Abstract
Historically, the study of state formation has involved a focus on the urban and national conditions under which states monopolize the means of coercion, generate legitimacy, and marshal sufficient economic resources to wage war against enemies while sustaining citizen allegiance through the extension of social programs, new forms of national solidarity, and citizenship. In Charles Tilly’s large body of work, these themes loomed large, and they have re-emerged in slightly reformulated ways in an unfinished manuscript that reflected on the relationship between capital and coercion in which he also integrated the element of commitment—or networks of trust—into the study of state formation. This article develops these same ideas but in new directions, casting them in light of contemporary rather than historical developments. Taking as its point of departure the accelerating rates of criminal violence and citizen insecurity in cities of the developing world, this essay suggests that random and targeted violence increasingly perpetrated by “irregular” armed forces pose a direct challenge to state legitimacy and national sovereignty. Through examination of urban and transnational non-state armed actors who use violence to accumulate capital and secure economic dominion, and whose activities reveal alternative networks of commitment, power, authority, and even self-governance, this essay identifies contemporary parallels with the pre-modern period studied by Charles Tilly, arguing that current patterns challenge prevailing national-state forms of sovereignty. Drawing evidence primarily from Mexico and other middle income developing countries that face growing insecurity and armed violence, the article examines the new “spatialities” of irregular armed force, how they form the basis for alternative networks of coercion, allegiance, and reciprocity that challenge old forms and scales of sovereignty, and what this means for the power and legitimacy of the traditional nation-state.
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Notes
Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Brazil hold the highest homicide rates in the world (Cohen and Rubio 2007).
Drawing on a definition offered by Nir Gazit (2009, p. 1), I conceive of fragmented sovereignty as the existence of “multiple, localized, and relatively autonomous cores of power,” rather than an “all-compassing structural and centralized modality of control,” a more standard form of sovereignty associated with the modern nation-state.
Much of this owed to the fact that private police were seen as a mainstay of white protection, harkening to the values of Afrikaaner dominance of the past, in the era of political transition in which the new South African Police (SAP) were empowered and legitimized to represent the new South Africa.
Recent evidence included a series of shoot-outs between military and mafia on one hand, and military and police on the other that led to a total of 40 deaths across various cities in Mexico in a single day this past July, racheting up the yearly rate of deaths stemming from battles over drugs to 3553. For newspaper accounts of this recent explosion of deadly violence, see, e.g., La Jornada,, July 11, 2009, p. 7.
For more on this history, see Davis (forthcoming). A quarterly compilation of statistics and reporting on the levels of impunity and corruption in police and military are available from the Justice in Mexico Project, www.justiceinmexico.org.
Some examples include Hezbollah’s reliance on Colombia drug traffickers for funds, the Taliban’s use of the opium trade for financial resources, and Somali rebels’ engagement with pirates and other criminal groups who control trade running through waters off the African coast. See Jojarth (2009).
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This essay is dedicated to the memory of Charles Tilly, a valued former colleague at the New School for Social Research and a great source of inspiration during my 14 years of teaching there. His writings and insights have stimulated much of my own work on the relations between cites and state formation. Portions of the research for this article, particularly those sections focused on private police and police corruption, were undertaken with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Direct all inquiries to: dedavis@mit.edu
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Davis, D.E. Irregular armed forces, shifting patterns of commitment, and fragmented sovereignty in the developing world. Theor Soc 39, 397–413 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9112-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9112-6