Bureaucracy, Contracts and Networks: The Unholy Trinity and the Police

Over the past thirty years, police services in the UK and Australia havebeen subjected to a series of demands for change and reform. Thisarticle describes these reforms as a shift from command and controlbureaucracy through markets to networks and argues that constant reformis a result of the unintended consequences of change. Many of theseunintended consequences stem from the limitations and incompatibility ofeach of these governing structures.We show that the conflicts between thecore ideas that distinguish each governing structure create dilemmas thatrender all reforms continget.