Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-rvbq7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-09T18:21:46.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Elections as Focusing Events: Explaining Attitudes Toward the Police and the Government in Comparative Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Lee Demetrius Walker  and
Richard W. Waterman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Traditional views hold that citizens' attitudes toward the police are driven by local concerns. We contend that public attitudes toward the police are responsive to systematic and periodic national-level political factors. In particular, we show that national elections as a focusing event alter periodically the determinants of attitudes toward the police. Using a logistic regression model and diachronic data from Costa Rica, Mexico, and the United States, we find that attitudes toward the police and the national government are linked, and this linkage is responsive to the influence of national election campaigns in varying degrees. In addition, we find that attitudes toward the Mexican police are sensitive to partisan changes in the composition of the national political government. We find no such sensitivity in the police attitudes of Costa Rican and U.S. citizens. This suggests that police attitudes are not only affected by the performance of the national political government but also by the character (consolidated versus unconsolidated) of the national political government. In short, police attitudes in new democracies are an indication of the unconsolidated nature of the state apparatus.

Type
Articles of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 337 - 366
Copyright
© 2008 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article was written with support from the University of Kentucky, the University of South Carolina, and a resident fellowship at The Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. We also wish to thank Jeff Gill, Gary King, James L. Gibson, Andrew Martin, Christopher Zorn, the political science departments of the University of Kentucky and University of South Carolina, and Law & Society Review's anonymous reviews.

References

Agresti, Alan (1996) An Introduction to Categorical Data Analysis. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Albrecht, Stan L., & Green, Miles (1977) “Attitudes toward the Police and the Larger Attitude Complex: Implications for Police-Community Relationships,” 5 Criminology 67–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benson, Paul R. (1981) “Political Alienation and Public Satisfaction with Police Services,” 24 Pacific Sociological Rev. 24–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birkland, Thomas A. (1997) After Disaster: Agenda Setting, Public Policy and Focusing Events. Washington, DC: Georgetown Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Bordua, David J., & Tifft, Larry L. (1971) “Citizens Interviews, Organizational Feedback, and Police-Community Relations Decisions,” 6 Law & Society Rev. 155–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Ben, & Benedict, Wm Reed (2002) “Perceptions of the Police: Past Findings, Methodological Issues, Conceptual Issues and Policy Implications,” 25 Policing-An International J. of Police Strategies and Management 543–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Ben, et al. (2006) “Public Perceptions of the Police in Mexico: A Case Study,” 29 Policing-An International J. of Police Strategies and Management 158–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Call, Charles T. (2002) “War Transitions and the New Civilian Security in Latin America,” 35 Comparative Politics 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camp, Roderic Ai (1999) Politics in Mexico: The Decline of Authoritarianism. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Canache, Damarys, et al. (2001) “Meaning and Measurement in Cross-National Research on Satisfaction with Democracy,” 65 Public Opinion Q. 506–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cao, Liqun, & Hou, Charles (2001) “A Comparison of Confidence in the Police in China and in the United States,” 29 J. of Criminal Justice 87–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cao, Liqun, & Zhao, Jihong Solomon (1998) “Public Confidence in the Police: A Comparative Study between Japan and America,” 26 J. of Criminal Justice 279–89.Google Scholar
Cao, Liqun, & Zhao, Jihong Solomon (2005) “Confidence in the Police in Latin America,” 33 J. of Criminal Justice 430–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, David, & Levitsky, Steven (1997) “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research,” 49 World Politics 403–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Correia, Mark E., et al. (1996) “Public Perceptions of State Police: An Analysis of Individual-Level and Contextual Variables,” 24 J. of Criminal Justice 17–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Robert (1989) Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L., et al. (2003) “Measuring Attitudes toward the Supreme Court,” 47 American J. of Political Science 354–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godwin, Marcia L., & Schroedel, Jean Reith (2000) “Policy Diffusion and Strategies for Promoting Policy Change: Evidence from California Local Gun Control Ordinances,” 28 Policy Studies J. 760–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howell, Susan E., et al. (2004) “Black Cities/White Cities: Evaluating the Police,” 26 Political Behavior 45–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kessel, John (1980) Presidential Campaign Politics: Coalition Strategies and Citizen Response. Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press.Google Scholar
Kingdon, John W. (1995) Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Lasley, James R. (1994) “Ethnicity, Gender, and Police-Community Attitudes,” 75 Social Science Q. 85–97.Google Scholar
Levitt, Steven D. (1997) “Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime,” 87 The American Economic Rev. 270–90.Google Scholar
Linz, Juan J., & Stepan, Alfred (1996) Problems of Democratic Transitions and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
López-Montiel, Angel Gustavo (2000) “The Military, Political Power, and Police Relations in Mexico City,” 111 Latin American Perspectives 79–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCann, James A., & Lawson, Chappell (2003) “An Electorate Adrift? Public Opinion and the Quality of Democracy in Mexico,” 38 Latin American Research Rev. 60–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagelkerke, Nico J. D. (1991) “Miscellanea: A Note on a General Definition of the Coefficient of Determination,” 78 Biometrika 691–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Donnell, Guillermo (2001) “Democracy, Law, and Comparative Politics,” 36 Studies in Comparative International Development 7–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olivero, J. Michael, & Murataya, Rodrigo (1998) “Citizen Satisfaction with Police Services in Guadalajara, Mexico,” 22 International J. of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice 303–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pereira, Anthony W. (2001) “Virtual Legality: Authoritarian Legacies and the Reform of Military Justice in Brazil, the Southern Cone, and Mexico,” 34 Comparative Political Studies 555–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Przeworski, Adam, & Teune, Henry (1970) The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Reisig, Michael D., & Parks, Roger B. (2000) “Experience, Quality of Life, and Neighborhood Context: A Hierarchical Analysis of Satisfaction with Police,” 17 Justice Q. 607–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reiss, Albert (1967) Studies in Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., & Bartusch, Dawn Jeglum (1998) “Legal Cynicism and Subcultural Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of Racial Differences,” 32 Law & Society Rev. 777–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph (1975) Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Seron, Carroll, et al. (2004) “Judging Police Misconduct: ‘Street-Level’ versus Professional Policing,” 38 Law & Society Rev. 665–710.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, Greg M., et al. (1998) “The Polls Trends: Crime, the Police, and Civil Liberties,” 62 Public Opinion Q. 405–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shipan, Charles R., & Volden, Craig (2006) “Bottom-Up Federalism: The Diffusion of Antismoking Policies from US Cities to States,” 50 American J. of Political Science 825–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sigelman, Lee, et al. (1997) “Police Brutality and Public Perceptions of Racial Discrimination: A Tale of Two Beatings,” 50 Political Research Q. 777–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Douglas A. (1986) “The Neighborhood Context of Police Behavior,” in Reiss, A. J. & Tonry, M., eds., Communities and Crime. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sunshine, Jason, & Tyler, Tom R. (2003) “The Role of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for Policing,” 37 Law & Society Rev. 513–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terrill, William, & Reisig, Michael D. (2003) “Neighborhood Context and Police Use of Force,” 40 J. of Research in Crime Delinquency 291–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuch, Steven A., & Weitzer, Ronald (1997) “The Polls Trends: Racial Differences in Attitudes Toward the Police,” 61 Political Opinion Q. 642–63.Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom R. (1988) “What Is Procedural Justice? Criteria Used by Citizens to Assess the Fairness of Legal Procedures,” 22 Law & Society Rev. 103–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weitzer, Ronald (1995) Policing Under Fire: Ethnic Conflict and Police-Community Relations in Northern Ireland. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Weitzer, Ronald (2000) “Racialized Policing: Residents Perceptions in Three Neighborhoods,” 34 Law & Society Rev. 129–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, James Q. (1963) “The Police and Their Problems: A Theory,” 12 Public Policy 189–216.Google Scholar
Whyte, William Foote (1943) Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zamble, Edward, & Annesley, Phyllis (1987) “Some Determinants of Public Attitudes toward the Police,” 15 J. of Police Science and Administration 285–90.Google Scholar