Who Represents Us? Policing and Public Trust in Pakistan: CID Faculty Research Insights

How do perceptions of ethnic underrepresentation in security forces shape citizen trust and expectations?

Key Findings:

• Ethnicity matters, but modestly: Respondents were slightly less likely to expect fair and respectful treatment from police officers of a different ethnicity. However, the overall effect was small in a setting where trust in the police is generally very low.
• Descriptive representation is crucial: Among citizens who believed their ethnic group was underrepresented in the police (particularly Muhajirs and Pashtuns), the effect of officer-citizen coethnicity on expected procedural justice doubled. Citizens who felt descriptively excluded expected more biased treatment from non-coethnic officers.
• Expectations of favoritism: Coethnic officers were not only expected to treat civilians more fairly but also to offer preferential treatment relative to non-coethnics, highlighting both fears of discrimination and hopes for in-group bias.
• Context shapes citizen expectations: In Karachi, where the Sindhi-dominated provincial government controls the police, underrepresented groups are more mistrustful of police impartiality. High baseline distrust of the police moderates—but does not eliminate—the influence of ethnic identity. 

Impact and Relevance:

This study advances understanding of how ethnic identity and perceptions of institutional representation shape everyday experiences of the state in the Global South. By showing that expectations of fair policing are conditioned not just by shared identity but by perceptions of descriptive underrepresentation, the findings refine theories of trust, bias, and legitimacy in weakly institutionalized environments. It highlights that trust in security forces is partly shaped by descriptive representation, and that diversity can affect citizen attitudes and strengthen state legitimacy. 
 
More broadly, the paper speaks to critical issues of governance in multi-ethnic societies where public institutions, including the police, are often captured by dominant groups. When historically marginalized communities perceive themselves as underrepresented or discriminated against by state authorities, their willingness to cooperate with, report to, or trust those institutions erodes. This has downstream effects on public safety, civic participation, and the durability of democratic norms. By documenting how identity-based grievances can emerge even in mundane encounters like traffic stops, the study underscores how everyday bureaucratic interactions can reinforce or mitigate broader patterns of political exclusion. 
 
Finally, the research provides important lessons for policymakers grappling with institutional reform across diverse settings. Building equitable, trusted security institutions requires more than quotas or surface-level diversity initiatives; it demands addressing how historical patterns of marginalization shape citizen expectations and interactions. As states in the Global South urbanize and diversify further, the legitimacy and effectiveness of policing (and by extension the legitimacy of the state) may increasingly hinge on whether citizens across ethnic groups feel they are treated with fairness, respect, and dignity by the agents who represent state authority in their daily lives.