Abstract:

The effect of political violence on policy and attitudes has recently come back into scholarly and popular attention. Whether voters will punitively react to riots and other violence is a question of policy relevance and speaks to a long literature on intergroup bias. The Los Angeles Riots lasted from April 29 to May 4, 1992, and served as a focal point for race relations in the US. The riots strongly shifted political discourse prior to a statewide election on June 2. We argue that the riots served as an exogenous shock to the salience of racial issues, but a shock which affected Los Angeles voters differently depending on their race and spatial proximity to the riots. To causally identify the effect of the riots on behavior, we use the change in the difference between voter support for public education and higher education as proxy for attitude shifts in the wake of the riots. Using official election returns and survey data, we find that among white voters, the riot increased support for racial-minority targeted public goods, relative to other public goods. However, white voters increased support at lower rates than racial minorities and, among white voters, proximity to the epicenter of the riots is related to diminished support for spending on minority-targeted goods.