Police legitimacy and approval of vigilante violence: The significance of anger
| Author | Muhammad Asif |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806221101369 |
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Police legitimacy and approval
of vigilante violence: The
significance of anger
Muhammad Asif
Bahauddin Zakariya University, Pakistan
Abstract
Most of the previous studies on vigilante violence suggest that people employ vigilante
violence instrumentally to compensate for a lack of state monopoly on violence and
the state’s illegitimacy in controlling crime. This study, however, highlights the signifi-
cance of emotions—most notably anger—in explaining approval of vigilante violence.
A cross-sectional study was conducted at six Pakistani universities with a sample of
500 students recruited through online surveys. The results of the regression models
show that police legitimacy and trait anger independently predict approval of vigilante
violence both directly and indirectly via righteous anger. Thus, the findings suggest
that people who are easily angered and who perceive the police as corrupt and proced-
urally unjust feel righteous anger and are likely to approve of vigilante violence.
Keywords
Legitimacy, Pakistan, policing, righteous anger, trait anger, vigilante violence
Introduction
In recent decades, scholars have been investigating vigilante violence, defined as “taking
the law into one’s own hands”(Rosenbaum and Sederberg, 1974: 542). Vigilante vio-
lence might begin with slapping and punching and escalate to more intense extralegal
punishment of the offender (Adinkrah, 2005; Bateson, 2021). A predominant research
tradition relates acts of vigilante violence to the weakness, absence or illegitimacy of
Corresponding author:
Muhammad Asif, Department of Sociology, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan; Department of
Sociology, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Email: masif786@bzu.edu.pk; m.asif@uva.nl
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(2) 305–325
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13624806221101369
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the state or police in the eyes of the public (Haas et al., 2012; Jackson et al., 2013; Nivette,
2016; Tankebe, 2009). According to this approach, when people perceive the state/police
as illegitimate or lacking the capacity to control crime, they create an alternate, self-help
response to exert social control (Black, 1983; Senechal de la Roche, 1996). However,
another theoretical approach posits anger itself as a factor in explaining support for vigi-
lante violence (Asif and Weenink, 2022; Silke, 2001). Empirical evidence supporting this
hypothesis is limited (García-Ponce et al., 2019). Anger has been largely ignored as an
explanatory factor, particularly in relation to approval of vigilante violence. Therefore,
this study seeks to extend the research on approval of vigilante violence by considering
how such approval (namely, of the beating and/or lynching of alleged offenders) relates
to anger. Anger is categorized into trait anger (a general disposition of experiencing
anger) and righteous anger (a moral anger that stems from violation of core moral
values), which will be illustrated further below. This study examines three relationships.
First, this article examines the effect of police legitimacy on the approval of vigilante vio-
lence. Second, it examines whether righteous anger mediates the effect of police legitim-
acy on the approval of vigilante violence. Third, it examines whether righteous anger
mediates the effect of trait anger on the approval of vigilante violence.
The study was conducted at six public-sector Pakistani universities. The rationale for
choosing Pakistani university students was as follows. Tankebe and Asif’s (2016) findings
from three neighborhoods in Lahore suggested widespread support for vigilante violence in
Pakistan. According to their work, approximately 71% of the sampled heads of household
believed that taking the law into one’s own hands to punish a perceived offender is appropriate
if the public perceives the police as unable to control crime, and 60% of those sampled would
not condemn the killing of violent robbers by the public. By engaging in vigilante violence,
people choose to forgo the use of formal legal procedures for dispute resolution. In democratic
societies, these procedures are founded on the principle of the rule of law—theideathatsus-
pects are innocent until proven otherwise by a lawfully constituted authority. Supportfor vigi-
lante violence is therefore an important indicator of people’s commitment to due p rocess, the
rule of law and human rights. University students are prospective elites. Some will go on to
occupy key positions in society. Furthermore, their attitudes toward vigilante violence can
offer insight into their current commitment to the rule of law. Moreover, vigilante acts some-
times involve university students. For example, on 13 April 2017, a group of students at Abdul
Wali Khan University Mardan lynched a fellow student on campus after accusing him of
posting blasphemous (derogatory remarks about religion) content on social media. There is,
therefore, merit in focusing on this particular group. Thus, online surveys were administered
to a total of 500 respondents. This study contributes to the existing literature on approval of
vigilante violence by exploring whether police legitimacy and trait anger independently and
directly predict approval of vigilante violence or whether their effects are mediated by right-
eous anger. The following section further elaborates on the historical and sociolegal contextof
vigilante violence in Pakistan.
Vigilante violence in Pakistan: A contextual overview
Vigilante violence is not specific to Pakistan; present or past acts of vigilante violence can be
identified across most countries (Adinkrah, 2005; Baker, 2002; Brundage, 1993; Senechal
306 Theoretical Criminology 27(2)
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