ABSTRACT
The traditional Asian public attitude towards authority is, usually, to “show respect but keep your distance”.31 Certainly no police officer should expect to find most Asian-born parents or first-generation children extending the kind of automatic trust toward the police that we still find in many smaller North American towns and cities. Although there have been very strong autocratic governments in most Asian countries for many centuries, Asians are no more (or less) suspicious of political power than we are. However, Asians are, in general, more accustomed to autocratic government than are West Europeans, who, for the most part, have exhibited a somewhat greater degree of internal criticism and a greater emphasis on grounding law and ethics on universal principles applicable to all, as noted in Chapter 12.
