The Adoption of Culturally Contentious Innovations: The Case of Citizen Oversight of Police

by Mir Usman Ali

The deaths of George Floyd and Broenna Taylor at the hands of police in 2020 brought the issue of police accountability to the forefront of public debate. One reform that has been a long-standing demand of police accountability advocates is Citizen Oversight Agencies (COAs). COAs are institutional arrangements at the local level that provide a platform for non-sworn review complaints about the police. While there is growing scholarly interest in these agencies, little research has examined factors associated with their adoption. In this paper, I use innovation diffusion theory to help fill this gap. 

In particular, I investigate the role of cultural contentiousness, a previously understudied concept. When an innovation is culturally contentious, it challenges an existing institution’s dominant cultural meaning, leading to resistance. I argue that COAs are culturally contentious because they highlight the disconnect between the race- and class-neutral way police are supposed to perform their role in a liberal-capitalist society and the non-neutral way in which they actually perform it. Moreover, I argue that investigative COAs (i.e., COAs that can independently investigate allegations of police misconduct and recommend discipline) are more contentious than non-investigative COAs (which merely review or monitor police investigations of citizen complaints) because the former can be viewed as undermining the professional autonomy of the police.

To identify the factors associated with the adoption and diffusion of COAs at the municipal level in the United States between 1980 and 2016, I assembled a panel data set of all cities with a population greater than 100,000 persons as of 2010. There were 77 municipalities with COAs and 154 municipalities without COAs that met the criteria for inclusion in the study. I used event history modeling (EHM) to estimate the impact of various antecedents on the likelihood of adoption and diffusion of COAs. 

Results indicate that a federal investigation or entering a consent decree, an increase in the number of civil rights nonprofits, or an increase in own-source revenue per capita was associated with the adoption of investigative COAs, while not being associated with non-investigative COAs. These findings underscore the importance of antecedents that reveal contradictions between cultural assumptions and non-neutral material effects of policing.

I also find that antecedents that symbolically obfuscate the above contradiction, or whose meaning is unclear, tend to reduce the likelihood of adoption of COAs overall or increase the likelihood of adoption of non-investigative COAs. For instance, the presence of a Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBOR) law, an increase in the violent crime rate, or an increase in the number of neighboring cities with a COA either increased the likelihood of adopting a non-investigative COA or no COA at all.

In summary, this work highlights the importance of cultural contentiousness in innovation adoption and diffusion. While the results indicate that less culturally contentious change is more common, more contentious change does occur. However, for such change to be institutionalized, it needs to be supported by other levels of government and sustained advocacy efforts for police accountability. 

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at 

Ali, M. U.. 2023. “The adoption of culturally contentious innovations: The case of citizen oversight of police.” Policy Studies Journal, 51, 905–928. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12499

About the Author

Mir Usman Ali is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. His research revolves around building a theory of the conditions under which public managers and organizations can foster social equity-enhancing institutional change. His research has looked at a variety of topics such as citizen oversight of police, impact of body-worn cameras, policies intended to curb domestic violence, and pandemic preparedness among local health departments. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Affairs Indiana University-Bloomington, an M.S. in Statistics from Texas A&M University, College Station and MBA and BBA degrees from the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi. His research has been published in Public Administration Review, Public Performance and Management Review, American Review of Public Administration, and Policy Studies Journal.