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City Power in a Time of Urban Digitalized Security

Report made by researchers as part of the Geneva Graduate Institute’s Applied Research Project.

This report discusses the role of city governments in influencing the deployment of surveillance technologies in their cities over the last 10 years. The study focuses on three case cities - London, Beirut and Singapore - and uses a combination of theories of local autonomy and multi-level governance to categorise the different types of power. It uses an innovative method of analysis that compares five categories of power - economic, structural, expert, moral and discursive - and measures the relative importance of each category using a checklist of indicators.

The research shows that different cities relied to varying degrees on different forms of power to influence the use of surveillance technology. For example, London relied most heavily on structural power, while Singapore scored highly in almost every category except expert power. Beirut's municipal government, on the other hand, scored relatively low in all categories except expert power, due to its formal institutional dependence on the national Ministry of Interior.

However, the study also highlights the contextual nature of the findings and cautions against drawing any general conclusions. Further research is needed to understand the role of city governments in deploying surveillance technologies and the forms of power they mobilise to influence them.