Blurring the Distinction Between Empirical and Normative Legitimacy? A Methodological Commentary on ‘Police Legitimacy and Citizen Cooperation in China’

Abstract

In a fascinating study into the nature of police legitimacy in Southern China, Sun et al. (2018) present evidence that what researchers have previously been treated as possible sources of legitimacy-public perceptions of police conduct defined along the lines of procedural justice, distributive justice, effectiveness and lawfulness-are in fact constituent components of legitimacy. In this methodological commentary, we argue that the empirical strategy used to reach this conclusion is not fit for purpose because both conceptual stances-possible sources of legitimacy or constituent components of legitimacy-are consistent with the same fitted statistical model. Analysing nationally representative data from 30 countries across Europe and beyond, we also show that erroneous support for the approach to measurement is likely to be found wherever one looks. To be sensitive to cultural context means using a methodology that does not impose the preconditions of legitimacy, and we counsel against a trend starting in international criminology that does precisely the opposite.

Fear and Legitimacy in São Paulo, Brazil: Police-Citizen Relations in a High Violence, High Fear City

“…Our examination of which aspects of PJT translate-and which do notcontributes to the growing international literature on instrumental and normative police-citizen relations (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003;Papachristos et al, 2012;Tyler & Jackson, 2014;Murphy et al, 2016;Trinkner et al, 2018). Our findings also add to ongoing debate about the meaning, measurement, sources and consequences of legitimacy (Tyler, 2006a(Tyler, , 2006bReisig et al, 2007;Jackson et al, 2012;Bottoms & Tankebe, 2012;Jackson & Gau, 2015;Hamm et al, 2017;Jackson & Bradford, 2019;Posch et al, 2020).…”

“…If, for example, procedural justice is a strong positive predictor of normative alignment, then we infer from this is an important dimension of appropriate (i.e. legitimate) police conduct-it is, we infer, a key element that defines what exercising authority in appropriate ways means in practice (for discussion, see Huq et al, 2017;Jackson & Bradford, 2019;. We turn to duty to obey in study two.…”

“…According to PJT, when police officers act in ways that accord with widely shared norms about how power should be exercised, citizens tend to believe that the institution is legitimate (Tyler, 2006a(Tyler, , 2006bTrinkner & Tyler, 2016;Tyler & Trinkner, 2018). Legitimacy of a legal authority is generally defined along two connected lines: (a) the belief that the institution is moral, just and appropriate and (b) the belief that the institution is entitled to enforce the law, make decisions and expect people to willingly comply with their orders (Tyler, 2006a(Tyler, , 2006bJackson & Bradford, 2019;. On the one hand, people judge the legitimacy of the police as an institution against the societal norms that dictate what is appropriate conduct (e.g.…”

Police Legitimacy and the Norm to Cooperate: Using a Mixed Effects Location-Scale Model to Estimate the Strength of Social Norms at a Small Spatial Scale

“…Because of legitimacy, people feel that they ought to defer to decisions and rules, following them voluntarily out of obligation rather than out of fear of punishment or anticipation of reward.' At the operational level, researchers have measured legitimacy in a variety of different ways (for discussion, see Reisig et al, 2007;Hawdon, 2008;Bottoms & Tankebe, 2012;Tyler & Jackson, 2013;Jackson & Gau, 2015;Hamm et al, 2017;Jackson, 2018;Jackson & Bradford, 2019;Trinkner, 2019;Posch et al, forthcoming). One approach has been to use a single indicator of trust or confidence in the police as a proxy for legitimacy (e.g.…”

Debating Core Conceptual and Measurement Issues About Police Legitimacy—Editor’s Introduction

“…This special issue contains the first article titled "Blurring the Distinction Between Empirical and Normative Legitimacy? A Methodological Commentary on 'Police Legitimacy and Citizen Cooperation in China'" by Jackson and Bradford (2019) which is aimed at making a methodological commentary to the paper of Sun et al (2018). This commentary indicated that Sun and his colleagues blurred the distinction between empirical and normative legitimacy at the conceptual aspect and overly interpreted the statistical analysis result at the methodological aspect, which meant that confirmatory factor analysis could not decide the four aspects (procedural justice, distributive justice, effectiveness, and lawfulness) as the source or the constituent components of police legitimacy.…”