Police legitimacy in Africa: a multilevel multinational analysis

ABSTRACT

Using data obtained from multiple sources, with more than 40,000 individuals nested in 29 countries, a multilevel analysis was conducted to predict the effects of country-level variables on police legitimacy. Results from the unconditional analysis suggest that a significant variation in police legitimacy was at country level. Of the individual predictors included, being employed, being satisfied with democracy, and being an urban dweller showed positive relations with legitimacy. Police illegitimacy was high among the old, people with prior victimisation experience, and those who were fearful of crime. Among the country-level predictors, countries’ level of democracy and peacefulness had significant relationship with legitimacy, whereas institutional corruption, impact of terrorism and rate of victimisation did not. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Police legitimacy
• terrorism
• Africa
• democracy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 These countries were Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

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.