Anti-State Riots in the Market Society: The Case of 2011 Summer Riots in England

Incidents involving police shooting of young minority males have repeatedly triggered riots on both sides of the Atlantic. But given this initial spark, what explains why some neighborhoods join a riot wave while others remain calm? Extant research has built on the basis of the realist conflict theory to conceptualize violent conflict as an extension of economic competition between ethnic groups. Local politics channels scarce resources such as jobs or housing to either favor or exclude immigrant-origin groups. Favored groups become targets of nativist backlash, the excluded ones become resentful and engage in low-level conflicts with state agents. This may capture the dynamics of rioting in traditional welfare state, but it leaves important questions open in the era of an increased reliance on market and quasi-market mechanisms to deliver public goods.

To tackle this problem, I have compiled a novel dataset coding all incidents of disorder during the 2011 Riots in England, as well as borough-level data on socio-economic conditions, council politics, immigration, and policing. Statistical analysis of this dataset, and qualitative analysis of riots’ micro-dynamics, shows that resentment over discriminatory policing was indeed the central grievance driving the riots. However, I also find that local political power of immigrant-origin communities does not explain the spatial pattern of rioting. Instead, riots were likelier in boroughs where private sector social housing providers pursued aggressive marketization strategies that included investment in non-social housing, steeper rent increases, and more frequent involvement of the police in conflicts over the use of public spaces.