The London Riots

I don’t have much to say about the riots that have rocked England for the last several days other than to note how terribly sad the situation is, I don’t have any particular insights into the political and socail issues of the United Kingdom, and that under the circumstances I think that going much farther is none of my business.

I do think it’s worthwhile to observe that there is empirical evidence that supports the idea that perceptions of punishment and reward affect the likelihood of riots as well as ethnic diversity while poverty does not.

If anyone knows of any empirical evidence that poverty causes riot other than the anecdotal or “it stands to reason” sort, I’d be interested in seeing it.

Hat tip: Tyler Cowen

Update

A street-level take on the riots.

Also, Derek Thompson cites this research paper, “Austerity and Anarchy: Budget Cuts and Social Unrest in Europe, 1919-2009”. Haven’t read it yet. Apparently, the paper finds a correlation between budgets cuts and increased levels of social unrest. Of course, correlation is not causality. The two might have a common cause.

Here’s what they say in the paper:

Controlling for economic growth does not change our results. This suggests that we capture more than the general association between economic downturns and unrest.

They conclude:

We demonstrate that the general pattern of association between unrest and budget cuts holds in Europe for the period 1919-2009. It can be found in
almost all sub-periods, and for all types of unrest. Strikingly, where we can trace the cause of each incident (during the period 1980-95), we can show that
only austerity-inspired demonstrations respond to budget cuts in the timeseries. Also, when we use recently-developed data that allows clean identification of policy-driven changes in the budget balance, our results hold. Finally, the results are not affected by using alternative measures of unrest. Contrary to what might be expected, we also find no evidence that the spread of mass media facilitates the rise of mass protests.

It sounds very much as though either riots are in our future or this area may be another way in America, indeed, different from Europe.

3 comments… add one
  • jaafar Link

    For the thoughts of a long-time, close-up observer:

    http://city-journal.org/2011/eon0810td.html

  • PD Shaw Link

    One would think Europe differs in having larger swings in government policy than in the American system. Also, most have higher reliance on social welfare systems.

  • I lived in the UK for almost four years in the late 1990’s. Although that was well over a decade ago, this current violence doesn’t surprise me much. I could see, even as a relative outsider, the divisions within British society and saw first hand how prone to violence certain classes of young British “lads” could be. I was also pretty shocked at the racism evident in the UK.

Leave a Comment