Does representation matter: examining officer inclusion, citizen cooperation and police empowerment in a divided society

ABSTRACT

How can we improve public confidence in the legitimacy of recently instituted police forces in a divided society affected by violent conflict? And can public perceptions of clan representation within the police force encourage public engagement with law enforcement? It is generally understood that public confidence in domestic security sector institutions is integral for stability and consolidation of states affected by prolonged warfare. However, in deeply divided societies, building such confidence can be difficult. Accordingly, advocates argue that improved demographic representation within domestic security institutions can help improve residents’ engagement and cooperation with security forces. The current study tests this prediction relying on community survey data collected in Kismayo, Somalia. The authors find that residents who perceive the local police to be representative of local clans are more likely to believe the force is legitimate. In turn, residents who believe the force has more legitimacy are more willing to cooperate with and empower police with greater discretionary authority, while perceptions of clan representation maintains an indirect and significant impact on residents’ willingness to empower officers.

KEYWORDS:

• Representation
• inclusion
• divided society
• conflict
• police

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Karim, Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict Security.

2. Lake, The Statebuilder’s Dilemma.

3. Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies.

4. Weitzer, Policing Under Fire.

5. Roeder and Rothchild, Sustainable Peace; Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict; Weitzer, Policing Under Fire; Nanes, Policing Under Fire; Bayley, Post-Conflict Police Reform; Ben-Porat and Yuval, Minorities in Democracy and Policing Policy; Perito, The Iraq Federal Police; Karim, Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict Security; Karim et al., International Gender Balancing Reforms.

6. Walker et al., The Colour of Justice; Banerjee, Iyer and Somanathan, History, Social Divisions and Public Goods; Putnam, E Pluribus Unum.

7. Mansbridge, Should Blacks Represent Blacks; Phillips, The Politics of Presence.

8. Twardowski, The Future of Peacekeeping.

9. Habyarimana et al., Coethnicity; Preuhs, Descriptive Representation as a Mechanism; Allport, The Nature of Prejudice; Blair et al., Policing Ethnicity; Karim et al., International Gender Balancing Reforms.

10. Karim, Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict Security; Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies.

11. Tyler, Procedural Justice.

12. Karim, Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict Security.

13. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States; Weber, Weber: Political Writings.

14. Tyler, Policing in Black and White; Karim, Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict Security.

15. Tyler, Procedural Justice; Tyler, Why People Cooperate; Mazerolle et al., Legitimacy in Policing.

16. Tyler and Fagan, Legitimacy and Cooperation.

17. Taylor, Critic Incivilities Reduction Policing; Dirikx and Bulck; Media Use and The Process.

18. Tyler and Fagan, Legitimacy and Cooperation.

19. Ibid.

20. Karakus, Instrumental and Normative Pathways; Tankebe, Public cooperation with the police.

21. Tankebe, Viewing Things Differently.

22. Reisig, Bratton and Gertz, The Construct Validity and Refinement; Murphy, Mazerolle and Bennett, Promoting Trust in Police; Tyler, Jackson and Mentovich, The Consequences of Being; Sunshine and Tyler, The Role of Procedural Justice; Mazerolle et al., Legitimacy in Policing; Reisig, Tankebe and Meško, Compliance with the Law in Slovenia.

23. Hamm, Trinker and Carr, Fair Process, Trust, and Cooperation.

24. Pryce, The Relative Effects of Normative; Tyler, Procedural justice; Sunshine and Tyler, The Role of Procedural Justice; Metcalfe and Hodge, Empowering the Police; Tyler and Jackson, Popular Legitimacy; Jackson et al., Compliance with the Law; Paternoster et al., Do Fair Procedures Matter?; Hamm et al., Fair Process, Trust, and Cooperation.

25. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law; Hamm et al., Fair Process, Trust, and Cooperation; Tyler, Why People Obey the Law.

26. Sunshine and Tyler, The Role of Procedural Justice; Dirikx and Bulck; Media Use and The Process.

27. Wolfe et al., Is the Effect of Procedural Justice; Tyler and Huo, Trust in the Law; Tyler, Procedural Justice and Policing.

28. Akinlabi, Young people, Procedural Justice; Kochel, Parks and Mastrofski, Examining Police Effectiveness; Tankebe, Public Cooperation with the Police; Karakus, Instrumental and Normative Pathways; Bradford, Huq and Roberts, What price fairness when security is at stake? Police legitimacy

in South Africa. Jackson et al., Corruption and police legitimacy in Lahore, Pakistan.

29. Lyall, Shiraito and Imai, Coethnic Bias and Wartime Informing; Berman, Shapiro and Felter, Can Hearts and Minds.

30. Tyler, Procedural Justice.

31. Karim, Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict.

32. Nanes, ‘Policing in Divided Societies’, 583.

33. Ibid, 584.

34. Baker, Policing for Conflict Zones.

35. Goldsmith, Policing Weak States; Baker, Policing for Conflict Zones.

36. Baker, Policing for Conflict Zones.

37. Nanes, Policing in Divided Societies; Bayley, Post-conflict Police Reform; Habyarimana et al., Why Does Ethnic Diversity; Lyall, Are Coethnics More Effective?; Lyall, Shiraito and Imai, Coethnic Bias and Wartime Informing; Weitzer and Hasisi, Does ethnic Composition Make a Difference?; Karim, Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict.

38. Bayley, Post-Conflict Police Reform; Blair et al., Policing Ethnicity; McGarry, Police reform in Northern Ireland; Perito, The Iraq Federal Police; Robinson, Tell Me How This Ends; Weitzer, Policing Under Fire; Weitzer and Tuch, Race and perceptions; Weitzer and Tuch, Race and Policing in America.

39. Lijphart, Consociational Democracy; Norris, Driving Democracy.

40. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict.

41. For more detailed discussion of the Representative Bureaucracy literature see Gade and Wilkins, Where Did You Serve?; Kingsley, Representative Bureaucracy; Meier and Nicholas-Crotty, Gender, representative bureaucracy, and law enforcement; Pitkin, The Concept of Representation; Mosher, Democracy and the Public Service; Keiser et al., Lipstick and Logarithms; Selden, The Promise of Representative Bureaucracy; Meier, Latinos and Representative Bureaucracy; Hong, Representative Bureaucracy, Organizational Integrity, and Citizen Coproduction; Hong, Does Increasing Ethnic Representativeness Reduce Police Misconduct?; Headley and Wright, Is Representation Enough?; Wilkins and Williams, Black or Blue: Racial Profiling and Representative Bureaucracy; Nicholson-Crotty et al., Will More Black Cops Matter?; Headley et al., Bureaucracy, Democracy, and Race.

42. Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies.

43. Andersen, From Passive to Active Representation.

44. Ben-Porat and Yuval, Minorities in Democracy and Policing Policy; Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies.

45. Similar debates around the efficacy of demographic representation within the representative bureaucracy literature emerging from the West. While some studies have found that representation of ethnic minorities resulted in a decrease in the number of citizen complaints against police officer misconduct, others have found that the presence of minority officers was related to increases in racial profiling due to the intense pressure for police socialisation and a desire by minority officers to fit in. See for example Hong; Headley and Wringth; Wilkins and Williams.

46. Blair et al., ‘Policing Ethnicity’, 1.

47. Banerjee, Iyer and Somanathan, History, Social Divisions and Public Goods; Putnam, E Pluribus Unum.

48. Habyarimana et al., Coethnicity.

49. Blair et al., Policing Ethnicity; Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies. Karim et al., International Gender Balancing Reforms; Preuhs, Descriptive Representation as a Mechanism; Selden, Representative Bureaucracy; Mansbridge, Should Blacks Represent Blacks; Phillips, The Politics of Presence; Samii, Perils or Promise of Ethnic Integration.

50. Karim, Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict Security.

51. Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies; Muibu, Police Empowerment and Police Militarisation; Muibu, Police empowerment and police militarisation in times of protracted conflict: Examining public perceptions in southern Somalia.

52. Conflict Early Warning Early Response Unit (CEWERU), From the Bottom Up: Southern Regions – Perspectives through Conflict Analysis and Key Political Actors’ Mapping of Gedo, Middle Juba, Lower Juba, and Lower Shabelle.

53. BBC, Kismayo attack: At least 26 dead as gunmen storm Somali hotel.

54. Somali Affairs, Jubbaland President Attends Funeral of Chamber of Commerce Official Killed in Shabaab Attack.

55. International Crisis Group, Ending the Dangerous Standoff in Southern Somalia.

56. Azar, Jureidini, and McLaurin, Protracted Social Conflict: Theory and Practice in the Middle East.

57. Bacon and Muibu, The Domestication of Al-Shabaab.

58. Hills, The dynamics of prototypical police forces: lessons from two Somali cities.

59. UNSOM, Federal Government and UN Unveil Support Programme for Somalia’s New Policing Model.

60. It is also worth noting there exists an extra 110 police officers on the force comprised of federal police and ex-security force personnel who did not undergo the JPP programme and were not trained under AMISOM. These officers are likely former clan militias, notably Ras Kamboni, loyal to President Madowe.

61. Hills, The dynamics of prototypical police forces: lessons from two Somali cities.

62. Muibu, Police empowerment and police militarisation in times of protracted conflict: Examining public perceptions in southern Somalia.

63. Muibu, Police empowerment and police militarisation in times of protracted conflict: Examining public perceptions in southern Somalia.

64. Ibid.

65. Other clans with less than 5 per cent representation within the force include the Awrmale, Ashraaf, Awrtable, Bajuni, Digil, Dir, Geri, Ogaadeen, Leelkase, Rahanweyn, Wardei and other Kumade clans.

66. Sahan Foundation, Perception Study: Regional Policing in Southern Somalia.

67. Hills,The dynamics of prototypical police forces: lessons from two Somali cities, 1540

68. Hills,The dynamics of prototypical police forces: lessons from two Somali cities

69. Ibid.

70. Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies, 584.

71. Hills,The dynamics of prototypical police forces: lessons from two Somali cities, 1537.

72. Sahan Foundation, Perception Study: Regional Policing in Southern Somalia.

73. Muibu, Police empowerment and police militarisation in times of protracted conflict: Examining public perceptions in southern Somalia.

74. Hills, What Is Policeness? On Being Police in Somalia, 779.

75. UNFPA, Population Estimation Survey 2014 For the 18 Pre-War Regions of Somalia.

76. Measures of Legitimacy: 1) ‘Do you believe the Jubbaland police officers are trustworthy?’; 2) ‘Are you confident in the Jubbaland police?’; 3) ‘Are the Jubbaland police usually honest?’; 4) ‘Do the police accurately understand and apply the law?’ Pryce, The Relative Effects of Normative; Tankebe, Public cooperation with the police.

77. Sunshine and Tyler, The Role of Procedural Justice.

78. Capturing perceptions of representation utilising a binary measure presents a limitation. Specifically, representativeness is a matter of degree and so different respondents may have different ideas about what representation means, with some responding ‘yes’ because they believe the force is representative at 60 per cent while others may say ‘yes’ because they see representation at 100 per cent. Therefore, though the current study can examine the importance of perceptions of representation and whether these views matter for examining public confidence, it is not possible, with available data, to determine at which cut-off points views on representation matter.

79. Procedural fairness was captured using the following survey question: ‘Do the police treat everyone in your neighborhood with dignity and respect?’

80. Police Effectiveness was captured using the following survey question: ‘Are the police effective at controlling crime in your neighborhood?’

81. Of the 323 observations, 219 were complete, while 32 per cent of the observations contained missing values, with missing-value patters that were not monotone.

82. Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies; Nanes, Police integration and support for anti-government violence in divided societies; Karim, Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict Security; Karim et al., International Gender Balancing Reforms; Blair et al., Policing Ethnicity; Bayley, Post-Conflict Police Reform; McGarry, Police reform in Northern Ireland; Perito, The Iraq Federal Police; Robinson, Tell Me How This Ends; Weitzer, Policing Under Fire; Weitzer and Hasisi, ‘Does ethnic Composition Make a Difference?’

83. Robinson and Matisek, Assistance to Locally Appropriate, 77.

84. Bayley, Post-Conflict Police Reform; McGarry, Police reform in Northern Ireland

85. Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies.

86. Jackson et al., Monopolising force?: police legitimacy and public attitudes towards the acceptability of violence.

87. Weitzer and Hasisi, ‘Does ethnic Composition Make a Difference?’, 363; Bayley, Post-Conflict Police Reform; Ellison, A blueprint for democratic policing anywhere in the world? Police reform, political transition, and conflict resolution in Northern Ireland; McGarry, Police reform in Northern Ireland; Weitzer, Policing Under Fire.

88. Nanes, Policing in Dividing Societies; Weitzer and Tuch, Race and Policing in America; Riccucci, Representative Bureaucracy in Policing: Does It Increase Perceived Legitimacy; Riccucci, Representative Bureaucracy, Race, and Policing: A Survey Experiment.

89. Karim, Relational State Building in Areas of Limited Statehood.

90. Ibid.

91. Tyler, Procedural Justice.

92. Robinson and Matisek, Assistance to Locally Appropriate.

93. Sahan Foundation, Perception Study: Regional Policing in Southern Somalia.

94. Pryce, The Relative Effects of Normative; Tyler, Procedural justice; Sunshine and Tyler, The Role of Procedural Justice; Metcalfe and Hodge, Empowering the Police; Tyler and Jackson, Popular Legitimacy; Jackson et al., Compliance with the Law; Murphy and Cherney, Fostering cooperation with the police; Reisig, Bratton and Gertz, The Construct Validity and Refinement; Murphy, Mazerolle and Bennett, Promoting Trust in Police; Jonathan Jackson et al. Why do People Comply with the Law? Legitimacy and the Influence of Legal Institutions; Akinlabi, Young people, Procedural Justice; Kochel, Parks and Mastrofski, Examining Police Effectiveness; Karakus, Instrumental and Normative Pathways. Pryce and Grant, The relative impacts of normative and instrumental factors of policing on willingness to empower the police; Bradford, Huq and Roberts, What price fairness when security is at stake? Police legitimacy in South Africa.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daisy Muibu

Daisy Muibu, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Her research is focused on policing and counterinsurgency with a focus on police legitimacy, police responses to terrorism, and the role of foreign fighters within insurgent groups.

Ifeoluwa Olawole

Ifeoluwa Olawole earned her Ph.D. political science (with subfields in comparative politics and international relations). Her research interests lie at the intersection of governance, conflict management, political economy of development, and political behaviour in low-income nations. Previously, she worked at the World Bank and the University of Pennsylvania Linguistic Data Consortium.