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Can Light Contact with the Police Motivate Political Participation? Evidence from Traffic Stops

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2022

Leah Christiani Open the ORCID record for Leah Christiani [Opens in a new window]  and
Kelsey Shoub
Leah Christiani*
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA
Kelsey Shoub
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: christiani@utk.edu
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Abstract

Harsh, highly intrusive, personal contact with the criminal justice system has been shown to politically demobilize, but it is unclear whether less intrusive forms of police contact have any political effects. As the modal type of involuntary police–citizen contact is less invasive and more routine (e.g., a traffic stop), it is critical to understand the ramifications of lighter forms of contact. We argue that, unlike harsh police contact, light, personal, police contact can mobilize individuals, under certain circumstances. When a negative encounter with the police—even if it is minor—runs counter to prior expectations, people experiencing the contact are mobilized to take political action. Using 3 years of observational data and an original survey experiment, we demonstrate that individuals who receive tickets or are stopped by the police are more likely to participate in politics. These effects are most pronounced for individuals with positive evaluations of the police, often White respondents.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , November 2022 , pp. 385 - 405
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

The authors contributed equally. The authors would like to thank Dave Attewell, Frank Baumgartner, Lucy Britt, Derek Epp, Eroll Kuhn, Andreas Jozwiak, Tim Ryan, Katelyn Stauffer, Emily Wager, Hannah Walker, and the reviewers and editor for their thoughtful feedback on this paper.

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