Police self-legitimacy and democratic orientations: Assessing shared values

Abstract

Using a sample of frontline police officers from several mid-sized municipal police departments in the United States, this study explores the relationships between frontline police officers’ self-legitimacy, organizational fit, moral alignment with policed communities, and attitudes toward democratic policing principles. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling, the analysis frames democratic policing using a formative latent construct to test several hypotheses. The results support a direct positive relationship between self-legitimacy and attitudes toward democratic policing, and suggest the relationship is partially mediated by officers' perceptions of moral alignment with their policed communities. The results further demonstrate that self-legitimacy is significantly related to organizational fit, but organizational fit does not appear to mediate the relationship between self-legitimacy and attitudes toward democratic policing.