The Politics and Management of Policing Reforms in Newly Industrialized, Industrializing and Developmental States: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

SummaryThis Special Issue of Public Administration Development on The Politics and Management of Policing Reforms in Newly Industrialized, 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 Introduction, 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 establish and sustain more professional and democratic policing. The essence of the conceptual approach is that reforming policing 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 individual 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.