Dominant group backlash? Majority responses to minority participation in the police

Matthew Nanes
Additional contact information
Matthew Nanes: Department of Political Science, Saint Louis University

Journal of Peace Research, 2025, vol. 62, issue 1, 36-51

Abstract: Security sector reform often involves integrating marginalized groups into the police. Extensive discussion surrounds the benefits of inclusion to the marginalized group, but we know little about impacts on the dominant group. I argue that exposure to out-group police can increase dominant group civilians’ trust in the out-group, opening the door for further reforms and increasing the likelihood of peace. I explore dominant group citizens’ responses to out-group police officers in Israel. First, using a survey experiment, I find no evidence that exposure to Arab (marginalized) police officers leads to backlash by Jewish (dominant) civilians. Then, drawing on multiple surveys and panel data on the identity of officers at every station over six years, I find that exposure to Arab police is associated with increased trust in Arabs among Jews. This trust extends to both everyday situations like willingness to live next door to an Arab and to beliefs about Arabs’ intentions to commit political violence. Collectively, these results contradict fears that backlash by the dominant group might spoil peace, opening the door for police integration as an important part of peace processes.

Keywords: ethnic politics; Israel; Israeli-Palestinian conflict; peace processes; police (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00223433231200921 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:62:y:2025:i:1:p:36-51

DOI: 10.1177/00223433231200921

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Peace Research from Peace Research Institute Oslo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().