IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amsocr/v88y2023i4p656-680.html

The Politics of Police

Author

Listed:
  • Samuel Thomas Donahue

Abstract

The connection between racially prejudiced policing and politics has a long history in the United States. In the current period, police organizations have displayed unprecedented support for Republican presidential candidates, and both have organized against social movements focused on addressing racial disparities in police contact. Yet despite strong connections between law enforcement and party politics, we know almost nothing about the relationship between partisan identity and the behavior of police officers. Using millions of traffic stop records from the Florida Highway Patrol and linked voter records, the present study shows that White Republican officers exhibit a larger racial disparity than White Democratic officers in their propensity to search motorists whom they have stopped. This result is robust to an array of alternative empirical tests and holds across varying sociodemographic contexts. I also find that both White Republican and White Democratic officers grew more biased between 2012 and 2020, a period characterized by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the election of Donald Trump.

Suggested Citation

  • Samuel Thomas Donahue, 2023. "The Politics of Police," American Sociological Review, , vol. 88(4), pages 656-680, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amsocr:v:88:y:2023:i:4:p:656-680
    DOI: 10.1177/00031224231173070
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00031224231173070
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00031224231173070?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Bisgaard & Rune Slothuus, 2018. "Partisan Elites as Culprits? How Party Cues Shape Partisan Perceptual Gaps," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 62(2), pages 456-469, April.
    2. White, Ariel R. & Nathan, Noah L. & Faller, Julie K., 2015. "What Do I Need to Vote? Bureaucratic Discretion and Discrimination by Local Election Officials," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 109(1), pages 129-142, February.
    3. Vesla M. Weaver & Amanda Geller, 2019. "De-Policing America’s Youth: Disrupting Criminal Justice Policy Feedbacks That Distort Power and Derail Prospects," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 685(1), pages 190-226, September.
    4. E. Frank Stephenson, 2011. "Strategic voting in open primaries: evidence from Rush Limbaugh’s “operation chaos”," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 445-457, September.
    5. Grogger, Jeffrey & Ridgeway, Greg, 2006. "Testing for Racial Profiling in Traffic Stops From Behind a Veil of Darkness," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 101, pages 878-887, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kevin Lang & Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer, 2020. "Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 68-89, Spring.
    2. Ingrid Gould Ellen & Stephen L. Ross, 2018. "Race and the City," Working Papers 2018-022, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    3. Miller, Kirk, 2009. "Race, driving, and police organization: Modeling moving and nonmoving traffic stops with citizen self-reports of driving practices," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 564-575, November.
    4. repec:osf:socarx:9khds_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. DeAngelo, Gregory & Owens, Emily G., 2017. "Learning the ropes: General experience, task-Specific experience, and the output of police officers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 368-377.
    6. Benjamin E. Bagozzi & Daniel Berliner & Zack W. Almquist, 2021. "When does open government shut? Predicting government responses to citizen information requests," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(2), pages 280-297, April.
    7. Gérard P. Cachon & Dawson Kaaua, 2022. "Serving Democracy: Evidence of Voting Resource Disparity in Florida," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(9), pages 6687-6696, September.
    8. Mikula, Stepan & Montag, Josef, 2023. "Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment on Ethnic and Socioeconomic Discrimination," IZA Discussion Papers 16218, IZA Network @ LISER.
    9. Druckman, James N. & Levy, Jeremy & Sands, Natalie, 2021. "Bias in education disability accommodations," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    10. Debopam Bhattacharya & Shin Kanaya & Margaret Stevens, 2017. "Are University Admissions Academically Fair?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(3), pages 449-464, July.
    11. repec:osf:osfxxx:gyz3h_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Michael Rochlitz & Evgeniya Mitrokhina & Irina Nizovkina, 2020. "Bureaucratic Discrimination in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: Experimental Evidence from Russia," Bremen Papers on Economics & Innovation 2010, University of Bremen, Faculty of Business Studies and Economics.
    13. repec:osf:socarx:e5hfc_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Margaret A. Meyer & Richard Gonzalez, 2024. "Detecting Bias in Traffic Searches: Examining False Searches of Innocent Drivers," Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 791-812, December.
    15. Jae‐Hee Jung, 2020. "The Mobilizing Effect of Parties' Moral Rhetoric," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(2), pages 341-355, April.
    16. Makofske, Matthew, 2020. "Pretextual Traffic Stops and Racial Disparities in their Use," MPRA Paper 100792, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Joseph A. Coll & Elizabeth Maltby & Rene R. Rocha, 2024. "Race and democratic decline in the United States: How minority population growth affects election administration," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 105(2), pages 160-179, March.
    18. Anwar Shamena & Fang Hanming, 2012. "Testing for the Role of Prejudice in Emergency Departments Using Bounceback Rates," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(3), pages 1-49, December.
    19. Sooahn Shin, 2024. "Difference-in-differences Design with Outcomes Missing Not at Random," Papers 2411.18772, arXiv.org.
    20. Jesse Matheson & Brendon McConnell & James Rockey & Argyris Sakalis, 2023. "Do Remote Workers Deter Neighborhood Crime? Evidence from the Rise of Working from Home," Working Papers 2023020, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    21. Yang, Xiaoliang & Zhou, Peng, 2025. "Unveiling citation bias in economics: Taste-based discrimination against Chinese-authored papers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    22. Grewenig, Elisabeth & Lergetporer, Philipp & Werner, Katharina & Woessmann, Ludger, 2020. "Do party positions affect the public's policy preferences? Experimental evidence on support for family policies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 523-543.
    23. Lieberman, Carl, 2024. "Variation in racial disparities in police use of force," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:amsocr:v:88:y:2023:i:4:p:656-680. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.