Viewing Things Differently: The Dimensions of Public Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

TLDR

Legitimacy, defined as the right to exercise power, is a well‑established criminological concept whose empirical importance lies in fostering law‑abiding behavior and citizen cooperation. The study tests whether police legitimacy comprises procedural fairness, distributive fairness, lawfulness, and effectiveness, and examines how legitimacy and obligation jointly influence citizens’ willingness to cooperate. Results confirm the four‑dimension model of legitimacy and show that legitimacy directly promotes cooperation and also indirectly does so via citizens’ felt obligation to obey the police.

Abstract

Legitimacy (or “the right to exercise power”) is now an established concept in criminological analysis, especially in relation to policing. Substantial empirical evidence shows the importance of legitimacy in securing law‐abiding behavior and cooperation from citizens. Yet adequate theorization has lagged behind empirical evidence, and there has been a conflation of legitimacy with the cognate concepts of “trust” and of “obligation to obey the law.” By drawing on the work of Beetham (1991) and others (e.g., Bottoms and Tankebe, ), this study tests the hypothesis that the contents of the multiple dimensions of police legitimacy comprise procedural fairness, distributive fairness, lawfulness, and effectiveness. The study also investigates the relative influence of legitimacy and feelings of obligation on citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the police. Using data from London, the results substantiate the hypothesized dimensions of police legitimacy. In addition, legitimacy was found to exhibit both a direct influence on cooperation that is independent of obligation and an indirect influence that flows through people's felt obligations to obey the police. Implications for future research are discussed.