From Warre to Tyranny: Lethal Conflict and the State

Following Hobbes, many social theorists have claimed that the state reduces the amount of violence in human societies. Are they right ? The author reviews the cross-cultural and cross-national evidence on the impact of the state on the most common form of extreme violence-lethal conflict (i.e., war, rebellion, homicide, and execution). Drawing on the sociology of conflict management, he argues that the relationship between the state and lethal conflict is not negative as Hobbesian theory predicts. Rather, it appears to be U-shaped. A combination of materials from anthropology, criminology, and political science suggests that rates of lethal conflict tend to be high when state authority is absent and also when it is extremely strong or centralized. Between these extremes, in less centralized states, lethal conflict typically declines