Urban Decision Making and Police Salaries

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2005 37: 103 State and Local Government Review
Miles Cooper
Urban Decision Making and Police Salaries
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103 Vol. 37, No. 2, 2005
Vol. 37, No. 2 (2005): 10315
P
OLICY OUTPUT studies address a prin-
cipal question in political science:
why does the degree of policy effort
vary across governmental units? For example,
numerous studies over the last 30 years in the
elds of public nance, public administration,
labor economics, and political science have
tried to identify the variables that predict pub-
lic employee salaries, including police salaries,
as one form of policy output. Regardless of the
particular policy area, the purpose of explain-
ing intergovernmental policy output variation
is to reveal something about politics or the
process of decision making. Adding to the
body of knowledge about urban governmental
decision making, this study develops a policy
output model to explain intercity variation
in police salaries using a set of economic, de-
mographic, and political variables as potential
policy determinants.
The subject of police salaries has waned
recently despite the many interconnected,
important political and substantive issues
surrounding it; this research revives it.
1
The
recent dearth of research is partially due to
the success of the early studies. That is, cu-
mulatively, the issue of police salary variation
with regard to identifying a set of explanatory
variables has been well studied. However, the
research has been disjointed because of the
cross-disciplinary nature of the topic. For
example, econometric studies using supply
and demand have focused on economic vari-
ables, whereas labor economics has focused on
unionization. The reasons for the variability of
entry-level police salaries have not been stud-
ied comprehensively, especially when couched
as a political question. Thus, the importance
of this study goes beyond the practical import
that municipal and police budgets matter to
city leaders because of the perennial battles
over the competing goals of limiting taxes and
delivering effective services.
Review and Approach
Although the literature on the factors affect-
ing public wages is extensive and diverse, the
underlying theoretical goal of the studies has
been to identify environmental conditions
and political attributes that, as variables, af-
fect collective decisions or policy outputs.
Methodologically, then, policy output stud-
ies, including those involving salaries, are
inherently at the aggregate level. Their unit
of analysis is the governmental entity rather
than the identication of the factors that pre-
dict the decisions of individual policymak-
ers (Hurley and Hill 2003; Kingdon 1977).
The multitude of explanatory variables used
Miles Cooper
104
Cooper
in macrolevel output studies can be divided
into several fundamental categories, includ-
ing economic, demographic, and political.
Each of the categories has a set of variables
and attendant hypotheses used to explain
municipal policy outputs, one of which has
been police salaries. For example, using an
econometric approach, some studies have
argued that economic conditions, such as a
citys scal capacity and private-sector wage
rates, serve as constraints on decision makers
in determining policy outputs (Jennings and
Borrelli 1994; Hall and Vanderporten 1977).
Focusing on needs created from sociological
conditions, other studies have used demo-
graphic variables such as region, population,
and crime as determinants of policy outputs
(Gallagher and Veglahn 1987; Jennings and
Borrelli 1994; Kearney 1979; Lewin and
Keith 1976). Finally, presuming that politics
and policy preferences affect decisions about
policy outputs, other studies have identied
several political variables, such as collective
bargaining (Gallagher and Veglahn 1987;
Jennings and Borrelli 1994; Kearney 1979;
Lewin and Keith 1976; Spizman 1980; Valetta
1993; Zhao and Lovrich 1997) and munici-
pal political structure (Dye and Garcia 1978;
Lineberry and Fowler 1967; Morgan and Pe-
lissero 1980).
With such an extensive literature and num-
ber of explanatory variables, ndings regard-
ing whether the variables affect salaries and to
what degree are inconsistent. The mixed re-
sults stem in part from methodological prob-
lems that have been identied thoroughly in
reviews of the policy output literature: poor
operationalization of variables, weak develop-
ment of hypotheses, decient identication of
the relative importance of political and envi-
ronmental variables, and poor development
of environmental variables as part of a theory
and a political process (Boyne 1985; Huber,
Ragin, and Stephens 1993).
To overcome these problems and help im-
prove the understanding of urban decision
making as a political process, a multipart ap-
proach has been employed in this study, which
expands its scope beyond previous research.
First, in order to improve the operational-
ization of the independent variables, a set of
hypotheses is explicitly developed, in the con-
text of extensive critical examination of the
variables used in previous studies. (Because of
the multidisciplinary nature of the literature,
the critique is limited to the operationaliza-
tion of particular variables and does not assess
the research design or theoretical approach.)
Simultaneously, a rationale is presented for
the potential effects of each independent vari-
able on police salary as an output. Finally,
following a prescription by Boyne (1985), the
variables are presented using the model of a
political system (Easton 1971; Almond and
Powell 2000). The multipart construct model
enables classifying each variable according
to its respective component (i.e., environ-
ment, input, policy makers, and output) to
help determine its relative importance and
causal sequence in explaining policy outputs.
Ultimately, the goal of presenting the variables
in this framework is to continue to test the
competing theories regarding whether urban
decision making is inuenced by economic
constraints as a form of economic determin-
ism (Hwang and Gray 1991, 280), is driven
by economic constraints or pressure politics,
or is affected by some combination of the two
(Beach 1995; Clark and Ferguson 1983; Gray
1976; Peterson 1981; Wong 1988).
Hypotheses and Variables
Environmental
Assuming a positive relationship between the
ability to pay for services, including police sal-
aries, and the extent of municipal services, the
concept of scal capacity is used. However,
previous studies have had several problems
in their development and use of this concept.
First, scal capacity as a concept has two dis-
tinct dimensions: wealth and revenue. Wealth
is conceived as the economic well-being of
the city, which can be viewed as the potential
capacity for a governmental entity to raise
revenue. Revenue, on the other hand, is the
105 Vol. 37, No. 2, 2005
degree to which a city extracts that potential
economic wealth.
A second problem with the use of scal
capacity to show a relationship between a
municipalitys level of services and salaries
is how to consistently operationalize scal
capacity. Fiscal capacity has been measured
using median family income (Hall and Van-
derporten 1977), per capita income (Spizman
1980), per capita tax (Jennings and Borrelli
1994), and per capita municipal expendi-
tures for police services (Zhao and Lovrich
1997). Not surprisingly, this use of multiple
measures to operationalize scal capacity
has produced different ndings. For exam-
ple, per capita income and median family
income affects salaries positively (Spizman
1980; Jennings and Borrelli 1994), but per
capita taxes do not (Zhao and Lovrich 1997).
Furthermore, income-based measures such
as per capita income or median family in-
come are problematic because they ignore
the fact that most revenue at the local level
is raised through property taxes, which are
not directly correlated to personal income.
To diminish the problems that arise from the
use of scal capacity, it is divided into wealth
and revenue, with distinct measures for each.
Wealth is measured using the median value
of owner-occupied housing units (as a non-
income measure) with median family income
included in the model to allow comparison
with the ndings of other studies that used it
(Smith and Lyons 1980). Likewise, revenue
is measured in two ways: per capita tax and
per capita city revenue.
Using salary competition as another vari-
able, it is hypothesized that higher private- or
public-sector salaries in the surrounding area
increase police salaries because job seekers
can consider better paying alternatives. Some
studies have examined private-sector profes-
sions to determine if competing salary sched-
ules of similar occupations affect public-sector
salaries. However, police have few positions
that are directly comparable to those in the
private sector. To overcome this problem, Hall
and Vanderporten (1977) argued that other
similarly paying jobs (rather than similarly
tasked jobs) may serve as alternatives for those
people considering law enforcement. They
found that differences among cities in median
income for male craftsmen correlated highly
with differences in police salaries, thereby
lending support to the conclusion that area
wages inuence each other. Previous studies
that have used manufacturing jobs to measure
salary competition are, however, inadequate
for use in todays job market. Those studies
presume that people who are considering the
police as a profession have only one type of
job alternative, i.e., manufacturing. However,
police today must have a level of job skills that
suggest other job options. Rather than relying
on comparison with other jobs, therefore, this
study uses the measure of per capita income as
an alternative, though it is vulnerable to the
criticism that it may be too broad.
City size measured as population, as a de-
mographic variable, has been posited to affect
police salaries and public-sector salaries gen-
erally (Quinn and McCormick 1980). More
specically, larger cities are expected to have
higher salaries, although the rationale for this
anticipated correlation has varied. Zhao and
Lovrich (1997) suggest that population is a
necessary control variable because other stud-
ies have shown it to be an explanatory variable.
Some studies suggest that population mat-
ters because of its effect on other intervening
variables, namely, labor quality, cost of liv-
ing, and unionization (Quinn and McCormik
1980). Conversely, others assert that there is
no compelling theoretical reason to include
population (Jennings and Borrelli 1994, 8)
and have omitted population as a variable in
their models. Regardless of the rationale, most
studies that have used population have shown
a strong bivariate association with salary (Hall
and Vanderporten 1977). Thus, city popula-
tion is used not because it is thought to be the
direct cause of increasing salaries but because
it has been used previously as a variable and
may have an indirect effect.
Population density and population growth
rate, as composite measures of population,
106
Cooper
have been used to create other causal vari-
ables with attendant hypotheses. Population
density has proved to be stronger than growth
rate in predicting police salary levels (Jen-
nings and Borrelli 1994), but the rationales
relating to these variables are weakly, if at all,
developed. Arguably, high-density and high-
growth cities produce greater conict and,
thus, disproportionately greater workloads
for police in terms of number of crimes or
calls for service. Assuming the latter hypoth-
esis about the relationship between density
and growth and workload is valid, a higher
pay rate can be proposed and justied because
the per-ofcer workload is heavier; that is,
ofcers deserve better pay if they have larger
workloads than their peers in smaller, less
densely populated cities.
2

Regardless of the strength of the relation-
ship between population density and work-
load, the effect of workload on salaries can
be measured directly, such as with calls for
service. None of the reviewed studies used
these data to capture workload. In this model,
workload is included as the central variable of
interest, measured using calls for service. The
population density and growth measures are
included for comparison with the ndings of
other studies. It is hypothesized that higher
population density, higher growth rates, and
higher workloads are associated positively
with higher police pay.
To the extent that politicians are respon-
sive to their constituencies, the intensity of
crime and its threat to the personal safety of
citizens ought to be reected in the degree
of policy effort demonstrated in either ag-
gregate spending or individual police sala-
ries.
3
Studies that have assessed the relation-
ship between crime and aggregate spending
found that crime rate is associated modestly
with higher police expenditures (Jackson
and Carroll 1981; Jones 1974; McPheters
and Stronge 1974).
4
A positive relationship
indicates that cities with greater crime are
responding with a policy effort in one of at
least two ways. Some higher-spending cities
may choose to hire more police; others may
choose to pay current ofcers more or, more
realistically, some combination of the two.
One rationale for paying more is that better
pay will attract better candidates, who will
then produce better individual work out-
comes and consequently achieve improved
agency outcomes (e.g., lower crime). Another
is that a higher-crime city is more dangerous
and thus requires better compensation for
ofcers exposed to greater risk.
5
Whatever
the particular rationale, the hypothesis is that
cities with greater crime have higher police
salaries (Hall and Vanderporten 1977; Jen-
nings and Borrelli 1994).
Political
As a broad concept, political culture refers to
citizens affective and normative political at-
titudes about government. Although political
culture is often considered to be part of the
larger social environment within which the
components of the political system reside,
this study uses political culture as part of the
input or demand component. Specically,
the political culture variable is designed to
capture a base attitude about governments
policy-effort role, which, in this case, is mani-
fest in the police funding effort; political cul-
ture as an attitudinal measure is meant to be
a political variable when conceived of as a
demand (albeit indirect) on decision makers.
Consequently, it is hypothesized that cities
in which government is expected to have a
greater role in solving problems will pay more
for services.
A citys political culture is measured using
Elazars (1966) state-level tripartite typology
of moralistic, traditionalistic, or individual-
istic cultures.
6
Political culture is measured
dichotomously based on the assertion that
moralistic states want more government and
that traditionalistic and individualistic states
want less government. Moralistic states are
principally in the West and are expected to
pay more for services than traditionalistic and
individualistic states. This measure is prob-
lematic because it is at the state level (rather
than city level) and the classications may
107 Vol. 37, No. 2, 2005
have lost legitimacy over time due to the high
degree of cross-state population migrations.
Despite the difculty in measuring political
culture, use of this variable is intended to be
an improvement on previous studies that ig-
nored it or merely used region as a potential
proxy measure.
7
A greater degree of bureau-
cracy in a government has been hypothesized
to increase policy outputs (Huber, Ragin,
and Stephens 1993), so professionalism and
agency size are two bureaucratic attributes
presented as potential explanatory variables
in this study. Professionalism as a concept im-
plies that the police are formalistic, efcient,
impartial, noncorrupt, comprehensive, and
differentiated with regard to their quantity
of services (Henderson 1975). A correlate
to these functional and structural attributes
presumes that the individual ofcers in these
more professional agencies are better-trained
ofcers. Thus, one hypothesis is that ofcers
in more professional agencies should be paid
better.
One measure designed to capture profes-
sionalism is an additive index that dichoto-
mously measures the presence of several
specialty units, such as homicide, drug en-
forcement, motorcycle, horse, and helicopter
units. Because these measures had a low de-
gree of association between them (Cronback
Alpha .38), the amount of eld training hours
was used as a single, albeit blunt, measure of
professionalism. Agencies with more hours
of entry-level ofcer training are expected
to have higher salary levels.
As a second bureaucratic attribute, agency
size was used to predict salary outputs, based
on the rationale that agency size is an indica-
tor of potential political power to inuence
decisions about policy outcomes. Zhao and
Lovrich (1997) employed agency size by us-
ing the number of ofcers to predict sup-
plemental benets such as shift-differential
pay and educational-incentive money. They
found that department size had very little ef-
fect on benet levels. Despite their negative
nding, agency size, measured as the number
of full-time sworn ofcers, was used in this
study to test whether agency size is related
positively to entry-level salary.
Many studies that have tried to explain
public-sector salaries have focused on the ef-
fect of collective bargaining, another politi-
cal variable.
8
Studies have hypothesized that
the negotiating process itself is efcacious as
a political process in translating the collec-
tive interest of police union members into
nancial benets. Other studies suggest that
unions can inuence the decisions of politi-
cians, who acknowledge the votes or political
support of employees with increased salary
benets (Love and Sulzer 1972; OBrian 1994;
Spizman 1980). Regardless of how collec-
tive bargaining translates employee demand
into higher public-sector salaries, numerous
studies have shown a strong positive relation-
ship across various professions. For example,
Gallagher (1978) demonstrated that bargain-
ing increased salaries for teachers. Similarly,
other studies (Gallagher and Veglahn 1987;
Jennings and Borrelli 1994; Kearney 1979;
Lewin and Keith 1976; Spizman 1980; Valetta
1993; Zhao and Lovrich 1997) have shown
that police agencies with collective bargain-
ing have salaries greater than those agencies
without it. Collective bargaining is measured
dichotomously, according to whether or not
the agency uses it (see Table 1).
Methodology and Data
Using several model specications with the
general linear model (using ordinary least
squares regression), 1997 entry-level salaries
were regressed against the environmental and
political variables. The analysis is cross-sec-
tional, but, to account for the effects of time
order, it is also lagged in that some of the data
forming the independent variables are from
years preceding the dependent variable. Ini-
tially, and ideally, the universe or population
of interest is all law enforcement agencies in
the United States, but the universe has been
circumscribed by the readily available second-
ary data sets. Specically, the scope is limited
to municipal police agencies (rather than in-
108
Cooper
cluding state police, sheriffs, and university
police) and to those cities with populations
over 25,000. Most of the law enforcement,
crime, and economic data for the variables are
drawn from three secondary sources, which
are used collectively as a sampling frame: the
1997 Law Enforcement Management and
Administrative Statistical Report (LEMAS)
(1999), the 1996 FBI Uniform Crime Reports
(UCR) (1997), and the 1994 U.S. Census
Bureaus County and City Data Book (1995).
9

After excluding cities with fewer than 25,000
inhabitants, data from these three sources,
which contains information on almost 4,000
cities, were merged to produce one usable
data set of approximately 1,200 cities. The
sample size was decreased further based on a
listwise deletion method that excluded cities
that did not contain the requisite data for all
of the variables used in the model.

Of course,
a data set with so many missing data resulted
in a large loss of cities as cases, raising serious
concerns about sample size and the repre-
sentativeness of the sample cities compared
with those that were excluded. Nonetheless,
comparing the univariate descriptive statis-
tics between the two groups of cities revealed
similar means and distributions, strengthen-
ing the generalizability of the sample.
Direct Effects Model
The results of the regression analysis for the
direct model using the battery of 16 inde-
pendent variables are presented in Table 2.
The ndings vary with regard to whether
the independent variables as hypothesized
are important in explaining the dependent
variable of entry-level police salaries. About
one-third of the proposed variables across
the environmental and political categories
are statistically signicant. Furthermore, the
regression coefcients show that several vari-
ables are substantively important in explain-
ing police salary variation.
The strongest variable in the battery of
the economic conditions of the city is wealth,
when measured as the median value of a hous-
ing unit. The wealth measure alone accounts
for more than half the variance while, sub-
stantively, the regression coefcient shows
that wealth strongly affects salary (as repre-
sented by a $482 salary difference for every
$10,000 difference in the median value of
a residence). Median family income, as an
alternative measure of city wealth, is not
signicant and correlates highly with other
variables, especially housing value. Although
multicollinearity potentially makes the pa-
rameter estimate unstable, the nding tenta-
Table 1. Variables Dened and Classied According to Political System Components
Environmental Variables Political Variables
Economic Demographic Input Structure
Wealth City size Political culture Agency size
median housing value 1996 population Elazars typology number of ofcers
median family income
Revenue Growth rate Bargaining Professionalism
per capita tax population 198092 presence of process training hours
per capita revenue
Salary Population density
per capita income people per square mile
Workload
number of calls per ofcer
Crime
crime index
murder
vehicle theft
109 Vol. 37, No. 2, 2005
tively indicates that housing value is a more
valid measure of city wealth than median
family income. The two revenue measures,
per capita revenue and per capita tax, are also
highly correlated, but neither are signicant.
Lastly, salary competition, measured as per
capita income, is not signicant with regard
to producing higher police salaries.
Crime, one of the most commonly used
demographic variables in police salary stud-
ies, also proves to be statistically signicant
in explaining salary. However, the ndings
varied with regard to which of the three crime
measures had an effect. The murder rate and
the overall seven-part crime index are not
signicant, but motor vehicle theft is signi-
cant. City size, measured as population, is
signicant even when controlling for some
of the stronger theoretical variables, such as
agency size, collective bargaining, and s-
cal capacity. However, its tolerance measure
is low (.053), meaning that most of its vari-
ance is explained by several of the other in-
dependent variables. Population density and
population growth rate, as correlate measures
of city size, are insignicant in predicting sal-
ary or even its presumed intervening variable
of workload. More directly, workload itself,
when measured as calls for service per ofcer,
is insignicant in explaining salary.
Among the political variables, political cul-
ture is signicant and substantively impor-
tant, which conrms Elazars thesis that citi-
zen attitudes about the scope of government
are relevant to policy outputs (Elazar 1966).
Specically, cities in moralistic states pay
$3,300 more in police salaries than do those
in nonmoralistic states. Collective bargain-
ing also proves to be a powerful predictor of
police salaries. While controlling for agency
size, the ndings indicate that police in agen-
cies that use collective bargaining earn about
$2,076 more than police in agencies that do
not use collective bargaining. As bureaucratic
Table 2. Police Salary Model
Category
Variable B Beta p-value
Environmental (economic)
Wealth 1 (median housing value) .0482 .516 .000
Wealth 2 (median family income) .0600 .072 .575
Revenue 1 (per capita tax) .0780 .091 .490
Revenue 2 (per capita revenue) 881.0000 .064 .628
Salary (per capita income) .1100 .053 .674
Environmental (demographic)
City size (population log 10) 9474.0000 .488 .018
Growth rate (population 198092 log 10) 173.0000 .013 .808
Population density (people per square mile log 10) 28.5000 .001 .987
Workload (calls per ofcer) .5050 .014 .792
Crime 1 (part 1 crime rate per 1,000) 22.9000 .086 .323
Crime 2 (murder rate per 1,000) 10.3000 .078 .295
Crime 3 (motor vehicle theft rate log 10) 7271.0000 .258 .000
Political (structure)
Political culture (moralistic) 3291.0000 .220 .005
Agency size (number of ofcers log 10) 9996.0000 .548 .017
Political (input)
Professionalism (eld training hours) 45.8500 .007 .920
Collective bargaining (presence of process) 2076.0000 .136 .024
Constant 13144.0000 .430
Adjusted R
2
= .688. N = 146.
Notes: The dependent variable is entry-level police salary. B is the unstandardized regression coefcient. Beta is the stan-
dardized regression coefcient. Signicance levels are two-tailed.
110
Cooper
attributes, agency size is signicant, but pro-
fessionalism is not.
Both environmental and political variables
are signicant, indicating a multicausal expla-
nation for policy outputs rather than a spuri-
ous model in which socioeconomic variables
negate political variables (see Figure 1). Thus,
the analysis helps to establish that politics
matters to policy outputs and that policy out-
puts are not determined solely by socioeco-
nomic conditions. Comparatively, three of
the signicant variables are environmental
(wealth, crime, and population), and three
are political (political culture, bargaining, and
agency size). However, a more sophisticated
method for determining the relative strength
of two categories of variables is to compare
the standardized regression coefcients (be-
tas), which are regression parameters that
account for the different units of measure.
Using this measure, the environmental and
political variables proved to be about equally
strong relative to one another, with wealth
making the environmental determinants cat-
egory slightly stronger (see Table 2). A third
method used to assess the relative strength
of the two groups of variables was to build
models for political or environmental vari-
ables alone and then to compare their F-tests,
which measure the overall signicance of the
regression equation. The results show that
both models are signicant at p < .000, in-
dicating that the two groups of variables are
equally powerful.
Indirect Effects Model
To test the strength of an indirect effects
model (Boyne 1985), a more sophisticated
but truncated analysis was conducted to ascer-
tain whether some of the variables proved to
be important when specied in a linear and
additive model that conforms to the sequen-
tial process. That is, in contrast to the direct
effects model that merely controls for other
variables, the indirect analysis uses a congu-
ration that views the effect of the variables
when they are structured according to the
arrangement in the political system model.
Specically, the models interplay of variables
assumes that the environmental conditions
affect the policy outputs when mediated
through political components, such as de-
mand, political structure, and decision mak-
ers. Causally, then, the arrangement presumes
that the environmental variables may have
an indirect effect on salaries through their
causal inuence on the political or interven-
ing variables. Ultimately, the purpose of the
analysis is to determine if the environmental
variables indirect effects might improve the
models overall explanatory power over the
direct-effects approach, thereby lending sup-
port to using the indirect model as an alterna-
tive construct for assessing policy making in
policy output studies (see Figure 2).
One statistical technique that can identify
complex relationships regarding the potential
indirect and additive effects of variables is
Envlronmenl
Pollllcol
Pollcy oulpul
Pollcy oulpul
Pollllcol
Envlronmenl
-ULTICAUSAL-ODEL 3PURIOUS-ODEL
Figure 1. Multicausal and Spurious Models
111 Vol. 37, No. 2, 2005
path analysis.
10
Using this method, a more
complex, indirect structural model was de-
veloped by creating and testing several simul-
taneous regression equations. First, salary,
as the dependent variable, was regressed on
the signicant political variables, which are
political culture and bargaining. Next, the
two political variables, collective bargaining
and political culture, were regressed on the
full group of environmental variables, which
are considered exogenous in the model. Using
all of the environmental variables certainly
conforms procedurally with the attempt to
test the sequential nature suggested by the
political system model, but not all of the en-
vironmental variables produce strong a priori
predictors of collective bargaining and politi-
cal culture, as they do for salary. Nevertheless,
the model containing the respective path coef-
cients (standard regression coefcients) and
equations error components (U or 1R
2
) are
presented in Figure 3.
11
An assessment of the
variables relationships revealed that about
one-third of the environmental variables have
a signicant and substantive effect. Some of
the environmental variables that were not
signicant in the direct model but that are
important in the indirect model (based on
their statistical signicance) are family in-
come, per capita income, population density,
and murder rate.
Conclusion
The ndings of this study provide some evi-
dence to support conclusions about the pro-
cess of urban politics and collective decision
making. Methodologically, the city was used
as the unit of analysis. The study employed
a group of environmental and political vari-
ables that were presented using the model of
a political system and couched within a policy
output approach. The environmental vari-
ables are those economic and demographic
conditions that either enable or constrain the
decisions of a city and its politicians to pro-
vide the degree of policy effort that it does.
In contrast, the political variables are those
attitudinal and structural attributes that affect
decision making. The design and ndings en-
able some tentative conclusions that can be
drawn about which of these city-level condi-
tions affect the collective decision making of
city ofcials about police salaries. In addition,
the various model specications and the sta-
tistical analysis provide evidence about which
group of environmental and political variables
affect police salary as a policy outcome and in
which causal sequence they occur.
Overall, the model is strong in its explana-
tory power. It reveals that, individually, some
environmental or contextual variables are
signicant. Specically, scal capacity and
crime, when measured as the median value of
housing units and motor vehicle theft, respec-
tively, are strong factors that directly affect
police salaries, indicating that decisions are
determined, in part, by the capacity to raise
revenue and desire to respond to problems.
Conversely, several environmental variables
are not signicant, indicating that the condi-
Envlronmenlol vorlobles Pollllcol vorlobles Culpul
Enlrylevel solory
$IRECT%FFECT
)NDIRECT%FFECTS
Figure 2. Effect Models
112
Cooper
tions that they represent do not affect policy
outcomes or the decisions that go into them.
For example, as indirect measures of need,
population density, population growth, and
calls for service do not have a direct effect on
salary. Further, surrounding-area salary levels
do not seem to inuence police salaries, indi-
cating that city ofcials decisions on salary
are independent of the supply and demand of
labor. Lastly, although a more sophisticated
public nance model is necessary to fully un-
derstand the relationships between revenue,
income, and spending, the ndings indicate
that cities with higher tax rates and revenue
effort do not necessarily translate this money
into higher salaries for police ofcers. In sum,
the results suggest that while cities may not
respond automatically to many types of en-
vironmental conditions (when considered as
resources or needs), their policy output deci-
sions are inuenced strongly by two condi-
tions: wealth and crime.
Several political variables also affect police
salaries. First, political cultures positive ef-
fect shows that the publics general attitudes
about the scope of government matter in
determining public policy outcomes. This
nding indicates that urban governments, as
policy-making entities, are responsive to the
publics general political dispositions, at least
on the issue of police spending. Collective
bargaining is also an important variable that
represents the political process occurring be-
tween police negotiators and city politicians,
who, as political actors, try to persuade one
another about appropriate salaries. Conse-
quently, the fact that agencies with collective
bargaining have higher salaries suggests that
arranging the decision-making process into
one in which public employees, as political
participants, have a formal role inuences
political decisions and affects outcomes.
Considered together, the particular nd-
ings provide evidence for making other broad
Medlon houslng volue .0P8 5 = .Z34 [P < .001|
Medlon lomlly lncome .31**
Per copllo lox .03
Per copllo revenue .10P
Per copllo lncome .382*
Clly populollon .03Z
Growlh role .018
Populollon denslly .3**
Clllcer worklood .0Z
= .Z4 [P <.001|
Crlme role .0P
Murder .233**
Vehlcle lhell .1P
Medlon houslng volue .41***
Medlon lomlly lncome .330***
Per copllo lox .1P3
Per copllo revenue .11
Per copllo lncome .3PP**
Clly populollon .08 Pollllcol cullure .218 [P < .001|
Growlh role .0ZZ
Populollon denslly .0P3
Clllcer worklood .03Z
Crlme lndex .188
Murder .141 5 = .04 [P < 000|
Vehlcle lhell .30***
Solory
Collecllve borgolnlng .4Z8
%RROR#OMPONENT 0ATH#OEFFICIENT
Figure 3. Path Analysis Results
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
113 Vol. 37, No. 2, 2005
conclusions about the policy-making process.
The direct model specication shows that both
political variables and environmental variables
matter to policy outputs. Causally, this result
means that the argument about economic
constraints or determinism has merit because
economic and social conditions do constrain
and determine policy output decisions mech-
anistically. However, policy outputs are not
explained solely by environmental variables;
political variables also matter. That is, policy-
makers use their discretion to some degree in
that they respond to political pressures. The
indirect model specifying the political variables
as intervening between environmental vari-
ables and policy outputs modestly improves
the models explanatory power. Although the
number of explanatory variables constituting
the respective components of the political sys-
tem to test this model is limited, the results
suggest that the more complex additive model
of policy making may have some merit.
If police salaries are important because
of their potential effect on outcomes such
as the quality of police service and crime re-
duction, then the political process of deter-
mining salaries is important. To this end, this
studys model incorporates a set of variables
borrowed from a variety of disciplines to ex-
plain how the variables affect political deci-
sions about police salary outputs.
Future research might improve on the
model and execution of the research design
presented here. Specically, some variables
may need to be added, and some existing con-
cepts may need to be measured differently.
For example, public opinion toward crime and
government (e.g., trust and efcacy) and gov-
ernmental structure (e.g., city manager versus
mayor) could be added, and a better measure
for political culture at the city level and for
scal capacity could be developed. Finally,
although the results suggest that some of the
environmental variables may have an indirect
effect on salaries, a much more complex struc-
tural equation model should be developed to
assess their effects in more detail by using
their specic coefcients and correlations.
Miles Cooper is an assistant professor at Geor-
gia Southwestern State University. His current
research addresses bureaucratic performance, citi-
zen satisfaction with police, and public opinion.
Notes
1. A search of political science, economic, and labor
journal articles using ProQuest and JSTOR conrmed
that only a few studies addressed police salaries spe-
cically, most of which occurred in the 1980s and
early 1990s. The public nance literature on wages
in other professions is extensive and diverse with
regard to the number of potential variables, but this
literature waned after a spate of studies that occurred
in the 1970s. Consequently, the literature cited is
older, and this article seeks to revisit and revive the
issue in a new way with regard to politics explicitly.
2. Workload at the individual level may not be higher
for ofcers in these high-density and high-growth
cities even if the citys workload or crime rate is
higher, perhaps because these cities have more of-
cers as a response to the greater workload.
3. Crime is measured using three variables that are
based on the 1996 Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) Uniform Crime Reports (1997), which collects
data from citizen reports to law enforcement agen-
cies. One measure is the Part I index, which consists
of seven types of crimes.

The seven Part 1 crimes are
murder, rape, robbery, theft, motor vehicle theft, ag-
gravated assault, and burglary.

Several of the specic
crimes have well-documented reliability problems
with regard to intercity comparisons because the
reporting rate for crimes varies considerably across
cities. The crimes of murder and auto theft are gen-
erally more reliable in that they are reported at con-
sistent rates, so they are included as additional crime
measures (Grove, Hughes, and Geerkin 1985).
4. Some sophisticated studies have tried to discern
whether crime affects expenditures or whether ex-
penditures affect crime by using a two-stage regres-
sion methodology to control for simultaneity. For
example, McPheters and Stronge (1974) modeled
crime rate against police spending and spending
against crime rate, nding that crime increased
spending more than spending reduced crime.
5. Whether or not there is a relationship between city
crime rate and danger to police, crime rate as a po-
tential cause of danger to police may be translated
into higher salaries if this relationship is believed to
be true by salary negotiators. Even if the latter rela-
tionship is tenuous or unproved empirically, danger
alone, when measured more directly such as by us-
ing the number of ofcers killed or injured, may be
posited and considered in bargaining negotiations.
Stuart and McPheters (1983) looked at the effect of
danger on salaries by formally measuring the risk
of death, nding that cities with a higher risk (or
frequency of ofcer death) had higher salaries.
114
Cooper
6. Elazars development of political culture typology
prompted scores of follow-up studies to conrm or
refute its existence. Using more rigorous methodolo-
gies (e.g., attitudinal surveys) than Elazars religious
and ethnic attributes to discern political attitudes,
numerous studies have conrmed that Elazar was
accurate in his categorization of the states respective
political cultures (Lieske 1993). The following states
were coded moralistic: Arizona, California, Colo-
rado, Idaho, Kansas, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, South
Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin.
7. Some of these studies found that western states paid
12 percent to 46 percent more for services than did
states in other regions of the country (Lewin and
Keith 1976; Zhao and Lovrich 1997).
8. A group of studies about the effects of collective bar-
gaining were conducted in the 1980s in the wake of
increased unionization of public-sector employees.
9. The U.S. Department of Justice commissions LEMAS
every three to four years, and the survey sample is
drawn from all 19,000 U.S. law enforcement agen-
cies. The LEMAS surveys all law enforcement agen-
cies with more than 100 ofcers and draws a sample
for agencies with fewer than 100 ofcers. The 1997
LEMAS response rate was approximately 95 percent,
resulting in a nal sample of over 3,000 agencies.
The UCR is conducted every year across a variety
of geographical units of analysis, such as counties,
standard metropolitan statistical areas, and cities
with populations over 10,000. The report contains
the number of crime incidents (by crime type) re-
ported to police. It includes only cities with more
than 10,000 peoplein 1996, approximately 2,700
cities or police agencies. The nal data source is the
1994 County and City Data Book; it taps 220 demo-
graphic, economic, and social items for all U.S. cities
over 25,000, a table of 1,070 cities.
10. Path analysis is a form of causal modeling using
regression parameters to map presumed relation-
ships between variables, some of which may have
an indirect effect on the dependent variable. The
method uses a priori expectations about relationships
to assess and test the degree to which the exogenous
variables have more complex, indirect effects on
the dependent variables acting through interven-
ing variables. Statistically, the indirect effects of
the variables are assessed by multiplying the path
coefcients (standardized regression coefcients) of
the direct-effect variables by the path coefcients or
correlations of the indirect variables.
11. Some of the indirect effects can be calculated from
the data provided in the gure. For example, the
indirect effect of median family income is derived
by .531 .478 and .531 .218, or .337. In contrast,
the direct effect of median family income in the full
model was .071.
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