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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2021
It is a long-held belief that states must retain the monopoly over political violence in order to be states, and to survive. However, there are recent criticisms of this view forcing us to consider not just the state's use of political violence but the very nature of the state. Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberly Hutchings's Can Political Violence Ever Be Justified? argues that it cannot. Ned Dobos's Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine raises a series of arguments against states having standing militaries, and Alex Vitale's The End of Policing similarly raises a series of arguments against the institution of the police. In this review essay, I suggest that these arguments all force us to revisit the very nature of the state. There are concerns about simply abolishing these institutions of political violence, but we can indeed conceive of states without the monopoly on violence.
1 Monique Cormier and Alison Duxbury, “Pathways to Prosecution for Australian Soldiers’ Crimes in Afghanistan,” Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, November 20, 2020, www.aspistrategist.org.au/pathways-to-prosecution-for-australian-soldiers-crimes-in-afghanistan/.
2 Haan, Willem de, “Violence as an Essentially Contested Concept,” in Body-Gendrot, Sophie and Spierenburg, Petrus Cornelis, eds., Violence in Europe: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Springer, 2008)Google Scholar.
3 Smith, Michael Joseph, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), pp. 6Google Scholar, 9.
4 Max Weber, quoted in ibid., p. 24.
5 Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Mansfield Centre, Conn.: Martino, 2012), pp. 154Google Scholar, 165 (emphasis original).
6 See, for instance, Melissa Jeltsen, “Don't Use Domestic Violence Victims to Derail Police Reform,” “Black Voices,” Huffpost, June 6, 2020, www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/domestic-violence-defund-police_n_5eda8fe1c5b692d897d2de13?ri18n=true; Natalie Schreyer, “Too Terrified to Speak Up: Domestic Abuse Victims Afraid to Call Police,” USA Today, April 9, 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/04/09/too-terrified-speak-up-domestic-abuse-victims-afraid-call-police/479855002/; and Jill Crowner, “Why Survivors Don't Call the Police,” Break the Silence against Domestic Violence, April 23, 2019, breakthesilencedv.org/why-survivors-dont-call-the-police/?cn-reloaded=1.
7 Allen Buchanan, “A New Argument for Ethical Pluralism with a Surprising Implication for Ideal Moral Theory” (lecture, St. Cross College, University of Oxford, Oxford, U.K., June 14, 2018).