Losing control is not an option. Resource allocation to police oversight agencies in Western states

Abstract

Abstract Independent police oversight is a specific government delegated function that has been neglected by scholars of regulation. The main goal of this article is to understand the allocation of state resources to independent police oversight agencies (POAs) in the post delegation stage. We test whether the aim of delegation is better governance in complex areas to increase police agents' accountability (“policy complexity”) or to avoid political costs of agencification (“agency losses”). A survey of 27 POAs in Europe and Canada shows that POAs tend to receive significantly fewer state resources when they have a high level of formal independence or strong legal empowerment. Resource allocation seems more congruent with an “agency losses” logic than with the goal of making regulation more efficient. Our findings have notable implications for international norm‐setting bodies (the UN, the Council of Europe), who have not sufficiently codified the allocation of resources.