Police abuse and democratic accountability: Agonistic surveillance of the administrative state

Abstract

Rosa Squillacote and Leonard Feldman contend that police abuse calls on us to rethink traditionally institutional approaches to understanding accountability. Instead, they argue that courts and legislatures should be decentered by an approach that (a) recovers the potential for democratic accountability within administrative agencies and (b) emphasizes practices of agonistic surveillance by nonstate actors. Engaging the literature in political theory and drawing on examples from the United States, they examine specific institutional mechanisms and agonistic surveillance practices, such as body cameras and Cop Watch. By examining the ways in which administrative agencies are, or can be, accountable to the people—and focusing on the police as administrative agents—they find that we uncover new possibilities for police reform.