This study introduces a new type of oversight in civil-military and executive-legislative relations:community policing. Building on principal-agent theory, this type of oversight emphasises trust rather than confrontation. To illustrate how community policing functions, the study examines how legislative oversight of military affairs operates in Belgium and New Zealand. Legislative defence committees in both countries rely on trust when overseeing the executive’s handling of defence affairs. This allows these committees to perform their oversight function at low cost in terms of time and effort, but with a high degree of access to information. Community policing therefore combines the strengths of recognised ‘police patrol’ and ‘fire alarm’ oversight, while avoiding their respective weaknesses. However, since it relies on a higher degree of trust and cooperation between the principal and agent, community policing is inherently fragile.

中文翻译：

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当文官控制是民事时：比利时和新西兰的议会对军队的监督

本研究介绍了对军民关系和行政立法关系的新型监督：社区警务. 基于委托代理理论，这种类型的监督强调信任而不是对抗。为了说明社区警务的运作方式，该研究考察了比利时和新西兰对军事事务的立法监督是如何运作的。两国的立法国防委员会在监督行政部门处理国防事务时都依赖信任。这使得这些委员会能够在时间和精力方面以低成本执行其监督职能，但具有高度的信息访问权限。因此，社区警务结合了公认的“警察巡逻”和“火警”监督的优势，同时避免了它们各自的弱点。然而，由于它依赖于委托人和代理人之间更高程度的信任和合作，社区警务本质上是脆弱的。