Family matters: The double-edged sword of police-community connections

Abstract

Scholars and policymakers frequently advocate recruiting embedded bureaucrats with strong ties to citizens to improve service delivery. Yet officials who are too embedded in their community are often blamed for corruption, favoritism, and ineffectiveness. We argue that this ambiguity stems from a mismatch between individual- and community-level effects of embeddedness. While personal ties increase engagement by connected citizens, community-level embeddedness marginalizes unconnected citizens and undermines claims of impartiality. We test this argument in the context of public safety provision in the Philippines. We measure family networks in 289 villages, locate police officers within those networks, and analyze responses from two citizen surveys. Citizens are more willing to trust and engage with officers to whom they are more closely related. However, in villages where officers are highly embedded, unconnected citizens evaluate their performance more poorly. Consequently, village-level officer embeddedness is associated with higher rates of family feuds and neighbor disputes.

Cite

@article{haim2021family,
title={Family matters: The double-edged sword of police-community connections},
author={Haim, Dotan and Nanes, Matthew and Davidson, Michael W},
journal={The Journal of Politics},
volume={83},
number={4},
pages={1529--1544},
year={2021},
publisher={The University of Chicago Press Chicago, IL}
}