War+Making+and+State+Making+as+Organized+Crime

Tatiana Charles Tilly “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime” Note: This is probably the text Prof. Silvia alluded to din describing the transition from the state as a “roving bandit” to a “stationary bandit”. He compares governments as racketeers who create threats and then charges for the reduction of said threat. “ To the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket”(171). Primary claims: · Coercive exploitation played a large part in the creation of European States · Mercantile Capitalism and state making reinforced one another · State making (in the European context) began with the effort to monopolize the means of violence within a given territory adjacent to a power holder’s base. · Governments are in the business of selling protection, whether the people want it or not The difference between organized crime systems and states are the concept of legitimacy in which “the person over whom power is exercised is not as important as the other power holders”(171). Essentially states have legitimacy because other powerful bodies recognize it as such and usually confirm its decisions. In the early stages of state making especially, the lines between banditry and “legitimate” state controlled violence was slim. Bandits and pirates were hired to protect the interests of Lords and states and returned to their piracy and banditry once demobilized. · That said, anyone desiring to centralize power needed to disarm opponents and mercenaries. The Tudors demilitarized other lords by: § Eliminating their personal “armies” § Razing their fortresses § Taming their resort to violence to resolve disputes § Discouraging their dependents and tenants from cooperating on their behalf · English taxation- prior to 16th century kings had to live off revenue from their own properties and could only assess taxes for war. However, when taxes were raised during wartime, the never fell below those new levels, increasing the revenue for the kingdom, and arguably for war making. · A state that successfully eliminates its internal rivals also increases its ability to extract resources, wage war, and protect its supporters In terms of state making: The more costly the activity (other things being equal) the greater was the organizational residue. o War making yielded armies, navies and the supporting services. o State making produced durable instruments of control/ surveillance within the territory o Protection relied on the organization of war making and state making but added systems for those under protection to get their due, through courts and representative assemblies o Extraction brought about fiscal accounting structures. (181) Connection of individual states to European network of states caused by : o Loans and supplies given to neighboring states often for war making o Competition among states for hegemony in disputed territories, which increased war making and muted the lines between war making, state making and extraction o Interstate coalitions created to force a given state into a certain position within the international network Important note: This model does not fit for post-colonial/developing nations because their military development and arguably their apparatus for protection is inherited from colonial masters rather than developed from within so the military has much greater power in relation to civil society because of its support by the previous colonizers. “To the extent that outside states guarantee their boundaries, the managers of those military organizations exercise extraordinary military power within them”(186).