Social Cohesion and Collective Violence: Latent Variable Approach to Explaining Riots in East Jerusalem

Does social cohesion explain variation in violence within divided cities? In line with insights drawn from the ethnic politics, criminology and urban geography literature we suggest that explaining intergroup is not possible by relying on motivational elements alone, attention to required as well. While can facilitate collective action aids violent mobilization, it also strengthen order contributes group’s capability control prevent unrest. We test these relationships using an application of a latent variable model integration survey results, crime data expert-coded measure East Jerusalem neighborhoods. then analyze its impact riots three original geolocated datasets recording neighborhoods between years 2013 2015. Our results reveal even controls for economic political determinants violence, well spatial clustering temporal explanations, neighborhood-level robust explanatory negatively correlates riots.