Conference Agenda

The core argument of this paper revolves around the question of how police authorities can strengthen their democratic resilience. From a theoretical point of view, this paper is geared to explore the manifold meanings of the concept of “resilience” if applied to police organizations, which operate in increasingly contested polarized political habitats. In fact, the almost ubiquitous reference to resilient actors, institutions, and systems calls for a theoretical exposition of “resilience-thinking” in comparative public administration, thus clarifying how “democratic resilience” relates to other organizational values and theories of public organization.

Democratic resilience may impact on a range of organizational functions, which cover both internal and external relations and tasks of government bureaucracies. Externally, democratic resilience may refer to strategies of how to engage with (or disengage from) political actors and institutions, clientele groups and the wider public or specific parts thereof. Internally, the degree of organizational resilience has consequences for the way how structures and processes for the generation of knowledge, decision-making, service delivery as well as internal control mechanisms and procedures for seeking redress for maladministration are designed and applied. In particular, inside bureaucracies the recruitment, selection, training, and further development of personnel is of central concern for questions of democratic resilience.

Turning the levers for change to render police authorities more resilient, possible reform measures tend to fall in different categories of policy instruments: While some approaches primarily rely on government authority and rule-setting (exemplified by regulatory and disciplinary measures that govern the selection and vetting of police officers or sanction administrative behavior), others build upon the power of persuasion (such as communicative strategies, information campaigns as well as training and education programs often designed as preventive measures) and still others prefer structural and procedural responses as their reform instrument of choice (illustrated by networked approaches of collaborative arrangements with partners inside and outside of the police or cases of capacity building for strategy development, administrative control, scrutiny, and self-reflection).

In democratic polities and societies, the police need to be both accountable to government but also not under the direct control of government (Bayley and Stenning, 2016; Hartley and Roberts, 2024). So the police relationship with elected politicians is “complicated” and while it has similarities to an extent with other public services, the police relationship is distinctive, because the police are given authority by the to use state-sanctioned force which can even be lethal in ways rarely given to other public services. In addition, the police have the powers to investigate and if necessary arrest elected politicians where there is evidence of crime. Consequently, the models of governance in policing are of particular importance to the oversight of the police and the provision of public safety and order.

The governance model in England and Wales is the subject of considerable controversy in policing but treated with relative indifference by the public (Rowe, 2020). It was fundamentally changed in 2012 so the literature includes some comparison of “before” and “after”, generating insights about the quality and effectiveness of the governance model.

This paper draws both on a systematic review of that literature, along with empirical data from interviews with the managerial leader, separately, and the political leader at the strategic apex of the governance model. These are the chief constable of a police force along with the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for that force (along with some institutional variation within England and Wales which will also be analysed). 11 interviews with chief constables and 11 interviews with Police and Crime Commissioners (and Deputy Mayors) were undertaken and analysed. Some chiefs had worked under the previous governance model. The interviews were paired, so the chief was from the same governance institution as the PCC. They were chosen to give a variety of demographic and geographic policing areas, and size of force, along with as much political party variety in the PCCs as possible.

The analysis looks at the governance model through the lens of operational independence combined with accountability, reflecting the policing dilemma outlined by Bayley and Stenning (2016) and Rowe (2020). It also draws on the literature about public leadership to consider how governance is enacted in practice, beyond the formal model. It examines both how the governance model is intended to work in terms of operational independence and accountability but also how it works in practice, based on the interviewees’ descriptions of the roles, relationships and behaviours.

The paper concludes that the governance model was fundamentally changed in 2012 in order to address some perceived governance problems but that the “new” model (i.e. post 2012) also contains problems and tensions which cannot be addressed through this governance structure and model. Implications for alternative governance models are explored.

References:

On request.