ABSTRACT
Indian State Governments has much greater political autonomy and primacy over the police than provinces do in China where the central government exerts greater control of the PSB via the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Moreover, due to the nature of policing the traditional term ‘corruption’ is insufficient to cover activities that undermine public trust. Consequently, in this book the term corruption includes cover-ups, abuse of power and unlawful violence. Police culture plays an important role in influencing police attitude, behaviour, misconduct and decision-making at the moments of truth but research in this domain is inconclusive with scholars asking for more research. It is also obvious that most of the research into this domain is Western-centric with very little material in relation to China. Furthermore, much of the literature covering corruption in China focuses on corruption by the ‘Princelings’ (children of senior CCP cadres) and local officials turning from ‘Apparatchiks to Entrepreneurchiks’ (Lu, 2000) by taking advantage of China’s economic reforms with only passing remarks on the PSB. Literature on Indian police corruption is more common, but it has largely been written by ex-police officers, the scholarship of which is not well regarded in academic circles.
