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  Why Riot? An Expressive Theory of the Justification of Rioting
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                          ABSTRACT

Political rioting is a durable phenomenon: it is a recurrent feature
of societies across time, space, and political structure. It is also
highly morally contentious. Among  those  who  take  rioting  to  be
justifiable, the dominant approach has been to appeal to the  ethics
of war and its interpersonal counterpart, the framework of defensive
ethics, as determining which harms rioting may permissibly  inflict.
I argue that this approach is unlikely to succeed.  I  then  propose
and  develop  an  alternative  analysis  according  to   which   the
expressive norms to which rioting as a form of  protest  is  subject
may license its characteristic harms directly.