The Politics and Management of Policing Reforms in Newly Industrialized, Industrializing and Developmental States: Introduction to the Special Issue
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1758 |
| Date | 01 May 2016 |
| Published date | 01 May 2016 |
THE POLITICS AND MANAGEMENT OF POLICING REFORMS IN
NEWLY INDUSTRIALIZED, INDUSTRIALIZING AND DEVELOPMENTAL
STATES: INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE
PAUL COLLINS
1
*, OTWIN MARENIN
2
AND MICHAEL CHIN-CHIH CHU
3
1
Public Administration and Development, UK
2
Washington State University, USA
3
Central Police University, Dept. of Administration Police, Taiwan
SUMMARY
This Special Issue of Public Administration Development on The Politics and Management of Policing Reforms in Newly In-
dustrialized, Industrializing and Developmental States was undertaken in co-operation and with the support of the Central Police
University in Taiwan by the Guest Editorial team of Paul Collins, Otwin Marenin and Michael Chin-Chih Chu. In this Introduc-
tion, we first of all deal with the context in which policing reforms may arise the different types of policing, how reforms arise
from multiple domestic and international sources and the differences in the level and degree of reforms. Next, we outline the
Special Issue (SI) approach and focus, which is to build on what is already known and the lessons of past efforts seeking to es-
tablish and sustain more professional and democratic policing. The essence of the conceptual approach is that reforming polic-
ing systems is fundamentally a political process. We need to focus on specific policies, practices and behaviour and shifting the
balance of policing toward more professional behaviour. A key element that follows from this balancing is then the possibilities
of reforms taking hold in the long run and becoming sustained. Within this framework, the essays then summarized cover a wide
variety of topics and geographical areas —Africa, Asia, Europe and Americas —countries on the way toward economic and
political modernisation with a variety of backgrounds in authoritarianism. A number of emerging patterns and cross cutting
issues emerge. The final section addresses needs for future research. The unaddressed or partially addressed aspects across all
the essays suggest several matter, including the character of policing systems, police decision making at managerial and indi-
vidual levels, how to assess police work and civilianization of police work, informal policing systems and the impact of security
policies on policing —militarization and secrecy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words—Policing reforms; politics; management; democratic policing; developmental states; security; militarisation
CONTEXT
Clearly, there are many of different types of policing as there are many specific tasks and jobs, which fall under the
label of policing, or security and justice provision: protecting the state and homeland, cooperation with other formal
and informal security sector actors, full service 24/7 local (street) policing, functional and technological specializa-
tion and symbolic representations of the state and justice. Policing ranges from street policing or policing at the
coalface (in the common vocabulary of British police and scholars) —that is the provision of services, mainte-
nance of social order and effective crime control —to an emphasis on specialized functional policing (e.g. corrup-
tion control, confronting transnational crime, eliminating fraud or mitigating organized domestic violence).
*Correspondence to: P. D. Collins, Honorary Advisory Editor, 24 Rommany Road, London SE27 9PX, UK. E-mail: paul.collinspd@gmail.com
The Central Police University in Taiwan generously funded and organized an authors’conference in Taipei, with funding supporting invited
authors. This was held 14–16 August 2015. Authors presented their papers over the course of 2 days, and each was critiqued by colleagues
as the start of the peer review process. Full acknowledgements are to be found at the end of this Introduction.
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 36,71–79 (2016)
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1758
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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