Policing China: Fragmentation of the Security State

Abstract:

By design, policing in China is a centralized affair in which local bureaus are ultimately held accountable to the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. In reality, policing practices vary dramatically across region and issue area, even within provinces. This fragmentation is deeply entrenched in the bureaucracy, creating enforcement problems that vex upper level officials and aggravate public dissatisfaction while simultaneously opening up opportunities for lower level innovation. Drawing from over 100 interviews with 51 police officers at the central, provincial, and local levels, I examine fragmentation of the police bureaucracy by parsing out observable patterns of control over the local level and analyzing the ways in which the central government's exercise of power both helps and hinders policing on the ground.

 

Speaker Bio:

Suzanne is a pre-doctoral fellow at CDDRL and a PhD candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. A scholar of reform era China, her research is driven by interests in ground-level governance and authoritarian power structures. Her dissertation, "Policing China: Struggles of Law, Order, and Organization for Ground-Level Officers," maps the everyday challenges faced by local officers and their supervising authorities. Exploring the tensions between central government planning and the officers who enforce law on the ground provides insight into China's political reform and local state stability. Her work has appeared in PS: Political Science and Politics and China Quarterly (forthcoming).