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Group Entitlement, Anger and Participation in Intergroup Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2014

Christopher Claassen
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Abstract

There is little research on the thousands of individuals who take part in intergroup violence. This article proposes that their participation is motivated by the emotion of intergroup anger, which, in turn, is triggered by a comparison between the intergroup distribution of resources and the distribution that is believed to be desirable. Thus, when another group is perceived to violate group entitlements – by taking jobs thought to belong to the ingroup, for example – anger is experienced and individuals become more willing to take part in violence against the outgroup. Support for this theory is found in a new survey dataset, collected in a slum in South Africa where anti-immigrant violence occurred in 2008.

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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 127 - 148
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Department of Government, University of Essex (email: cclaas@essex.ac.uk). Many thanks are due to James L. Gibson for invaluable advice and support throughout this project. Thanks are also due to Harry Nakeng, Khathu Mathava, Ntombi Simelane, Keoagile Balatseng, Thabo Rakgwadi and Albert Moleme, who helped to carry out the fieldwork in Johannesburg. Three anonymous reviewers and attenders of seminars at the University of the Witwatersrand and the 2011 meeting of the American Political Science Association offered very helpful comments and questions. The fieldwork was funded in part by a grant from the Center for New Institutional Social Sciences at Washington University in St Louis. An online appendix with supplementary tables and replication data are available at http://www.chrisclaassen.com.

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