Dominique Strauss-Kahn: diplomatic immunity's greatest hits

Guardian


Former IMF head joins an illustrious collection of miscreants who claimed the status to get out of trouble

In invoking diplomatic immunity, Dominique Strauss-Kahn joins
a rogues' gallery of accused international reprobates.

From petty thieves and fine-dodgers to drunk-drivers and outright murderers, "diplomatic immunity" has been the cry of a rogues' gallery of accused international miscreants plunged into hot water overseas.

Former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the latest to try to claim its protection in his bid to get a civil case brought by the New York hotel maid he is alleged to have assaulted struck out.

A look at the history of those claiming the status puts the one-time French presidential hope in a league with some rum fellows, red-faced diplomats and a Burmese ambassador who took immunity to a shocking extreme, or so the story goes.

Mexico: BlackBerry thief

In one of the more bizarre incidents of diplomatic immunity being claimed, a Mexican press attaché sought to evade the law after being caught with the BlackBerrys of several White House staffers.

The theft took place in 2008 during a bilateral get-together in New Orleans. After the devices had been placed on a table outside the meeting room, Rafael Quintero Curiel picked up a handful and headed to the exit.

He made it to the airport before authorities picked him up. After initially denying the theft, he owned up after being shown video footage of him being caught red-handed. Claiming immunity, he headed back to Mexico where he was promptly sacked.

Police officers try to revive PC Yvonne Fletcher after she was shot outside
the Libyan embassy in London in 1984 during an anti-Gaddafi protest.
Libyan officials say the suspect might not be extradited.

The murder of police officer Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984 resulted in the UK cutting all diplomatic ties with Tripoli.

No one was prosecuted over her death, and embassy staff claimed diplomatic immunity before being deported.

Fact. There is a link between cuts and riots

Guardian

We've studied a century's worth of social unrest and the data suggests austerity measures can lead to riots

Incidents of police brutality, such as the beating of
Rodney King in LA in 1992, can provide the spark that
leads to conflagration.

When London stopped burning, the political debate about the causes of unrest began to heat up. At one end of the spectrum, Ken Livingstone blamed the government's cutbacks; at the other, David Cameron attributed the unrest to criminal behaviour, pure and simple. Many of the cuts announced by the coalition government haven't been implemented yet; but it is also true that there is real deprivation in many parts of London, and local services have been cut in some areas already. So, where do sudden conflagrations such as in London last week come from?

A constructive way to approach such a complex question is to distinguish between the incidents that touch off unrest, and the underlying causes that make it more likely. When a petrol station burns down, you don't just want to know who dropped the cigarette; you want to know why all the combustible fumes escaped. Social unrest and instability is typically difficult to explain. In most years, nothing happens; then, suddenly, violence erupts. Academics have tried to understand which factors are involved in creating explosive social environments. According to work on US race riots by the economist Ed Glaeser, for example, ethnic heterogeneity in a neighbourhood increases the probability of unrest. So does unemployment; Poverty, on the other hand, seems to play a smaller role.

In a recent study, we focused on the link between austerity measures and unrest. We analysed a large number of countries, over almost a century, to unearth some empirical regularities. In two studies, we analysed unrest in 28 European countries from 1919 to 2009, and in 11 Latin American countries since 1937. What we found is a clear and positive statistical association between expenditure cuts and the level of unrest.

To construct our measure of unrest, we looked at five indicators: riots, anti-government demonstrations, general strikes, political assassinations, and attempted revolutions. In a typical year and country, there are about 1.5 incidents of this type. The more you cut, the more incidents you get. By the time austerity measures hit 3% or more, the number of incidents has doubled. Interestingly, for the UK, the pattern is even stronger: for every percentage point of cut-backs, instability surges by more than it does on average in the rest of the countries. Importantly, these effects are in addition to the well-known relationship between lower growth (associated with more unemployment) and higher instability.