Theorizing Second-Order Legitimacy: Explaining Democratic and Republican Views on Defund the Police

• In Event: Sociology of Law Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Sociology of Law Section Roundtables: Table 1 — Policing, Misconduct, and Reform

Abstract

Existing scholarship, usefully elaborated mostly by organizational research, emphasizes the role of apparent consensus and the organizational maintenance of such appearance in upholding legitimacy. Yet, a core task for a insurgent movement is to disrupt this apparent legitimacy of the existing arrangement. How do social movement targets make sense of these challenges to the apparent consensus of legitimacy? In particular, emergent research on policing reform centers the organizational work that police and its allies undertake to restore legitimacy after the decade-long challenge by the Black Lives Matter movements. Yet, the success of these legitimizing moves is frequently presumed, rather than demonstrated and explained. This paper draws upon original interviews with a multiracial group of 65 Democratic and Republican local elected officials and local party activists—those most frequently making and influencing criminal justice policies—and explores how they evaluate Black Lives Matter’s challenge to police legitimacy, particularly as encapsulated by the policy demand to “Defund the Police.” Consistent with existing surveys, I find that, even though Democrats almost uniformly validated Black Lives Matter’s characterization of police illegitimacy, most rejected the call to defund the police. Surprisingly, however, most insisted that they do not necessarily object to the idea of redistributing police funding, but they rejected the phrasing of the demand as overly divisive. In this paper, I endeavor to theorize “second-order legitimacy”—or how people assess other’s legitimacy belief. I suggest that, layered upon assessments of the validity of other’s claims is the evaluation of whether the claimants have the standing to expect legitimacy. This paper advances existing research on social movements and legitimacy, as well as on police reform and legitimacy.

Author

• Jesse Yeh, Northwestern University