Authority, Coercion, and the Challenges of Political Order ●When interactions become repetitive or predictable they can be described as an order ●Creating an order depends on a set of political, economic, or social constraints that govern how humans and collectives of individuals interact with each other and help to produce this stability in social relationships ○does not imply anything about its legitimacy among those who live within it. An order could be based on norms associated with equality that prevent discrimination and protect political participation. Alternatively, an order could be extremely unjust, imposed through coercion and state-sanctioned violence.
○Example: Classrooms- instructors teach and students complete assignments,
instructor has authority, shows how people engage with each other in the classroom
●When an order is created they face multiple challenges:
○Unanimity or widespread agreement is rare among a large group of people ■People disagree about aspects of social life, possess different goals, view the achievement of social equality and justice differently ○ Individuals possess different capabilities to settle conflicts with others in their favor ■If there is a disagreement among people over water rights, some may resort to physical violence to limit others water consumption, others may encourage the people to move by buying their property ○ Differences in goals and capabilities among individuals raise fundamental questions about how stable patterns of interactions among individuals with ample opportunities for conflict can emerge.●Political orders : defined by the presence of authority relationships that resolve such disagreements among individuals and groups.○possession of authority enables individuals or groups to direct the behavior of others by prescribing or proscribing certain actions ○A government can exert authority over you and directs your behavior when it creating a set of laws ■authority stems partly from the capacity to coerce others into following some directive, either with a threat to impose some penalties for noncompliance or the actual imposition of them.
●Example: taxes, many people pay them so they won’t have to pay
a fine or end up in jail
Coercion and the State: Protection or Predation?
●Power to resolve disagreements with others through the use of physical force presents a society and its leaders with a profound coercion dilemma ●Using power to punish individuals or groups with coercive instruments can be used to impose peace on people with different goals and capabilities (keeps from harming each other or violating laws) ○Example : You go shopping when a lot of people are at the store because police officers are supposed to keep you from getting hurt by others, people shouldn’t 1 / 2
be attacking you because the protection deters criminals from attacking others in the first place ●Can be exploited to accumulate power and wealth by seizing it from others ○Predation- Violent redistribution of resources among individuals or groups
■Basic Example : Armed robbery
■Major Example : States building large military organizations, capable of
engaging in predation by conquering other states ●Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and WWll
○“Benefits” of this include:
■Wealth ■Resources ●Helps explain the development of the modern state in Europe out of the private armies that protected feudal landlords and aristocratic families ○While growing in size, organizations compete with each other to conquer new territory, through war ●Dual role of coercion creates problems for political order and the organizations that regulate them ○An organization capable of protecting its members of a society from threats that are outside of their group can use their function its coercive power to prey on society ■Individuals or groups may choose to halt their activities so they won’t be a target ■Targets of predation may revolt and try to overthrow a coercive organization by building or supporting rival coercive organizations ●States have long been held up as the primary organization that holds authority in international relations and politics ●Government of the states oversee coercive organizations (police and military) to extend and defend their authority over people that live within some set of territorial boundaries ○Coercive organizations provide protection from internal and external threats and allow individuals and substate groups to focus their time and resources on achieving other goals—like accumulating wealth or pursuing social justice ●The existence of a state and the preservation of its authority depend on whether it can maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive force within a polity ○Monopoly depends on the state’s ability to defeat or disarm rival coercive organizations in a military contest and its ability to deter the emergence of new coercive organizations from within the population it rules ○ Governments foster this support from within society by building legitimacy for their rule, which depends in part on observing limits on the use of coercion.■ limits help reassure society that coercive organizations will be deployed for protection rather than predation ●Absence of a monopoly can be seen in civil war among contending military organizations or violent protests targeting the state
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