Objectives:

To assess whether the relationship between legitimacy and police empowerment is sensitive to the operationalization of legitimacy, and whether the effects of legitimacy and its components on empowerment are invariant. Empowerment is examined in the context of police militarization—public support for the discretionary use of surplus military equipment by law enforcement.

Method:

Using a national sample of 702 American adults and a series of ordinary least squares regressions, the direct and interactive effects of legitimacy and its components on empowerment are examined.

Results:

The composite measure of legitimacy, as well as its individual components, each exert direct effects on police empowerment. Instrumental factors have persisting, albeit weaker, effects relative to normative factors. Interaction terms between the composite legitimacy measure or its components and sociodemographic characteristics were not statistically significant. In short, the effects of legitimacy and its components on empowerment appear invariant.

Conclusions:

Findings provide additional evidence of the generality of Tyler’s process–based model and extend these considerations to the burgeoning literature on public empowerment of police.

中文翻译：

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合法性的影响及其组成部分是否不变？操作性与阳光和泰勒赋权假说的一般性

目标：

评估合法性和赋予警察权力之间的关系是否对合法性的实施敏感，以及合法性及其组成部分对授权的影响是否不变。在警察军事化的背景下对赋权进行了检查，这是公众对执法机构随意使用剩余军事装备的支持。

方法：

使用702名美国成年人的全国样本和一系列普通的最小二乘回归，检验了合法性及其对赋权的直接和互动影响。

结果：

合法性的综合衡量标准及其各个组成部分，均直接影响警察的赋权。相对于规范性因素，工具性因素的影响持续存在，尽管较弱。合法性综合措施或其组成部分与社会人口统计学特征之间的相互作用条件在统计学上不显着。简而言之，合法性及其对赋权的影响似乎是不变的。

结论：

研究结果为泰勒基于过程的模型的普遍性提供了更多证据，并将这些考虑因素扩展到了有关警察公共赋权的新兴文献中。