Let's Dance: Variations of Partnerships in Community Policing

Community-oriented policing (COP) has become, at least in rhetoric, the dominant style of policing among countries systems across the globe. Yet even limited comparative research reveals the vast variations that have occurred among and within nations that nominally seek to implement the basic principles and values underlying COP. One core principle of COP is partnership/ co-production. We focus on the question whether a policing system can be said to implement the COP philosophy if effective partnerships are lacking. Partnerships, or working together, can range from merely symbolic interactions to effective and roughly equal cooperation among the police and civic society groups. Based on selected country studies, we argue that the type of partnership adopted depends heavily on societal conditions that enable or constrain implementation, but also who-police or civic society-originates and implements the idea.