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ABSTRACT
Analysing data obtained from several sources, with more than 42,000 individuals nested in 28 Asian countries, a multilevel hierarchical non-linear analysis was conducted to assess the predictive powers of macro-level factors on police legitimacy. Results from the unconditional analysis suggest that a significant variation in police legitimacy was at country level. Of the individual predictors analysed, being exposed to the media and being employed showed positive relations with legitimacy. A perception of police illegitimacy was high among those who were fearful of terrorism and crime, were females, and were married. Among the country-level predictors, countries’ levels of democracy and peacefulness demonstrated a positive relationship with legitimacy, whereas institutional corruption and impact of terrorism showed negative link. Moreover, citizens living in absolute press freedom countries reported greater perceptions of police legitimacy. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. These countries were Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Armenia, China, Taiwan, Cyprus, Georgia, Palestine, Hong Kong, India, Iraq, Japan, Kazakhstan, Jordon, South Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
2. The GTI is based on data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), which is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
3. The intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) is computed by using the linear threshold model method. Based on this method, ICC is calculated as VB/(VB + 3.29), where VB is the between-group variance.