Violence and The State

We start with Max Weber’s definition of the state. In his “Politics As a Vocation” he asserts that the State can be defined as a:

“Human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”

The State becomes a figurative but, monolithic institution which takes the responsibility for the use of violence away from the individual and assigns it to itself; the constructed and abstract agent of the law. It is assumed that a State is defined by its basic ability to monopolize violence. Further we argue that in first world countries the state must have a reputation for violence. Over time it projects a latent power within its borders that produces a self governing citizenry with the belief of an omnipresent and security providing state… The question being: does a safety producing monopoly on violence correlate with being a first world country?

We can observe that simply the ability to do violence onto a population is not enough. The theory developed here is in the context of a monopoly on violence that upholds a mythology of safety, not fear.

Theory/Hypothesis flow charts

Yes Monopoly on Violence → Yes Safety → Yes First World

Yes Monopoly on Violence → Yes Fear → Not First world

No Monopoly on Violence → No Safety → Not First world

No Monopoly on Violence → Yes Safety → Not First World

Survey Questions:

8,9,10 result in a yes while 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 result in a no

These cut offs are admittedly ambiguous but I do believe that there should be some leniency in assigning the status of a monopoly on violence because there can never be a true monopoly on violence so we shouldn't expect an absolute experience of it either. A large enough reputation for it is good enough in this context. The above logic extends to the other two variables (Safety and Fear) as well.

Monopoly on Violence-

On a scale of 1-10 how confident are you in the government's ability to control “the legitimate use of physical force” within the country. In other words does the government effectively inform when, where, why and by whom violence is legitimate.

Safety-

On a scale of 1-10 Do you feel that the government provides for a general feeling of safety in the country?

Fear-

On a scale of 1-10 Do you feel that the government provides for a general feeling of fear in the country?

Concept formation

“...norms of ordinary usage generally provide a range of terminological and definitional options, rather than a single definition.”

The infinite potential of terminological options in regards to safety and fear give strength to the research design. In the face of an infinite configurations/connotations that cannot be accounted for there must be a valid unifying factor if we observe unified results. Regardless of what safety and fear means to each individual what is important is how they apply those ideas to the State.

Safety and Fear are completely different concepts for every person, instead of trying to define them in ways that would still not capture the true nature of each, instead we leave them up to interpretation by the respondent. The goal isn’t to conceptualize fear and safety but to see if regardless of the differences in interpretation there is a general feeling of safety or fear as defined by each individual. Collectively despite personalized connotations of fear and safety through a large enough data set the randomness can be assumed to be accounted for if a significant trend exists.

Sampling:

We will use the comparative method to compare the USA with Brazil in order to test the relationship. They most importantly differ in their status but they are similar in terms of size and population.

In order to test the theory, large scale ethnographic surveys would be appropriate. The design uses qualitative surveys done within two cases that are selected on the dependent variable (first world vs third world). We chose Brazil and the US to compare.

To conduct the surveys each country would be Divided into 6 domestic regions where 3 cities would be chosen (urban, suburban, rural). If all the cities in the surveyed domestic region reports that a safety producing monopoly on violence is present then that domestic region gets coded as a yes. If the majority of the six domestic regions get a yes rating then the country is expected to be a first world country.

In each city we would also seek to get a diverse sample in terms of respondents. We want to reach business owners, their employees, teachers, academics, the self employed, and the unemployed to the best of our ability. In this way we can account for differences between sections of society in terms of how they interpret the state’s monopoly on violence and the subsequent feeling of safety or fear.

Dividing the countries into 6 regions allows for survey responses that span across a country and isn't representative of only one region. Using a singular region or just two to represent an entire country would provide a potentially bias data set as we might not get enough differentiation within a country which is important because we want to measure a country wide belief. That is, a generally shared belief despite region.

Second by further sub dividing our sampling into three cities with different locations within each domestic region allows for more control. We want to test the reputation for a security providing monopoly on violence regardless of it being an urban, suburban, or rural setting.

Lastly we only consider cities with a population larger than 70,000 to limit the scope of the research, therefore increasing its validity while decreasing its ability to be generalized. Larger metropolitan areas will share attributes which act as natural controls. As the size of the city decreases there can be increased variability in each town’s culture which could inform the perceptions of locals in a way that is unique to that towns situation. In general we want to avoid confounding the local experience with the national mythology even though we are locally asking about the greater nation.

Survey Deployment:

In order to do the survey there would need to be multiple outlets for it. First on the ground and in person surveys are time consuming but valuable as there is a natural randomization in an outdoor public setting. It is also the oldest and most accessible form of surveying since all one needs is the questions and a willingness to ask people questions. The costs for paying those that do the surveying would be the greatest barrier to this type of deployment. Distribution via the internet and social media is another way. Though engagement online is likely to be lower than actually asking and engaging with people. The obvious advantage is that the amount of people that can be reached is exponentially larger. Social media sites, like Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter are perfect online social media outlets that would provide a good platform for gathering survey data. Using the Academic world would also be invaluable since there are many schools in the US which would be open and receptive to disseminating an academic survey to its student body.

Necessary and sufficient

The theory poses that the variable: “Monopoly on violence” is a necessary but not sufficient condition for bringing about economic development.

Designing Social Inquiry

"the single most serious problem with qualitative research in political science is the pervasive failure to provide reasonable estimates of the uncertainty of the investigator's inferences."

Admittingly our small-N is failing to provide this certainty of the inferences that we are investigating Yet the small-N of the study does not mean there is a lack of data to corroborate the findings. This is because each country is not providing one data. They are providing 18 observable city surveys in each country (6 regions, 3 survey cities in each). With 36 total city surveys with an expected hundreds of responses to each which gives us a large amount of data to work with. The inferences supported by the data would be hard to empirically argue with because the above quantity of data would validate a statistically significant trend.

Redesigning Social Inquiry

Though we do not provide a large-N we do combine several methods to validate our logical inferences. Through the comparative method we are able to concentrate on two specific countries but go into a good amount of detail when doing our survey work. The ability to sub divide the countries into 6 regions and then again into 3 cities within each region gives us a good amount of insight and validity. We are not just getting very coarse regional responses but we are getting sub-regional local responses about the greater nation. Additionally the codification of the qualitative data which we can then use in statistical analysis is useful. Using qualitative methods to generate hypothesis and ethnographic data that can later be quantified is a great way to cross back and forth between the qualitative and quantitative methods.

Comparative Method

The design uses the comparative method to compare Brazil and the US and is a systematic analysis of two cases. The method is appropriate because given limited resources and time it is often more valuable to do an intensive study of a couple of cases versus doing a limited statistical analysis of a greater amount of cases.

The method has a weak ability to sort out rival explanations, it runs into the problem of many potential variables but tested in with just two cases.

We focused creating on comparable cases that are selected specifically to contrast each other. They are specifically comparable because of their size and population which gives them comparable economic potential but they differ in their 1st and 3rd world status.

We are limited in our solutions to the above limitation because we cannot easily increase the number of cases since the cost and time to do the study would increase exponentially with each new country that is added and we cannot reduce the number of variables since they are dependent on each other.

Conclusion

The methods described are meant to take a very large question and break it down into smaller pieces. Economic development has many factors no doubt. We use the comparative method to allow for feasibility in terms of money and time. Doing survey work is extremely expensive and time consuming so using two examples helps contain the scope of the project in that sense. Yet through our survey deployment and design we are able to generate a large amount of data. Dividing each country into six different regions with three sub cities allows for a great amount of validity in the results since they comprehensively survey the different countries regions and cities. The conceptualization of the variables fear and safety are done through the surveys responses themselves. They are concepts which are defined by their outcome. If someone feels safe then they feel safe in their perception of the question. We do not try to test a specific definition for safety or fear but the presence of it regardless of what attributes they take. The set backs to the design are that fact that it relies on survey data as its main data source. Surveys are inherently tricky and not quantitative until codified. The results can be turned into data but the quality depends on the questions and how they are interpreted. To conclude we hope to test if a monopoly on violence can cause safety that is indicative of first or third world status.

Bibliography

Collier, David. (1991). The Comparative Method: Two Decades of Change.

Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Goertz, Gary & Starr, Harvey (eds.) (2002). _Necessary Conditions: Theory, Methodology, and Applications_. Lanham, MD, USA: Rowman & Littlefield.

Verba S, King G, Keohane RO. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1994.