Instrumental and Normative Pathways to Legitimacy and Public Cooperation with the Police in Turkey: Considering Perceived Neighborhood Characteristics and Local Government Performance

Abstract

This study investigates the relative contributions of instrumental and normative models to the legitimacy of and cooperation with the police in Turkey. Based on a random sample of 1,800 Istanbulians, the potential contributions of perceived neighborhood characteristics also are considered. Results show that both instrumental and normative models of regulation are applicable to the highly centralized and state-serving Turkish policing context. While the instrumental model exerts relatively more influence on legitimacy than does the normative model, the two models are of equal importance in predicting legitimacy after perceived neighborhood characteristics are taken into consideration. Social cohesion and local government performance also emerged as significant predictors of police legitimacy. Public cooperation with police, on the other hand, is encouraged by increased police legitimacy, better local government performance, and higher household income. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

Keywords:

• legitimacy
• procedural justice
• police performance
• social cohesion
• local government performance
• cooperation with police

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Editor, anonymous reviewers, and Dr. Huseyin Akdogan for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See Aydin (1996) and Nalla and Boke (2011) for detailed information regarding historical development of the TNP.

2 Policing is carried out by three different institutions under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior in Turkey. While the TNP is responsible for policing within the municipal boundaries of cities and towns, the gendarmerie works in rural areas, villages, and small towns. Security of coasts and territorial waters, on the other hand, is the responsibility of the Coastal Guard (Aydin, 1996; Nalla & Boke, 2011).

3 The total number of households visited throughout the administration of 1,800 interviews was 6,471. Of those 6,471 addresses visited, 1,800 households agreed to participate, while 1,466 households declined to participate. Moreover, while 2,855 households could not be contacted during three visits, 73 addresses turned out to be businesses. The remaining 277 addresses are the ones substituted for other reasons (i.e. the residents of the households were too old to be able to participate in an interview, the residents were non-Turkish speakers, or no adults aged 18 and over were present during three visits).

4 Even though the police legitimacy scale is constrained by the availability of the data and does not capture perceived obligation to obey the law, such operationalization was expected to be acceptable for several reasons. First, recent studies found that the obligation to obey the law did not predict compliance with the law (Jackson et al., 2012; Reisig, Tankebe, & Mesko, 2014) and cooperation with the police (Reisig & Lloyd, 2009; Reisig et al., 2012; Tankebe, 2009), while trust in police did. Second, obligation to obey the law was reported to have explained a very small amount of variance in cooperation and compliance (Gau, 2011; Tyler, 2006). Third, despite ongoing theoretical and methodological arguments about operational distinctions between police legitimacy and procedural justice (Gau et al., 2012), the correlation between the police legitimacy and procedural justice scales (r = .60) in the current study mirrors the results reported by past studies that have used similar items to operationalize their measures (e.g. r = .63 in Murphy & Cherney, 2011; r = .59 in Cherney & Murphy, 2013). Thus, previous research identifying trust as the primary operative element of police legitimacy (Gau et al., 2012) guided the operationalization of police legitimacy in the current study. Nonetheless, a full test of measurement validity is beyond the scope of the present study, and operationalization of police legitimacy should be considered as a potential limitation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Onder Karakus

Onder Karakus is an associate professor at the Department of Public Administration at Cumhuriyet University and a senior researcher at Global Policy and Strategy Institute. His research focuses on civic engagement in policy making, human security, policing, fear, and social control. He has recently been published in Journal of Criminal Justice and Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management. Correspondence to: Onder Karakus, Department of Public Administration, Cumhuriyet University, 58140 Sivas, Turkey. E-mail: [email protected]