Police In-Between Apoliticality and Politicality

Abstract

The paper aims to construct a theoretical tool that allows for possible precise location of relations between the police and the ruling elite in a given country. Their relationship is between the ideal types of apoliticality and politicality. The five stages of the relationship between the ruling elite and the bureaucracy on a continuum between the ideal type of the apolitical Weberian bureaucracy and its antinomic ideal type of politicised system of patronage can be arranged as follows: self-regulation, personal independence, uncertainty, loyalty, and enhanced loyalty. The empirical usefulness test of these stages scheme consisting in the case study of one state characterised by a large range of autocratic and democratic regimes evolution (thus post-war Poland) was positive. Relations between the police, or more precisely: the Citizens’ Militia, in the period of the Polish People’s Republic can be defined as being at the stage of enhanced, double loyalty. In the period of the Third Polish Republic, relations between the police and the ruling elites can be placed at the fourth stage – loyalty. The few attempts to change this type of relationship and move to the stage of self-regulation or personal independence remained at the level of ineffective and temporary attempts at best.