How the normative resistance of anarchism shaped the state monopoly on violence
| Author | Michael E. Newell |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066119848037 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066119848037
European Journal of
International Relations
2019, Vol. 25(4) 1236 –1260
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066119848037
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How the normative
resistance of anarchism
shaped the state
monopoly on violence
Michael E. Newell
Gettysburg College and Johns Hopkins University, USA
Abstract
Rather than an assumption of statehood, the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of
force is better understood as a normative ideal that regulates behavior, and constitutes
states as the sole legitimate authority on violence. Existing literature on this norm
has explored its development in response to piracy in the early to mid-1800s, but it
has overlooked significant developments that occurred in response to the violence of
transnational anarchist terrorism. Anarchist philosophers in the late 1800s resisted the
normative basis of the state monopoly on violence and articulated their own competing
claims. While their normative ideas failed to gain widespread acceptance, they elicited
significant responses by states. In the Rome Conference of 1898 and the St. Petersburg
Protocol, states reiterated the constitutive aspects of the state monopoly norm, and
articulated new, deeper obligations to coordinate anti-anarchist policies. State officials
considered a protean form of collective security against the anarchists, and applied the
state monopoly norm to the control of the violence of individual, rather than corporate,
non-state actors for the first time. Similar to trends identified in existing literature
on the state monopoly norm, this article notes that the response to the anarchists
was bolstered by their perception as “outsiders of authority,” or violators of core
constitutive norms of state authority. This trend and these broader historical dynamics
are explained with reference to theoretical literature on normative resistance.
Keywords
Anarchism, collective security, norm contestation, norms, state monopoly on
violence, terrorism
Corresponding author:
Michael E. Newell, Gettysburg College and Johns Hopkins University, 300 N Washington St., Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania 17325, USA.
Emails: mnewell@gettysburg.edu; MikeNewell9@gmail.com
848037EJT0010.1177/1354066119848037European Journal of International RelationsNewell
research-article2019
Article
Newell 1237
Introduction
In response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, United Nations Security Council
(UNSC) Resolution 1373 called upon states to prevent terrorist violence through infor-
mation exchanges, the suppression of terrorist funds, the creation of a new United
Nations (UN) Counterterrorism Committee, and the regulation of the movement of indi-
vidual terrorist suspects.1 The Resolution signaled that state officials recognize a shared
obligation to reassert state control of violence against the challenge posed by non-state
actors. As this suggests, while typically considered an essential attribute or a defining
feature of statehood, the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence is better understood
as an ideal type, which, as an ideal, prescribes normative obligations.2 To this end, exist-
ing contributions to the literature have examined the historical evolution of the “state
monopoly norm,” or “Weberian norms,” through case studies of the Barbary pirates,
mercenaries, privateers, post-colonial conflicts, and the more recent war on terror
(Krahmann, 2013; Löwenheim, 2007; Philpott, 2001; Thomson, 1994). These existing
accounts have traced the historical development of the normative elements of the state
monopoly on violence, including the acceptability of the production and control of the
means of violence by the state, the proscription of violence by non-state actors, states’
obligation to prevent non-state violence emanating from their territory, and the constitu-
tion of states as the legitimate holders of authority over violence. As these elements
indicate, the state monopoly is a confluence of both regulatory norms relating to the
behavior of state and non-state actors, and constitutive norms that shape legitimate forms
of statehood and uses of force.
Existing scholarship on Weberian norms would indicate that the UNSC Resolution
and other contemporary multilateral counterterrorism institutions are a continuation of
the norms first articulated in response to piracy through the 1856 Declaration of Paris.
Yet, such a conclusion would fail to account for how the Declaration’s abolition of pri-
vateering and protection of neutral ships in a time of war developed into the more sub-
stantive obligations seen in response to contemporary terrorism. Instead, crucial changes
to the norms on legitimate violence occurred in the heretofore understudied years prior
to the First World War in response to violence associated with the transnational anarchist
movement. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anarchism sought to undermine state
authority through a philosophy of “direct action” involving violent, insurrectional acts
against European and American states. Anarchism challenged the norms constituting the
authority and legitimacy of states, and provoked the reassertion of normative rules and
their expansion through new forms of state authority. These were changes in the regula-
tive norms of the state monopoly on violence, but they occurred because the anarchists
posed threats to core constitutive norms.
Filling this gap in the chronological record helps us to understand why the complex
of regulative and constitutive norms of the state monopoly on violence that we have
today differs markedly in content from what existed in the 1856 Declaration of Paris.
Existing accounts of Weberian norms have thus far overlooked the distinction between
regulative and constitutive norms, as well as their different levels of importance in norm
contestation and development. At the same time, the preoccupation with state actors in
the history of these norms has failed to adequately theorize the role played by deviant
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