtedly become a reference work.