Public Perceptions of the Legitimacy of the Law and Legal Authorities: Evidence from the Caribbean

• Published date: 01 December 2014
• Date: 01 December 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12102

Public Perceptions of the Legitimacy of the

Law and Legal Authorities: Evidence from

the Caribbean

Devon Johnson

Edward R. Maguire

Joseph B. Kuhns

Research on procedural justice and legitimacy has expanded greatly across the

social sciences in recent years. The process-based model of regulation, which

links people’s assessments of procedural justice and legitimacy to their com-

pliance with the law and legal authorities, has become particularly influential

in criminology and sociolegal studies. A review of the previous research on

perceived legitimacy highlights two important features. First, legitimacy has

been conceptualized and measured in many different ways. Second, most of

the research on legitimacy has focused on only a handful of developed nations.

Using survey data from Trinidad and Tobago, this article examines the con-

ceptualization and measurement of the perceived legitimacy of the law and

legal authorities. The findings indicate that some of the prominent conceptual

and measurement models used in previous research are not empirically valid

in the Trinidadian context. The implications of the results for conceptualiza-

tion, theory, and future research are discussed.

With roots in philosophy, political theory, and social psychol-

ogy, the idea of legitimacy occupies an important role in scholarship

across the social sciences, including psychology (e.g., Lind and

Tyler 1988), organizational theory (e.g., Elsbach 2001), political

science (e.g., Easton 1979), and criminology and sociolegal studies

(e.g., Smith 2007; Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Tyler 2006; Tyler and

Huo 2002). Subjective assessments of the legitimacy of authority,

whether in the form of individuals or institutions, are thought to

influence a wide range of human behaviors, from child obedience

and worker productivity, to decisions about whether to obey the law

or comply with legal authorities. Legitimacy assessments play an

Funding for this research was provided by the Ministry of National Security (MNS) of

Trinidadand Tobago. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and

do not represent the official policies or positions of the MNS or the Trinidad and Tobago

Police Service. This research was approved by the Institutional Review Boards at George

Mason University and American University. We thank the editors and the anonymous

reviewers for their comments on a previous draft.

Please direct all correspondence to Devon Johnson, Department of Criminology, Law

and Society, George Mason University, 4400 University Dr., MS 4F4, Fairfax, VA 22030;

e-mail: djohns22@gmu.edu.

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Law & Society Review, Volume 48, Number 4 (2014)

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increasingly important role in a diverse scholarly literature on how

people think about and respond to authority.

In criminology and sociolegal studies, a rapidly developing

body of scholarship focuses on the antecedents and consequences

of the perceived legitimacy of law and legal authorities. The most

well-known causal model linking perceived legitimacy to its ante-

cedents and consequences is Tyler’s process-based model of regu-

lation (e.g., Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Tyler 2006; Tyler and Huo

2002). In this model, perceived legitimacy mediates the relation-

ship between people’s perceptions of the procedural justice of legal

authorities and their decisions about whether to obey the law or

comply with the directives of legal authorities. According to this

perspective, people assess the procedural justice employed by legal

authorities like police officers, prosecutors, judges, and prison

guards. These procedural justice judgments have a powerful influ-

ence on their more general assessments of the legitimacy of the law

and legal institutions, which in turn influence people’s willingness

to obey the law and comply with the directives of legal authorities.

Thus, according to the process-based model, when legal authorities

treat people in a procedurally just manner,their behaviors promote

the legitimacy of law and legal institutions and cultivate comp-

liance and other beneficial outcomes like cooperation and support

(Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Tankebe 2009; Tyler 2006; Tyler and

Fagan 2008; Tyler and Huo 2002).

The process-based model of regulation is appealing for many

reasons. From a theoretical perspective, it proposes an elegant set

of causal relationships between procedural justice, legitimacy, and

compliance with the law and legal authorities. Moreover,it serves as

a compelling counterweight to deterrence, the most common or

instinctual explanation for why people obey the law (Tyler 2006).

The process-based model is also inherently testable or refutable,

thus satisfying a key condition for good scientific theory (Blumer

1954). The model is also appealing from a philosophical perspec-

tive because it suggests that authority figures should treat people

fairly, not only because it can satisfy the Kantian imperative to do

the right thing, but because it also satisfies utilitarian objectives by

generating socially meaningful outcomes.

Studies in this area have grown exponentially in recent years.

Many of these studies provide support for the process-based model

of regulation (Fagan and Tyler 2004; Hinds and Murphy 2007;

Hough et al. 2013; Jackson et al. 2012; Mazerolle et al. 2013;

Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Tyler 2006; Tyler and Fagan 2008; Tyler

and Huo 2002). A review of the research on the legitimacy of legal

authorities reveals two important patterns. First, legitimacy has

been conceptualized and measured in numerous ways, suggesting

that there is not yet a clear consensus among scholars about what

948 Public Perceptions of the Legitimacy of the Law and Legal Authorities

exactly constitutes legitimacy. Recently, a robust debate has

emerged about the conceptual meaning and dimensional structure

of perceived legitimacy (Bottoms and Tankebe 2012; Cherney

and Murphy 2011; Gau 2011; Hough et al. 2013; Tankebe 2013).

Second, most of the research on perceived legitimacy and the

process-based model of regulation is based on data from a handful

of developed nations. The few studies that have tested the model in

other sociopolitical contexts have produced mixed results, thus

raising questions about the universality of the structure and content

of perceived legitimacy, as well as its connections with related

concepts.

The present study seeks to address two issues: the lack of

conceptual consensus in the field and the limited amount of

research in developing nations. We aim to clarify the nature and

structure of the perceived legitimacy of law and legal authorities,

testing the fit of a dominant conceptual model and contrasting it

with alternative models arising from recent conceptual and empiri-

cal challenges. The data used for this analysis come from Trinidad

and Tobago, a small twin-island developing nation in the eastern

Caribbean. This study contributes to a large and growing body of

research in criminology and sociolegal studies on the meaning of

perceived legitimacy and its relationships with other key concepts.

It also contributes to the small but important body of research on

procedural justice and legitimacy in developing and postcolonial

countries (Kochel et al. 2013; Reisig and Lloyd 2009; Tankebe

2008a, 2009).

Conceptualizing Legitimacy and Related Concepts

The concept of legitimacy has a lengthy history in social and

political philosophy. As Jost and Major (2001: 4) note, “it is now a

well-established fact in sociology and political science that leaders

and authorities are effective to the extent that they are perceived as

having legitimate authority and acting in accordance with prevail-

ing norms of appropriate conduct.” Legitimate authorities are

those institutions, regimes, or individuals whose laws, edicts,

or directives are perceived as “desirable, proper, or appropriate

within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs,

and definitions” (Suchman 1995: 574). Modern thinking about

legitimacy has been shaped heavily by Weber, whose vital contribu-

tion was the notion that legitimate authority generates compliance

by inspiring in people “an internal sense of moral obligation” (Herd

1999: 387; Weber 1918/1968).

Within criminology and sociolegal studies, arguably the most

influential scholarship on procedural justice and legitimacy is the

Johnson, Maguire, & Kuhns 949