PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR “LAW AND ORDER”: Interrelationships with System Affirmation and Attitudes Toward Minorities

This study deals with interrelationships among system affirmation, intoler‐ance of minorities or minority viewpoints. and support for a tough role for the police and courts in the criminal justice system. Using data from a survey of “Middletown” (Muncie, Indiana), all three of these concepts are‐as expected‐moderately highly interrelated. Those high in system affir‐mation are also high in intolerance, and they are high in support for a tough role for the police and courts. Further, combining system affirmation and intolerance measures into typologies accentuates the independent effects of these concepts on a hard‐line approach to “law and order” issues.