Giustozzi clearly appreciates the complexity of historical formation, collapse, and reformation of polities—and that this progression is not inevitably a “one-way” street. Thus, he digs deeply into the historical record to understand how coercive power is accumulated, translated into power over a geographical area, and progressively expanded outward.
He advances a number of interlinking hypotheses regarding how this occurs.
First, he asserts “that institution-building is a key aspect of any process of taming violence” (p. 7).
Second, he claims that “pre-empting hostile collective action through co-option, alliances, manipulation and intimidation is as important as the mere accumulation of means of coercion, and entire agencies of the state have been developed historically to implement this task” (p. 9).
Third, Giustozzi believes that the primitive accumulation of power generally is a ruthlessly violent process, with civil conflict continuing until one faction can establish a monopoly on violence—but, notably, even that monopoly may be broken, causing the process to begin again.
Fourth, he says, “Often in civil conflicts, violence is employed according to a logic and is therefore only seemingly indiscriminate. But sophisticated military political actors clearly understand what kind of violence is counter-productive,” with sophistication meaning at least some actors in a conflict comprehend this reality, even if that is not the case with all of them (p. 12).
Fifth, says Giustozzi, “Policing is a specific strategy of consolidating the monopoly of violence” (p. 14).
Sixth, he asserts that “the renegotiation of the terms of the political settlement, which may include changes in the command and control structure within the coercive apparatus, may weaken the ability of the ruling elite to operate in a coordinated fashion and endanger the monopoly of violence” (p. 16-17).
His final, and no doubt most controversial, hypothesis “is that external intervention, even in its milder form of advice and support, is most likely to be counter-productive in achieving and maintaining the monopoly of violence” (p. 18).
Given the general thrust of his hypotheses, it is unsurprising that Giustozzi has a rather grim view of the process of state-building; he straightforwardly challenges some of the core assumptions undergirding liberal interventionism, and his critique reflects the views of a writer who has an insightful and nuanced understanding of the issues at hand. It is striking that even most of the supposed successes of liberal interventionism are at best decidedly incomplete, according to Giustozzi.
Originally Posted by Bill Moore
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