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State Terror, State Violence pp 1–10Cite as

Terror, Violence, Coercion: States and the Use of (Il)legitimate Force

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Abstract

Latest since the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, academic as well as public discourses in the West and elsewhere have shifted towards a perception that deems violent non-state actors, frequently associate with the term global terrorism, as the main threat to freedom and security. Thus, acts of violence that are not committed by non-state actors and have been labeled acts of (global) terrorism seldom make it into the news and do not necessarily receive the public and scholarly attention they deserve.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although other acts of violence, including state violence, do not lack academics’ attention, most recent studies focus on a particular region or state (Burt 2010; Esparanza et al. 2010; Ganesan and Kim 2013) and, thus, do not draw any attention on the varieties of state violence.

  2. 2.

    For the full text of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1), 8 June 1977 see https://www.icrc.org/ihl/intro/470.

  3. 3.

    In order to provide some examples, in addition to well-known outsourcing of violence through private security forces like Blackwater in the last Iraq war, Pakistan, for instance nurtured jihadist groups in the conflict over Kashmir with India that were later relocated to the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands (Dorronsoro 2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 220 Stanger Street, 24061, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Bettina Koch

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  1. Bettina Koch
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Correspondence to Bettina Koch .

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  1. Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytech. Inst. and State Department of Political Science, BLACKSBURG, Virginia, USA

    Bettina Koch

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Koch, B. (2016). Terror, Violence, Coercion: States and the Use of (Il)legitimate Force. In: Koch, B. (eds) State Terror, State Violence. Staat – Souveränität – Nation. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_1

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