Police as Policymakers: How Experiences With Policy Implementation Shape Policy Representation

Abstract

Scholars of political representation have focused primarily on congruence between public preferences and enacted legislation, paying less attention to how policies are actually delivered by street-level bureaucrats in face-to-face encounters with citizens. This approach obscures the possibility that individuals may nonetheless have divergent perceptions of implemented policy that, in turn, inform their political attitudes. We examine this argument in the context of policing and traffic stops in Los Angeles using an integrated mixed-methods design combining an original survey (N = 2,118) and thirty semi-structured interviews. Our survey finds limited racial variation in preferences for police behavior and in reports of officer behavior during traffic stops. At the same time, our survey reproduces well-documented racial gaps in general assessments of police legitimacy and effectiveness. Our interviews reveal that these patterns result from fundamentally different personal and vicarious experiences across racial groups. For Black and Latine residents, the desire for a professional officer reflects concern for physical safety; for White residents, it reflects a preference for courtesy. Survey instruments that record responses but not the expectations underlying them may systematically understate racial inequality in how police encounters are actually experienced.