Moussa Ibrahim said in a phone call to the headquarters of The Associated Press in New York that “no dignified honorable nation would accept an ultimatum from armed gangs,” the news agency reported.
In 1985, the late great political sociologist Charles Tilly wrote that state making was sort of like organized crime. Based on a substantive body of empirical work, Tilly and his colleagues had found that states in Europe formed out of a process of nearly 500 years of war. Basically, a bunch of guys with access to weapons (wielders of coercion) went to war and had to find some way of financing this, so they built tax bureaucracies, police agencies (and eventually the architecture of the modern state). Those that were good at war making and tax collection won, and the organization that this called forth was a state. A state is just a super good way of deploying violence, extracting revenue, and exercising territorial control. This is, of course, what the mafia does also, and the modern state does this on much larger, more sophisticated scale.
In other words, state formation is the process through which armed gangs, warlords, or other people that hold coercive power come to control a piece of territory, gain some legitimacy as the "government", and become recognized as sovereign by the international community. As Saint Augustine said: "what is sovereignty but organized robbery?"
So sure, the Libyan rebels are a ragtag militia of gangsters. But with a little time, they could be the government of a new Libyan state.
Yes they could. Political power grows from the barrel of a gun. Its the reason why the second ammendment was written - as a check against the 'gangsters' in power at the time. The state also has a respondsibility to its citezens, like the mafia. If you pay protection money and have an issue, the bosses have to take care of it otherwise there is no 'protection' is there? The basic function of a state is not to make war but to provide safety and security for its population. The way to do this is to hold a monopoly on the use of force (or credible threat thereof) within a predefined set of boarders. Look at Somalia - many warlords, no one person has a monopoly = Chaos. In Libya the people are fed up with the current warlord, so they are attempting to replace him - through violence, because the state does not have a non-violent means of sucession. This is the only way to replace Kadafi.
ReplyDeleteThe full quote is actually, "In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?" Justice as a cornerstone of sovereignty is vital because as we see in Libya, the people had no real justice but Gaddafi's, and I agree he must be removed by force as said above.
ReplyDeleteIf a sovereign government rules justly(loosely defined here as following the rule of law) then I'm not sure we can equate sovereignty with gangsterism in accordance to the Augustine quote.
Augustine makes a clear distinction between robbery and the "just state", while Tilly is just saying all state making is gangsterism. While I may agree with Tilly, I think your Augustine quote is out of context/misleading when you omit the first part. Otherwise very interesting.
RJ:
ReplyDeleteFair enough. But could you not also have just robbers by that logic? The point is that "armed groups" exist on a continuum - whether or not they act "just" is another question, I suppose.
I guess it's not clear what Augustine means by sovereignty. Maybe it has something to do with divine authority to govern. If so, then you are right. In practical terms:
Sovereignty is, depending on who you ask: (a)de facto control of territory; (b) international legal recognition; (c) autonomy to carry out policies (d) westphalian sovereignty (non intervention)
Nothing really to do with justice.
Still, I like what Augustine has to say overall:
"For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor."
Anon: I agree. I guess the big question for Libya is whether the new gangsters can rule with effectiveness. That is first; I think justice (restraint) comes second. People are going to want Libya to automatically transform into a democracy. But order must come first.
ReplyDeleteThat is a much better quote by Augustine and yes, for Augustine, authority to rule did come from the Church. I guess the only difference between Christendom and band of thieves is that one gains its authority from divinity and the other claims ipso facto authority. Both are nothing more than organized gangsters, with one claiming itself to being closer to God.
ReplyDeleteAgainst Augustine, i'd include them all in the same category: Pirates, priests, and princes...
ReplyDeleteSoverignty is defined as a monopoly on force within a defined boarder over a given population. This is needed as humans only respond to physical force on a very basic level. I belive Al Capone said 'you get more with a nice word and a gun than you do with just a nice word' - meaning if the credible threat of force/violence is backing you up, you are more able to impose your will. I would rather be ruled by gangsters who respect the rule of law than exist in anarchy, which I think is the basis for accepting government and the 'social contract'?
ReplyDeleteAlso, Gangster, Warlord, Strongman, all inflammitory terms meant to cast negative light on the subject. Soverign, King, Leader, Ruler - same thing, better language.
Anon: That is one definition of sovereignty. Sovereignty is also the legal recognition of statehood by the international community. This may or may not correspond to de facto sovereignty. So Somalia has international legal sovereignty, but not sovereignty as defined by a state monopoly on violence.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that it is wrong to use terms like strongman, or warlord to describe state formation. It's important to recognize that, in the history of state building, entities move on and off this continuum.