Policing today in what Bowling and Sheptycki in this edition refer to as the 'global system' is characterised by institutional rearrangement. Organizations involved in policing, historically oriented and largely limited to discrete geographic jurisdictions, are increasingly encouraged to traverse and often eliminate physical and virtual boundaries with other similarly-oriented organizations in other places. The fundamental characteristics of this rearrangement are transnational and global in nature; however, at all times the activities and actors involved connect to specific localities and citizens that have claims on what police can and should do on their behalf. This special edition of the European Journal of Policing Studies examines these institutional rearrangements of policing, boundaries and the state. Through a combination of empirical, theoretical and legal scholarship, each contribution uniquely examines the profound transformations taking place in contemporary Europe and elsewhere, and the questions these transformations raise for policing in democratic societies. The result is a unique combination of papers from different angles, a variety of perspectives and focusing on different parts of the world (Denmark, Norway, Finland, England and Wales, Israel, China, Australia), but also an analysis at the European Union level. Chris Giacomantonio holds a DPhil in Criminology from the University of Oxford. His main research interests surround police governance, coordination, and tactics, with a focus on policy relevance. He is a qualitative and mixed-methodologist and currently works as an analyst at RAND Europe, a not-for-profit policy research institution based in Cambridge, UK and Brussels, BE. Helene O. I. Gundhus is Professor at Norwegian Police University College, Research Department. Subject: Politics, Policing Studies]