The myth of mob rule: violent crime and democratic politics

Abstract

Drawing on a comparative analysis of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, this book explores when and with what consequences crime becomes a politically salient issue. Reversing much of the conventional wisdom, the analysis finds that serious violence and public and political attention to it are highly correlated and that the United States has high levels of both crime and punishment, in part, because it suffers from a democratic deficit, rather than a surplus, in the production of fundamental collective goods, including risk of violence.