How Riots Spread Between Cities: Introducing the Police Pathway

Abstract

Waves of riots are politically and psychologically significant national events. The role of police perceptions and practices in spreading unrest between cities has been neglected in previous research, even though the police are significant actors in these events. We examined the role of police interventions in the spread of rioting to one English city in August 2011 by triangulating multiple data sources and analyzing police accounts and community-participant interviews. Rioting in other cities had relatively little direct influence in the community, but it led to heightened vigilance in the police. The resultant police mobilization inadvertently created a large gathering in a local community with a history of hostile relations with police. Police attempts to disperse the crowd affected many more people than those originally intending to riot, leading to collective conflict. These findings support a new theoretical account of the role of policing in riot spread. Complementing existing accounts of diffusion, our study helps explain how self-fulfilling prophecy can operate to spread conflict between cities.

Beyond normative and non‐normative: A systematic review on predictors of confrontational collective action

“…First, either confrontational or non-confrontational, collective actions should match with group norms (Becker, Tausch, & Wagner, 2011;Drury et al, 2020Drury et al, , 2022. Group members may refuse nonconfrontational collective tactics if they do not align with group norms, or they may refuse confrontational collective action if these tactics are mismatched with in-group norms.…”

“…Research on empowerment provided important insights related to the relationship between collective efficacy and confrontational collective action. In studies that examined how riots spread between cities, Drury et al (2020Drury et al ( , 2022 discussed how collective efficacy and empowerment can be also a vicarious process and spread from who are involving rioting to people who are not involved before. They showed that people participate in rioting by feeling empowerment as a consequence of the increased perceived vulnerability of outgroups (i.e., police) in other cities.…”

Beyond normative and non-normative: A systematic review on predictors of confrontational collective action

“…Last, even though the majority of research provides more conclusive evidence on the positive relationship between efficacy and confrontational collective action (e.g., Drury et al, 2020Drury et al, , 2022Medel et al, 2022;Saguy et al, 2020;Thomas et al, 2019), there are some contradictory results which stems from the measurement and conceptualization of the efficacy (for discussion see Hamann et al, 2023). Accordingly, research provides comparatively robust evidence for the positive relationship between group efficacy and confrontational collective action, more studies are needed for the relationship between the perceived efficacy of particular protest tactics and confrontational collective action (see Lizzio-Wilson et al, 2022;Saab et al, 2016).…”

“…In the last decade, a significant body of research in social psychology and political science has highlighted the positive impact of non-violence on the perceived legitimacy, efficacy and popular support for social movements (e.g., Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011;Feinberg et al, 2020;Orazani & Leidner, 2019aThomas & Louis, 2014). While much of the existing research on collective action has predominantly focused on non-violent normative actions, such as authorized protest rallies, marches and petitions, there is a growing interest in the study of protest violence and the so-called non-normative radical collective action (e.g., Drury et al, 2022;Pauls et al, 2022;Saavedra, 2020;Saavedra & Drury, 2022). However, this growing body of literature uses different terminologies, and it often conflates social approval with a form of action through normative versus non-normative distinction.…”

Identifying different ‘types’ of participants in the Chilean student movement: A latent transition analysis of collective action intentions, social class and movement identification

“…However, participation in collective action is a dynamic process, dependent on the contextual factors surrounding the actions. For example, peaceful protest can quickly turn into a violent confrontation if protesters see police violence and repression as illegitimate (Drury et al, 2020; Reicher, 1996), which can subsequently promote the spread of violent riots (Drury et al, 2021). This may mean that people strategically engage in a mix of conventional and radical actions, depending also on other factors such as their social class background or how much they identify with the social movement.…”