ABSTRACT
Numerous studies – mostly conducted in the US – have treated trust, legitimacy, cooperation and compliance as individual attributes and psychological mechanisms (for example, Tyler and Huo 2002; Sunshine and Tyler 2003a; Tyler 2006a, 2006b; Tyler and Fagan 2008; Bradford et al. 2009a; Murphy et al. 2009; Jackson et al. 2011; Murphy and Cherney 2012). Thus far, however, no study has addressed the importance of neighbourhood context on police legitimacy, leaving an important gap in the literature on the possibly socially situated nature of this phenomenon. Might police legitimacy be shaped by the context and culture that is rooted at the level of the neighbourhood?
