Development of Theory
In Western culture, the contemporary concept of a police paid by the government was developed by French legal scholars and practitioners in the 17th and early 18th centuries, notably with Nicolas Delamare's Traité de la Police ("Treatise on the Police"), first published in 1705. The German Polizeiwissenschaft (Science of Police) was also an important theoretical formulation of police.
As conceptualized by the Polizeiwissenschaft, the police had an economic and social duty ("procuring abundance"). It was in charge of demographics concerns and of empowering the population, which, according to mercantilist theory, was to be the main strength of the state. Thus, its functions largely overreached simple law enforcement activities and included public health concerns, urban planning (which was important because of the miasma theory of disease; thus, cemeteries were moved out of town, etc.), and surveillance of prices.[18]
Development of modern police was contemporary to the formation of the state, later defined by sociologist Max Weber as achieving a "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force" and which was primarily exercised by the police and the military. Marxist theory situates the development of the modern state as part of the rise of capitalism, in which the police are one component of the bourgeoisie's repressive apparatus for subjugating the working class.
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