Bureaucracy, contracts and networks: The unholy trinity and the police

Over the past thirty years, police services in the UK and Australia have been subjected to a series of demands for change and reform. This article describes these reforms as a shift from command and control bureaucracy through markets to networks and argues that constant reform is a result of the unintended consequences of change. Many of these unintended consequences stem from the limitations and incompatibility of each of these governing structures. We show that the conflicts between the core ideas that distinguish each governing structure create dilemmas that render all reforms contingent.