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Police patrol and fire alarm oversight policies are two distinct approaches to monitoring and regulating the implementation of policies and programs in the political science context. These oversight strategies are often employed by legislative bodies, such as Congress, to ensure that executive agencies and bureaucracies are effectively carrying out their mandates and adhering to established rules and procedures. Both systems are used interchangeably in the legislature, and effective use of both systems yields best results. The oversight system varies across chambers, committees, political parties, and election cycles.

The concept is generally viewed within principal-agent problem and both these methods are used in conjuncture as representation of the 2 methods which are utilized to solve it. In this case, the principal is the legislature, and the agent - governmental agencies or 3rd parties (Interest groups, citizens).

Police patrol procedure
Police patrol oversight is a centralized, active, and direct form of monitoring.It is an ongoing, routine oversight, which occurs constantly irrespective of government performance. Under this approach, the legislative body, at its own initiative, selects a sample of executive agencies to examine and assess their performance in attempt to stop any violations of its provisions, and discourage any further violations by its surveillance. Police control has been observed to occur more often in a divided government.

Examples of the method
An agency's activities might be surveyed by any of a number of means, such as reading documents, commissioning scientific studies, sunset reviews, conducting field observations, and holding hearings to question officials and affected citizens. In context of US, ongoing routine interest of Senate towards the Defence sector and military budget is one example of police patrol oversight.

Advantages of police patrol

 * 1) Police patrol is done directly by the legislators, therefore those areas that are the priority are sure to be under supervision.
 * 2) Police patrol's hands-on approach ensures the quality of monitoring process and its accuracy with the help of legislature resources.

Disadvantages of police patrol

 * 1) The method is resource-intensive requiring the legislature to organise routine audits and investigations into executive agencies' work. In addition, congress inevitably spends time on oversight in areas that are not inherently faulty.
 * 2) The method is argued to be ineffective since it is impossible for legislature to maintain diligent oversight over all aspect of policy implementation.
 * 3) It is argued that legislators are prone to using this method to manipulate the government agencies for their own political gain.

Fire-alarm procedure
Fire alarm oversight is a less centralized and less direct, event driven form of monitoring. This approach relies on selective monitoring triggered by complaints from citizens, interest groups, or other third parties who bring potential problems to the attention of legislators.

Examples of the method
Legislators who conduct fire-alarm oversight establish "a system of rules, procedures, and informal practices that enable [interested third parties] to examine administrative decisions . . . [and] to seek remedies from agencies, courts, and [the legislature] itself" (McCubbins and Schwartz, 1984:166). Example of such event-driven procedure tied to a specific event is W-4 controversy, when an attempt by IRS to change tax laws created outrage among population, since it, in their opinion, overcomplicated it. This promted the US congress to organise several hearings,which in the end forced the IRS to modify its project.

Advantages of fire-alarm

 * 1) Fire-alarm method is cheaper, the legislature has to act only, when some problem was identified and reported.
 * 2) Since legislative goals are often stated in ambiguous terms, legislature may find it difficult to decide what is to be observed, whereas with fire-alarm method, the problem will be identified by the 3rd party.
 * 3) Fire-alarm allows the legislature to only focus on the problems that have been reported to be negatively impacting the citizens.

Disadvantages of fire-alarm

 * 1) Not all groups may be represented in the legislatures fire-alarm system, effectively making it impossible for them to alarm the congress
 * 2) Since it is the 3rd party who first contacts the problem, the response of the legislature may be delayed, since it has to be alarmed first.
 * 3) The 3rd party who has the ability to alarm the legislature, could also benefit from deceiving the congress for its own gain. Therefore it cannot be ruled out that fire alarms may be false.

Congress preference for the policies
It has been largely accepted that congress has a rational preference for the fire-alarm procedure since it is more convenient, cheap and less time consuming for legislators. However, more recent research shows that despite such presupposition, US congress uses police-patrol much more frequently "The relative prevalence of police patrols over fire alarms holds not just in general, but across chambers, committees, political parties, and election cycles as well. Overall, 83.7% of House hearings and 85.4% of Senate hearings were police patrols". It is largely based on the fact that majority of police patrol oversight consists of annual hearings held by the congress. Statistically, despite the advantages and perceived preference of the fire-alarm procedure, police patrols are significantly more frequent.