MASENO UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT: ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
COURSE: BA CRIMINOLOGY WITH IT
COURSE CODE: ACS 311
COURSE TITLE: POLITICS OF MASS MURDER
NAME: KIPLIMO DENNIS
ADM: BA/00392/018
LECTURER: DR. OWOKO
Question: Discuss the role of state authority in the legitimization of violence. Use clear
examples.
Over some time many countries or states have been experiencing criminal activities either as
internal matter or external. Crimes do occur in our day-to-day lives, and some of these crimes
pose a serious threat to state security, which at times it leaves a country or a state with limited
options on how to curb them. In many cases the state may use its responsible security bodies to
protect its citizens from the harm of either internal or external insecurity threats, consequently, in
some circumstances, a state may be forced to use its powers to legitimize the use of violence to
ensure the safety and security of each citizen and the entire state has been fully promised.
Understanding what state is, violence, and legitimacy is important, according to Max Weber a
state is an organization that succeeds in holding the exclusive right to use, threaten or authorize
physical force against residents of its territory. Violence is an act of power that leads to the
intentional bodily injury of others. On the other hand, legitimacy is the quality of being valid.
State authority means an authority that state elected official, agency, board, commission,
committee, council, or public body corporate and political created by the constitution, statute,
rule or order.
In details the roles of state authority in the legitimization of violence are discussed below;
The state has the role of protecting its citizens against internal and external security threats.
Some countries and states utilize the constitution to formalize special military forces and
political measures to address security threats. The security forces are given special powers
passed by legislation bodies, to operate beyond the bounds of the rule of law in terrorist affected
areas or the disturbed areas perceived insecurity throughout the country. Sometimes the law
challenges the bounds of liberty of the individual in the name of security. For example, under the
Armed Force Special Powers Act, most parts of Northeast India have been declared as disturbed
areas where security forces are authorized to employ force where necessary against a suspect
even if it will lead to death.
Through the legitimization of violence, the authority has the role to keep and restore peace in the
country. Times a country might be in chaos and the peace of state is unstable because of political
violence or ethnic clashes. The state sometimes might be in a chaotic situation whereby the only
way to restore peace is by giving the police officers the power to use force or employ violence
where reasonable. The conflicting ethnic groups might be so violent that peaceful restoration
cannot work out, the only option is the law enforcing officers to use more force because it is
necessary. For example in Kenya during the post-election violence, the police officers had the
power to use for restoring peace in the country since every ethnic community was employing
violence as the only solution.
Violence is legitimate whenever it is necessary to keep power. The authority sometimes faces
rebellion and the risk of being overthrown from power by the opposition party, violence might be
used to achieve. Machiavelli argues that the use of violence is an effective means of achieving
the ends, and thus is legitimate whenever it is necessary to keep the power (Machiavelli 2011).
Consequently, the colonial state during the colonial era had actions that manipulated the
interstate power dynamics which excluded the traditional leaders completely from political
power. For example, the colonial authorities used violence in some way in taking up the power in
African countries by forcefully detaining African leaders who posed a great threat to their
political power.
More specifically, when ethnic groups are used by the political authority of the state to bring
discrimination among citizens, the groups are entitled to political potency and the power
connection between them is institutionalized in legal political organs of the state (Mamdani,
2003). If the asymmetric power structure enforced by the political and violent action of the
dominant group, creates some experiences of injustice and in the state, institutions subordinate
identified group is excluded completely from the political stage, then violence becomes
politically legitimate as the only action available.
It is the role of the state to enforce law and order. In some circumstances, the state which has the
powers and the authority to enforce the law and restore order may be forced to use physical force
through the law-enforcing officers to achieve the ends of restoring social order amongst its
citizens. According to Max Weber, a state is that entity that upholds the claim of the monopoly
of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order. Consequently, the state
authority is derived from how the state its precepts by use of force, and in the end, it doesn’t lose
its legitimate authority. For example, the Kenyan government had to use physical force and
violence in enforcing order in Baragoi by giving the police officers and the armed forces the
powers to use their force.
The state authority has a role in safeguarding the rights of civilians. In every state some rights are
entitled to each citizen in that particular country or state, the government always must ensure that
the rights of each individual are respected. The right to self-defense is the right that an individual
acting on their behalf may engage in violence for the sake of defending their own life or the lives
of others, including the use of deadly force. The right to self-defense is a private form of
legitimate violence recognized by the state. In other cases where an individual uses force to
defend others, it must be clear that those he or she was trying to defend were in a position that
required another individual intervention. For example, a husband will use force to defend himself
and his family when they have all been attacked and their lives are at risk and the only way to
defend themselves is by fighting back either by shooting if he is licensed to gun or use of
physical violence.
The state authority is also entitled to a role of combating or preventing terror attacks from
happening in the state by use of legitimate violence. Many countries face a lot of threats from
terrorist-related groups for instance the Kenyan government faces threats from the Al-Shabaab
terrorist group in Somalia, these terrorist groups pose a great danger to the safety of the state and
that of its citizens since it undermines many activities that a state or a country engage in such as
economic actives. It’s with the state authority where the power of countering such attacks lies,
the state has the power to approve or legitimate the use of force by the external security bodies to
combat the attacks and fight the terrorist despite the relations that the country has with the
country that is believed to be the mother of the terrorist. For example, the terrorist attack that
occurred in west gate mall in 2013 left many deaths behind and many injured, the internal
security and external security forces were engaged and what was seen is the forces using their
powers to try to counter the attacks.
Also, through the legitimization of violence, the state authority has the role of promoting the
general welfare. In many ways, the state has an obligation in making sure the well-being of its
citizens is guaranteed and fully promoted, this a times can be reached by employing violence as
the only means of achieving it. When the welfare of an individual is at risk or it faces a lot of
risks that use of force can only result in the establishment, restoration, or protection of such
welfare then the authority has an obligation of either passing some legalized laws about the
promotion of the welfare in ether way that signifies the upkeep of the well-being, then it will be
termed that the state authority has acted in a legitimate way of accepting violence as the only
means of achieving what was necessary. For example, when the health state of patients is at great
risk, and during the referral process the ambulance transporting the patients is denied trespass by
a group of people who collect a certain amount of fee as trespass fee because they believe they
own that route, then in any circumstances, the involved law executing body will have to use
physical force or violence to reciprocate.
Through the legitimization of violence, the state can achieve a goal of maintaining and asserting
its authority. The state can coerce people under its jurisdiction with its potential to introduce the
means of authority. According to Weber, a defining characteristic of the state is its total
domination over the right to employ legitimate force to assert its legitimacy. Because only the
state controls the means to achieve an end that it can only fulfill, Weber believes that the state is
the sole entity that can legitimately assert its power by the use of might. For example, the Pope
who the Catholics believe is the sole representative of Christ, and thus infallible after his
ascension to the throne of St Peter, used his infallibility as a way to justify and argue the purity
of his legitimate claim on purity to justify the pureness of his decisions, the state with a sole right
to employ the means of authority or violence legitimacy, shows its authority by asserting its
power.
Protecting the state interest by limiting how misleading and sensitive information about the
government and propaganda is being circulated in the media. A times journalists are harassed
threatened and arrested for reporting events that conflict with the official government depictions
and activities more so those involving civilian casualties. In the ideological battle against the
Maoists, several states have interpreted directives about the government to mean that free speech
rights can be withdrawn under the guise of national security concerns (Miklian, 2016). For
example, in all of India’s conflict zones, power use under law authorization activities are
prevalent with harassment, imprisonment of journalists, and even at times being killed.
The state authority must ensure that citizens conform to the duty to obey. First conforming to the
duty to obey means that the judgments, order, and rules of an authority suspend and replace the
judgment made by an individual. When citizens feel a duty to obey, they grant officers the right
to dedicate their] own behavior, here the right to apply force, to make decisions when it is
appropriate, and to be given support by citizens in such use. Importantly, one might expect that
the duty to obey would be more positively linked with the perceived acceptability of excessive
use of violence. Individuals who feel a strong moral duty to obey the police may also tend to
give support to excessive police violence without questioning, the give the police the power to
dictate what is appropriate, even if that behavior is counter-normative. In essence, an act
becomes the right thing to engage in when it is committed by a legitimate authority (Bradford,
Jackson, 2016). For example, every individual according to the constitution is entitled to the duty
to obey the law and the terms stated by the law officers or the authority.
Consequently, the violence exercised by the state is termed legitimate when the situation the
state is dealing with the use of violence or violence is the only option to achieve the ends. In
public issues such as peacekeeping or at war crisis, where the security of the state is at risk of
being compromised then the authorities are left with no other alternative than to only legalize the
use of physical force or violence. For example, police officers walking around with guns can
shoot an individual posing a threat to the state security legally, and also they can shoot to kill as
an order from the above or as part of their job whenever they are compromised and they are at
greater danger.
Finally, the sovereignty of a state has a greater role in the process of legitimizing violence. The
state can make its laws and control the resources about how they will have to engage in war with
other states that pose a greater danger to its security without other nations coercing it that is if the
country is a member state of a union such as African Union. Also by having the power of ruling
and being the sole protector of a state including security, that power would have some active
duty.
There is a multiplicity of conceptual and practical roles of the state authority to any attempt of
legitimizing the use of violence in a wide range. The use of violence or physical force depends
on the legal authority offered by the constitutional laws or the state to exercise it. However,
human action is characterized by its unpredictability and of all, it is more self-righteous to
delegitimize violence but in some circumstances legitimizing it is the only option. From this
basis, violence can be legitimate in many ways when rendered the only option for maintain state
affairs.
References;
Winter, Y. (2018). Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence. Cambridge University Press.
Miklian, J. (2016). Monopolies of violence in developing democracies: Emerging evidence from
India. Available at SSRN 2854224
.
Mamdani, M. (2003). Making sense of political violence in postcolonial Africa. In War and
Peace in the 20th Century and Beyond (pp. 71-99).
Anter, A. (2019). The Modern State and Its Monopoly on Violence. In The Oxford Handbook of
Max Weber.
Jackson, J., Bradford, B., Hough, M., Myhill, A., Quinton, P., & Tyler, T. R. (2012). Why do
people comply with the law? Legitimacy and the influence of legal institutions. British journal of
criminology, 52(6), 1051-1071.