A gendarmerie or gendarmery is, in principle, a military force charged with
police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are
typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
describes gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a
"gendarmery, -erie" as "gendarmes as a body".
Modern civilian police forces may retain the title of "gendarmerie" for
historical reasons. Etymology
The word gendarme comes from the Old French gens d'armes, meaning
men-at-arms. During the Late Medieval to the Early Modern period, the term
referred to a heavily armoured cavalryman of noble birth, primarily
serving in the French army). The word gained policing connotations only after
the French Revolution when the Maréchaussée of the Ancien Régime was
renamed the Gendarmerie. Historically, the spelling in English
was gendarmery, but now the French spelling gendarmerie is more common. The
Oxford English Dictionary uses gendarmery as the principal spelling;
Merriam-Webster uses gendarmerie as the principal spelling.
Title and status These forces are normally titled
"gendarmerie", but gendarmeries may bear other titles, for instance the
Carabinieri in Italy, the Guarda Nacional Republicana in Portugal, the
Guardia Civil in Spain, or Internal Troops/National Guard in Ukraine.
As a result of their duties within the civilian population, gendarmeries are
sometimes described as "paramilitary" rather than "military" forces although
this description rarely corresponds to their official status and capabilities.
Gendarmes are often deployed in military situations, sometimes in their own
country, and often in humanitarian deployments abroad.
A gendarmerie may come under the authority of a ministry of defence, a
ministry of the interior, or even both at once. Generally there is some
coordination between a ministry of defence and a ministry of the interior
over the use of gendarmes. A few forces which are no longer
considered military retain the title "gendarmerie" for reasons of tradition.
For instance, the French language title of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is
Gendarmerie royale du Canada because this force traditionally had some
military-style functions and because until the 1960s it retained an honorific
status as a regiment of dragoons. The Argentine Gendarmerie is a military
force in terms of training, identity and public perception, and was involved in
combat in the Falklands War, however it is classified as a "security force" not
an "armed force", to exercise jurisdiction over the civilian
population under Argentine law. Since different countries may make
different use of institutional terms such as "gendarmerie", there are cases
in which the term may become confusing. For instance, in the French-speaking
Cantons of Switzerland the "gendarmeries" are the uniformed civil
police). In Chile, the word "gendarmerie" refers for historic
reasons to the prison service, while the actual gendarmerie force is called the
"carabineros". In some cases, a police service's
military links are ambiguous and it can be unclear whether a force should be
defined as a gendarmerie or not. Services such as the Italian Guardia di
Finanza would rarely be defined as gendarmeries since the service is of an
ambiguous military status and does not have general policing duties amongst the
civilian population. In Russia, the modern Internal Troops are military
units with quasi-police duties but historically, different bodies within
the Tsarist Special Corps of Gendarmes performed a variety of functions as an
armed rural constabulary, urban riot control units, frontier guards,
intelligence agents and political police. Prior to the creation of the
Irish Free State in 1922, British rule was based on the Royal Irish
Constabulary - a drilled and armed force located in rural "barracks" that was in
all but name a gendarmerie. In 2014 the Mexican Federal Police, a
heavily-armed force which has many attributes of a gendarmerie, created a
new seventh branch of service called the National Gendarmerie Division. The new
force would initially number 5,000 personnel and was created with the
assistance of the French gendarmerie. Role and services
In comparison to civilian police forces, gendarmeries may provide a more
disciplined force whose military capabilities make them more capable of
dealing with armed groups and with all types of violence. On the other hand,
the necessity of a more stringent selection process for military service,
especially in terms of physical prowess and health, restricts the pool of
potential recruits in comparison to those a civilian police force could
select from. They also provide a state with flexibility in policing, as the
military regulations of a gendermerie may exempt it from certain gaps in
service affecting the civilian police, for example regarding the right to
strike. In countries where the gendarmerie and
civilian police co-exist there may be rivalries and tensions between the
forces. This was one of the reasons cited for the decision to disband the
Belgian Gendarmerie, absorbing its functions into those of a new national
police force. In recent years three European countries, Belgium, Greece and
Austria, have replaced long-established gendarmeries with civilian police forces
having no military links or functions. In France, the gendarmerie has crowd and
riot control units, counter-terrorism and hostage rescue, maritime
surveillance, police at sea and coast guard, control and security at airports
and air traffic police, official buildings guard, honorary services and
protection of the President, mountain rescue and security of nuclear weapons
sites. In Argentina the Gendarmería Nacional
Argentina can act as border patrol forces, defending and patrolling the
land frontiers, antiterrorism, VIP escort missions, hostage situations and
special military operations in war times with their 601st Special Operations
Squadron "Alacran", which took part in the Falkland/Malvinas conflict