Examining the Accountability-Performance Link: The Case of Citizen Oversight of Police

Abstract

The public administration literature on the accountability-performance relationship depicts a mixed picture, with some studies arguing that accountability leads to a deterioration in performance and others finding that it leads to an improvement in performance. To reconcile this paradox and in response to recent calls for quantitative examination of the relationship in different contexts, we examine the impact of accountability on effectiveness in the context of policing, where some have suggested that accountability can have deleterious impacts on public and police officer safety. Using survey data and panel data modeling, we examine the impact of citizen oversight of police on two measures of effectiveness—the violent crime rate and line-of-duty homicides of police officers (HPOs). We find that while oversight with a broad scope of authority decreases the violent crime rate and HPOs, oversight with a narrow scope of authority leads to an increase in the violent crime rate. Our findings suggest that it is not merely the existence of an accountability mechanism that influences performance; instead, it is the scope of authority of an accountability mechanism that determines its impact.

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