Holding Mayors Accountable? Police Brutality and Mayoral Approval in US Cities

• In Event: The Politics of Policing: Partisanship, Race, and Law Enforcement in the City

Abstract

Does police performance affect mayoral approval? Do citizens hold mayors accountable when they are dissatisfied with the police? Despite the established body of research on executive approval, little is known about how public opinion on a particular bureaucratic branch - police department in this case - affects mayoral leadership. On the one hand, built on the “performance model,” past research suggests that positive evaluation on police performance tends to boost mayoral approval. On the other hand, recent incidents on police violence challenge this straightforward relationship. Not only is public opinion on police racially polarized, but mayors often promise to address racial discrimination and reform the police department. In this paper, I revisit the two models – performance and race models - using two most recent surveys in New York City and Chicago. Results find significant differences between the two cities: While police performance positively affects mayoral approval in Chicago, it is inversely related in New York City. Furthermore, racial identity plays a significant but different role in associating police performance and mayoral approval in the two cities. I argue that such divergent responses rest upon the historical and structural relationship between police and the executive leadership of a city. In cities with centralized executive power, such as Chicago, citizens will hold the mayor accountable for police performance. In contrast, in cities with a diffuse political system, as in New York City, citizens may not directly hold the mayor accountable for police performance, as the two parties often clashed over fiscal and political issues. I support this argument by analyzing historical documents and new coverage of police and mayor in the two cities. Content analysis of the cities’ two prominent newspapers – Chicago Tribune and New York Times - shows that newspapers highlight different aspects of police and mayors in the two cities, affecting citizens’ understanding of the police-mayor relationship. This paper concludes that police brutality and democratic accountability should be understood in the context of a city’s history.

Author

• Min Hee Go, Ewha Woman's University