A comparative study of police organisation and legitimacy in England & Wales and Turkey: The case for centralisation and decentralisation.

The policing systems in England & Wales and Turkey have problems in terms of legitimacy, flexibility and accountability, and solutions are currently sought through a range of organisational changes. The policing system, as an institution of social control, is under unique pressure to appear to be legitimate. The effectiveness of a police organisation depends on its legitimacy through either consensus or coercion or both. This thesis first examines the history and socio-economic and political contexts of the development of policing systems and state-police relations in England & Wales and Turkey through a critical consideration of different organisational theories and their application to police organisation. Second, it compares these policing systems in terms of their levels and forms of legitimacy, in order to identify their bases of legitimate authority and the forms of policing practice. Finally, the thesis compares the existing police organisational structures in England & Wales and Turkey in terms of the trends for change towards centralisation or decentralisation. The core theme of this thesis is the causal connection between differential forms of legitimacy and policing organisation and practices. The thesis proposes that the respective socio-economic and political contexts have resulted in different policing systems in England & Wales and Turkey, which are in turn within different forms of legitimacy in reality, although appearing to be the same, namely legal-rational. It argues that for England & Wales the real basis of legitimate authority is actually legal-rational, whilst for Turkey it is traditional. These respective bases of legitimacy result in different forms of policing practice in these countries. In England & Wales policing is essentially practised on the basis of value consensus, but employing potential and actual coercion to some extent, whilst in Turkey it is primarily on the basis of coercion. The thesis suggests that the effect of these different policing forms is to give rise to a relatively decentralised police organisation in England & Wales, despite a trend increasingly towards centralisation, and a highly centralised police organisation in Turkey, although there is evidence of decentralisation.