Contentious Federalism: Sheriffs, State Legislatures, and Political Violence in the American West

The Rise (and Fall) of Elected Sheriffs

“…Similar claims have been made by members of other anti-government groups, including Posse Comitatus, the Sovereign citizens, and various tax protesters (Kopel 2014). Recent research shows that a county sheriff's affiliation with the constitutional sheriff movement is associated with more violence against federal employees (Nemerever 2019). My findings in this paper demonstrate that these movements and their ideologies are based on a historical claim about elected sheriffs that is closer to myth than reality.…”

“…Recent work examines the relationship between county sheriffs' attitudes and their departments' policies related to domestic violence (Farris and Holman 2015) and immigration enforcement (Farris and Holman 2017). Other work shows that sheriffs' political attitudes can raise or lower the perceived cost of political violence in their communities (Nemerever 2019) This research joins the growing literature on sheriffs' elections. Preliminary research suggests that sheriffs enjoy a large incumbency advantage in elections, and serve longer tenures in office relative to appointed police chiefs (Zoorob 2019a).…”

Strategic Partnerships to Leverage Small Wins for Fine Fuels Management

“…In contexts such as public land grazing in which antagonism among rangeland stakeholders has historically been high (Sheridan 2007; Lewin et al 2019; Nemerever 2021), scholars have recognized that a series of small wins are useful for demonstrating the advantages of partnerships and collaboration (Berkes 2009). In our example, the partnership agreed on a problem—frequent large-scale wildfires—and explored opportunities for addressing it through the application of livestock grazing to treat herbaceous fine fuels.…”

Sheriffs, right‐wing extremism, and the limits of U.S. federalism during a crisis

“…We first document the process by which RWE organizations such as militias, anti‐government extremists, and white supremacists centered sheriffs as legitimate political actors (Jackson 2019, 2020; Nemerever 2021). Following Obama's election, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) organized to recruit and train sheriffs into RWE views, encouraging sheriffs to refuse enforcement of any federal or state law that sheriffs themselves deem unconstitutional.…”

“…An organization rooted in RWE in a variety of ways (ADL 2021), CSPOA encourages sheriffs to use their discretion and refuse to enforce laws they believe to be unconstitutional and to resist overreach by the federal government. In evaluating the role of the CSPOA in movements against federal land management, Nemerever (2021, p. 254) finds that “Constitutionalist sheriffs increase citizens’ grievances through anti‐federal government position‐taking” and that the presence of a constitutional sheriff increased the probability of violence against Western government officials by more than 50 percent.…”