Symbolic Representation, Expectancy Disconfirmation, and Citizen Complaints Against Police

• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Euipyo Lee,Sean Nicholson-Crotty
• DOI: 10.1177/02750740211034427
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/02750740211034427

American Review of Public Administration

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/02750740211034427

journals.sagepub.com/home/arp

Article

Introduction

Scholars have long debated the degree to which representa-

tion of a group in government increases the perceived legiti-

macy of government action among members (see, for

example, Pitkin, 1967). This symbolic representation has

been identified as a potentially positive impact of descriptive

representation that does not require a change in behavior on

the part of bureaucrats or the relatively narrow set of circum-

stances under which active representation can occur.

However, work specifically examining policing has offered

mixed conclusions regarding symbolic representation. On

one hand, some authors suggest that citizens do view police

actions as more legitimate when the force is more descrip-

tively representative of their group (see, for example,

Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009). On the other hand, other

work finds that the race of the officer with which they inter-

act does not influence Black citizens’ perceptions of mis-

treatment by police officers or the degree to which they view

police actions as legitimate (Epp et al., 2014).

This inconsistency suggests that the importance of sym-

bolic representation in the area of policing remains unre-

solved and existing evidence does not give clear guidance as

to whether Black citizens evaluate the legitimacy of encoun-

ters with police differently when they share the race of the

officer. Drawing on Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory

(EDT) for guidance, we develop the argument that symbolic

representation may not be as likely in the context of policing,

or in other places where expectations about the behavior and

impact of minority bureaucrats are very high.

We test related expectations in analyses of more than

2,000 individual citizen complaints against police from

Indianapolis, IN; Cincinnati, OH; Wichita, KS; and

Baltimore, MD, over a period of 4 years. These cities vary

considerably in terms of size, force diversity, crime rates

and, in the case of Baltimore, region. Symbolic representa-

tion would suggest that Black citizens would be less likely

to complain about the behavior of Black officers because

of improved trust and perceived legitimacy (Riccucci &

Van Ryzin, 2017).

Understanding whether this is actually the case is cru-

cial to determining the potential efficacy of a frequently

proposed policing reform: increasing the number of

minority officers as a way to improve poor relationships

between police and communities of color. Our results sug-

gest that the efficacy of such reforms may be limited

because complaints against Black officers are as or even

more likely to be filed by Black citizens. We conclude

1034427ARPXXX10.1177/02750740211034427The American Review of Public AdministrationLee and Nicholson-Crotty

research-article2021

1Indiana University Bloomington, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sean Nicholson-Crotty, Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and

Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington,

IN 47405, USA.

Email: seanicho@indiana.edu

Symbolic Representation, Expectancy

Disconfirmation, and Citizen Complaints

Against Police

Euipyo Lee1 and Sean Nicholson-Crotty1

Abstract

The theory of symbolic representation expects that citizens will view the actions of government as more legitimate when

administrators share their characteristics. Although there is support for this assertion in some service areas, the evidence in

policing is mixed. We draw on Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory to develop the expectation that policing is an area where

we may be unlikely to see a positive relationship between representation and positive citizen perceptions of government

officials. We test this expectation in an individual-level analysis of citizen complaints against police from four American cities

between 2014 and 2017. The results suggest that, all else equal, complaints against Black officers are as or more likely to be

filed by Black citizens than by citizens of other races. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for

both the study of representative bureaucracy and for the management of police citizen interactions.

Keywords

Representative bureaucracy, symbolic representation, expectancy disconfirmation theory, citizen complaints

2022, Vol. 52(1) 36–45