Abstract
Given the recent visibility of police officers using lethal force against unarmed African American citizens, many Americans are beginning to scrutinize the influence of law enforcement in their communities. In this study, we examine the relationship between contextual exposure to police killings and the perceived effectiveness of different forms of political participation. Our analysis relies upon the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, a multiracial, multiethnic and multilingual online survey. We hypothesize that the perceived effectiveness of electoral and non-electoral participation will be depressed in areas where high numbers of citizens are killed by police officers. Our findings demonstrate living in areas where there are a large number of police killings is related to feelings of inefficacy. African Americans are impacted by police violence more than White and Latina/o Americans. However, the effect of living in areas with high levels of police lethal force diminishes the effect of perceived external efficacy for each group. The evidence implies police violence may foster less faith among citizens in the political process.
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Notes
Although, the effect of proximal contact is conditional upon citizens’ sense of social injustice.
The distinction between electoral and non-electoral participation is similar to what Verba et al. (1995) describe as conventional and unconventional activities. However, we employ the labels electoral and non-electoral to reflect the fact that less formalized, grassroots forms of political participation have become more mainstream in American politics.
Additionally, Cohen et al. (2019) discover no evidence officer-involved-shootings reduce crime reporting.
Our contextual measure of the number of police killings can be distinguished from Walker’s (2014) subjective measure of proximal contact. The proximal contact measure captures people who know people who have had personal experiences with the criminal justice system but have not had such an experience themselves. While our aggregate-level measure of the number of police killings is likely to be positively correlated with proximal contact, it is a better reflection of the general climate of police violence within a community.
We thank one of our reviewers who inquired whether living on the periphery of multiple zip code areas with varying levels of police lethal force would influence respondents’ perceived efficacy differently. Unfortunately, the authors only had access to respondents’ zip code locations and, therefore, were not able to identify where they live within the zip code area. However, we acknowledge that living in proximity to an area with different levels of police violence may moderate the relationship of contextual exposure to police violence and respondents’ perceived external efficacy.
Burch (2013) demonstrates in addition to electoral participation, neighborhoods with higher rates of imprisonment also had lower rates of non-electoral participation, group memberships, and volunteer activities, (p. 173).
Since the primary focus of the study was to assess attitudes about the 2016 election, the initial sample consists predominantly of registered voters. However, the total sample includes a large adult sample of non-registered voters as well, which includes some non-citizens.
Full replication materials are available at the Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/BPNCX4
The MPV database is accessible at: mappingpoliceviolence.org.
The descriptive statistics on the dependent and independent variables are presented in Table B of the online appendix.
The Cronbach’s alpha, which measures the internal reliability of summed scales, on the measure is 0.75. This indicates the summative measure of contact with the local police has a strong level of internal consistency.
We thank one of our reviewers who suggested including a contextual measure of the number of protest events that occurred within respondents’ zip code areas. We acknowledge that the number of protest events within an area could potentially serve as a confounder. Unfortunately, we do not have systematic data regarding protest activities either at the zip code or county levels. We look forward to exploring this relationship further as better data presents itself.
Southern states include Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The Guardian data included 2 cases (husband and wife) involving deaths as a result of a car accident with a patrolman in pursuit of another automobile.
Matching is a strategy used to control for the influence of confounding control variables by decreasing the difference between the treatment and control group.
The dichotomous police variable is coded “1” for zip codes falling into the third quartile and higher on the continuous police violence measure and coded “0” otherwise. Next, we matched the treatment variable—areas with high levels of police violence—and the control group—areas with low levels of police violence—on several individual-level demographic variables including age, education, and gender.
We also estimated a generalized ordered logit model. The results are substantively consistent with the results presented herein. The auxiliary analysis is available upon request.
For brevity, we opted to present predicted probabilities for two categories: “not at all” and “very effective.” The figures for the other two categories—“not too” and “somewhat” effective—are available upon request.
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Branton, R.P., Carey, T.E. & Martinez-Ebers, V. Lethal Engagement: The Relationship Between Contextual Exposure to Police Killings and External Political Efficacy. Polit Behav 45, 1263–1283 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09760-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09760-4