Austerity, path dependency and the (re)configuration of policing

As a standard operating backdrop in the United Kingdom, for more than decade austerity has become an increasingly dominant logic as to how policing can be delivered and (re)configured do ‘more with less’. Yet beyond simple rationalisation of public line market principles, complex long-standing trajectory underpins relations between police commercial ‘others’ set within this climate. With guiding ‘code’, it accelerated rather punctuated evolution dispersal. Using path dependency theory, paper argues that change across both law policy via different forms critical juncture embedded while simultaneously reconfiguring symbolic (and operational) status their relationship public. In turn, highlights such pluralisation, genealogical sense, tilted authority away from central state control dispersed model – but on long-term which long precedes part path-dependent change.