By Brett Matthew Bebber

Britain enjoys a rich historical tradition of popular protest and collective action. Due to their public and publicized nature, sporting events have been recognized increasingly as venues in which broader cultural and political meanings are enacted and debated in the postwar period. This project examines how social anxieties about immigration, unemployment, and government repression were represented and contested through violence and eventually racist aggression at football matches. From 1968 to the mid-1970s, violence among fans and with police became expected on a weekly basis within and outside British football stadiums as new forms of spectator allegiance and sports consumption emerged. British football became a contested cultural and institutional site of racisms, violence, masculinities, and national mythologies. Rather than examining football per se, the principal aim of this project is to investigate how this distinct cultural milieu became a site for the British government to enact violence against working-class citizens by manipulating moral anxieties, physical environments, police tactics, and legal prosecution.

Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona, 2008. 474p.

Edited by Anastassia Tsoukala, Geoff Pearson, Peter T.M. Coenen

This book brings together a number of perspectives on how different European states have responded to the phenomenon of football crowd disorder and violence, or “hooliganism”. It applies a comparative legal approach, with a particular focus on civil and human rights, to analyze domestic legislation, policing and judicial responses to the problem of “football hooliganism” in Europe. Academics and legal professionals from eight different European countries introduce and analyze the different approaches and draw together common themes and problems from their various jurisdictions. They offer insights into the interactions between (domestic) politicians, law enforcers and sports authorities.

The Hague: Asser Press, 2016. 181p.

By Peter T. Leeson† Daniel J. Smith‡ Nicholas A. Snow

This paper analyzes hooligans: rival football fans bent on brawling. It develops a simple theory of hooligans as rational agents. We model hooligans as persons who derive utility from conflict. Legal penalties for conflicting with non-hooligans drive hooligans to form a kind of “fight club” where they fight only one another. This club makes it possible for hooligans to realize gains from trade. But it attracts ultra-violent persons we call “sadists.” If the proportion of fight-club members who are sadists grows sufficiently high, the fight club self-destructs. Rules that regulate the form club conflict can take, but don’t eliminate conflict, can prevent the club from self-destructing even when populated exclusively by sadists. This creates strong pressure for private rules that regulate conflict to emerge within the club. To illustrate our theory we examine the private rules that developed for this purpose among English football hooligans.

Unpublished paper, 2012. 29p.