Premium
Decentralization and citizen trust: An empirical study of policing in more and less developed countries
Author(s) -
Lowatcharin Grichawat,
Stallmann Judith I.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of public affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.221
H-Index - 20
eISSN - 1479-1854
pISSN - 1472-3891
DOI - 10.1002/pa.1974
Subject(s) - decentralization , government (linguistics) , sample (material) , community policing , public administration , empirical research , business , political science , law , philosophy , epistemology , linguistics , chemistry , chromatography
Decentralization is argued to enhance citizen–government relationships and, thus, to lead to higher levels of citizen trust. General purpose policing encompasses various services that might be assigned to different levels of governments. The literature lacks generalizable studies of the effects of the structural arrangements of police systems on police performance. This study is a cross‐national exploration of the relationship between the varying degrees of police decentralization and police performance as measured by citizen trust in the police. It uses a measure of decentralization of police systems based on the tiers of government with some control over police. Results show that, in the 72 sample countries, the relationship between citizen trust in police and decentralized police systems is not statistically significant. However, when the countries are categorized by the Human Development Index, decentralized police systems tend to be positively related to citizen trust in the more developed countries but inversely in the less developed countries.