Public Money & Management

The Politics and Management of Policing (Debate Articles)

June 2026: please note this issue is still open for Debate Articles Only.

This issue is still open for debate articles. PMM’s debate articles (up to 1,000 words), offering distinctive, provocative and considered comments and arguments—perhaps from the world of practice. These are subject to review by the guest editors.

The audience for readers of this themed issue is an interdisciplinary and broadly-defined community of academics and professionals who share an interest in the research of policing, law enforcement, and the provision of public safety from an organizational, managerial, governance and/or public policy analysis perspective.

We invite articles exploring questions of policing and public management, for example concerning the legitimacy, equity, power, authority, governance and organizational performance in policing; the analysis of organizational functions such as strategic planning, human resource management, budgeting and evaluation, coordination of operations, control of accountability of policing, cooperation with public and private partners; whether and how policing is value-creating or value-destroying in different settings and social environments; changing roles and expectations of police at points of political and societal change and/or stress and austerity; comparative analysis of policing values, operations, consequences in or across different locales; political governance systems and their implications for the provision of an effective, fair and accountable police service—in both its ideal forms and its practical manifestations—for policing.

Topics might include how those systems affect the degree of police operational independence, comparative analysis of ‘who guards the guards’, values or demographic differences in judgments about whether there is adequate civilian scrutiny of police, or the mechanisms (or lack thereof) of governance of private, non-governmentally provided police and security services.

Themed issue co-editors

• The following theme co-editors are working as a team and decisions will be made collectively. Enquiries can be made to any of us:
  • Kathy Quick, University of Minnesota, USA <[email protected]>
  • Jean Hartley, The Open University, UK <[email protected]>
  • Eckhard Schroeter, German University of the Police, Germany <[email protected]>
  • Nick Caveney, Hertfordshire Constabulary, UK <[email protected]>.