Defunding the ramparts and institutional theory: The master’s tools will fell the master’s house

Abstract

Witnessing current events in Ferguson, and now in Milwaukee, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, of course Portland, and now Kenosha, Wisconsin, where protests against police violence are met with yet more police violence, the question naturally arises: Why are police so seemingly insistent on actively working counter to their own organizational best interest? This essay poses this troubling question and derives part of an answer for it from institutional theory.