IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v13y1972i1p31-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An economic approach to riot analysis

Author

Listed:
  • J. Gunning

Abstract

The popular view that a riot is a spontaneous release of hostility by the frustrated and oppressed masses was rejected in favor of a notion of riot based upon motivation for personal gain by riot participants. The main difference between a riot and other forms of illegal activity was said to be the presence of a large and possibly sympathetic crowd. Since the ways of gaining from a riot are varied and differ among individuals, there are several ways to reduce the probability of riots. The particular method chosen by a riot analyst depends, to a large extent, on his personal biases. Two of these were discussed: (1) a desire for a redistribution of income in the direction of the rioting group, and (2) the maintenance of the constancy of deterrent power of laws in all situations. It was found that adoption of (1) leads to the advocacy of many of the riot-prevention techniques which are popularly discussed. The adoption of (2) supports the assignment of heavier penalties for criminal acts committed during riots. Copyright Center for Study of Public Choice Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 1972

Suggested Citation

  • J. Gunning, 1972. "An economic approach to riot analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 31-46, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:13:y:1972:i:1:p:31-46
    DOI: 10.1007/BF01718850
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF01718850
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF01718850?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leeson, Peter T., 2010. "Rational choice, Round Robin, and rebellion: An institutional solution to the problems of revolution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 297-307, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:13:y:1972:i:1:p:31-46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.