Who riots? Explaining individual participation in ethnic violence

This dissertation asks two questions about ethnic violence. First, who are the people who take to the streets and commit acts of violence during the chaotic chains of events we know as ethnic riots? Second, why does this set of people ultimately decide to riot? Most contemporary studies of ethnic conflict overlook these questions and focus instead on incentives of elites to instigate violence. This literature struggles to explain why ordinary people would choose to accept the risks and potential costs involved in carrying out violence on a local scale.;The dissertation's central argument is that poverty will increase the likelihood of riot participation for people who are embedded in social networks that link them to other potential participants. I argue that, in contexts where state authorities cannot guarantee protection for their citizens, poor people will be more willing to riot in order to defend their property, their families and themselves. Given the motivation to riot, certain types of social networks at the grassroots level help to transform potential into actual rioters. The motivating "push" of poverty and the "pull" of local social ties make an explosive combination.;To evaluate this argument, I draw on an original survey of nearly 800 respondents who chose to (or chose not to) participate in deadly Christian-Muslim riots in the northern Nigerian cities of Kaduna in 2000 and Jos in 2001. The survey contains direct questions about past participation in violent events, makes use of new methods to protect respondent anonymity, and relies on an innovative sampling strategy in order to locate rioters and elicit honest responses from them. The dissertation also uses in-depth interviews with riot organizers and participants to establish the robustness of the joint effect of poverty and local social embeddedness on riot participation and to evaluate alternative mechanisms that might underpin this relationship.