From Warre to Tyranny

FROM WARRE TO TYRANNY:LETHAL CONFLICT AND THE STATE*

Mark CooneyUniversity of Georgia

tovhng Hobbes, many social theorists have claimed that the state reducesthe amount of violence in human societies. Are they right? I review the cross-cultural and cross-national evidence on the impact of the state on the mostcommon form of extreme violence—lethal conflict (i.e., war, rebellion, homi-cide, and execution). Drawing on the sociology of conflict management (Black1993), I argue that the relationship between the state and lethal conflict is notnegative as Hobbesian theory predicts. Rather, it appears to be U-shaped. Acombination of materials from anthropology, criminology, and political sci-ence suggests that rates of lethal conflict tend to be high when state authorityis absent and also when it is extremely strong or centralized. Between theseextremes, in less centralized states, lethal conflict typically declines.

Theorists have long argued that the statereduces violence among those subject to

its jurisdiction. Hobbes ([1651] 1909) pro-vided an early and eloquent statement of thisidea, contending that in tbe absence of astrong central authority, violence pervadessocial life. Weber's ([1922] 1968:54) influ-ential definition of the state emphasizes itsability to successfully monopolize the legiti-mate use of violence, a capacity that wouldseem to depend partly on the state's ability torestrict violent behavior. Elias ([1939] 1982)nominates the state as a primary source of thelong-term civilizing process that decreasesviolence in everyday life. And Koch's (1974)experience as an ethnographer in New Guinealeads him to stress the importance of third-party modes of conflict management, likethose provided by state legal systems, as vio-lence-controlling mechanisms in human so-cieties.

But are these authors correct? Does thestate diminish violence in human affairs? If

* Direct all correspondence to Mark Cooney,Department of Sociology, University of Georgia,Athens, GA 30602-1611 ([email protected]). An early version of this paper was presentedat the annual meeting of the American Society ofCriminology, Miami, November 1994. For com-ments and advice I thank M. P. Baumgartner, E.M. Beck, Donald Black, William Finlay, JohnHerrmann, Ivy Kennelly, James Tucker, and sev-eral anonymous ASR reviewers.

the state did not exist, would life be moreviolent? Neither the literature on the state northat on violence contains a sustained empiri-cal analysis of these issues, even though the"many-sided problem of order" remains aprominent topic of theoretical discussion(Wrong 1994). In this paper, I seek to fill thevoid, reviewing the available information inlight of ideas developed in the sociology ofconflict management, a broad field dedicatedto describing and explaining the handling ofhuman conflict (Black 1976, 1984, 1993;also see Horwitz 1990).

The argument I advance is that the Hobbe-sian thesis is only partially correct. Anthro-pological evidence suggests that the statetends to reduce the amount of violent con-fiict in human societies. But political sciencedata indicate that the state may, under cer-tain conditions, also increase violence. Con-sequently, while the form of violent conflictmay change from the "warre of every managainst every man" (Hobbes [1651] 1909:98)to state tyranny directed against citizens, thesheer volume of violence may remain ap-proximately the same. I therefore proposethat the overall relationship between the stateand violent conflict is U-shaped: High levelsof violent conflict are found when state au-thority is weak or absent and when it is ex-tremely strong or centralized. Between theseextremes, in less centralized states, low andintermediate amounts of violence are found.

316 American Sociological Review, 1997, Vol. 62 (April:316-338)

LETHAL CONFLICT AND THE STATE 317

The information on violence is most abun-dant for lethal violence, whether committedby individuals, groups, or governments. Mostlethal violence arises out of conflict. Hence,in using data on lethal violence I am, in ef-fect, measuring lethal conflict. My argumentencompasses two hypotheses. First, rates oflethal conflict are higher in stateless than innoncentralized state societies. Second, ratesof lethal conflict are higher in centralizedstate societies than noncentralized state soci-eties.

ISSUES AND PERSPECTIVES

Scholarship on the state has analyzed vari-ous aspects of violence. These include thelink between war-making and state-forma-tion (Tilly 1975, 1990; Porter 1994), the re-lationship between internal and external stateviolence (Rasler 1986; Starr 1994), thegrowth of coercive states (Gurr 1988), andthe trend away from interstate war towardmore amorphous forms of confiict within andacross national boundaries (van Creveld1991; Tilly 1995). Anthropologists have pur-sued similar questions in the context of struc-turally simple societies, investigating, for ex-ample, how the development of political in-stitutions affects the incidence of differentforms of violence (Otterbein and Otterbein1965; Otterbein 1968).

Important though these questions are, I ad-dress a different topic here: the effect of stateauthority on the overall quantity of lethalconflict. Consider two scenarios. In scenarioA, tbe people of a region are divided into nu-merous small, autonomous, political commu-nities. In scenario B, these same people arenow organized into two sovereign states. Isthere more lethal conflict in scenario A or B?In other words, compared to their counterpartin B, does the average person in A have agreater, lesser, or the same chance of beingkilled in a violent conflict—whether the vio-lence is warfare, revolution, execution, orhomicide?

Three Positions

Theorists take three positions. The first posi-tion—that the state reduces lethal conflict—finds its classic expression in Hobbes's([1651] 1909) Leviathan:

[I]t is manifest that during the time men livewithout a common power to keep them all inawe, they are in that condition which is calledWarre; and such a warre, as is of every man,against every man. (P. 96)

The consequences of warre are

. . . continuall feare, and danger of violentdeath; And the life of man, solitary, poore,nasty, brutish, and short. (P. 97)

The solution is sovereign power

. . . as great, as possibly men can be imaginedto make it. And though of so unlimited aPower, men may fancy many evill conse-quences, yet the consequences of the want ofit, which is perpetuall warre of every managainst his neighbor, are much worse. (P. 160)

Although the Hobbesian view is undoubt-edly the dominant one, a second positionholds that the state has no impact on rates oflethal conflict. The anarchist theorist, Kro-potkin ([1886] 1975), expressed one versionof this idea:

[T]he severity of punishment does not dimin-ish the amount of crime. Hang, and if you like,quarter murderers, and the number of murderswill not decrease by one. On the other hand,abolish the penalty of death, and there will notbe one murder more; there will be fewer. Sta-tistics prove it. But if the harvest is good, andbread cheap, the weather fine, the number ofmurders immediately decreases. This again isproved by statistics. The amount of crime al-ways augments and diminishes in proportion tothe price of provisions and the state of theweather. (P. 42)

A third position is that the state increasesthe incidence of violent death. One way itdoes this is by increasing the scale of war-fare (Reyna 1994). This argument has beenstated most forcefully by the anthropologistLee (1979) in his study of the !Kung San(now called the Ju/'hoansi; Lee 1993:(x; cf.Thomas 1994), a much-studied group ofhunter-gatherers in the Kalahari desert. Re-ferring to the Hobbesian thesis, as expressedby Sahlins (1968), Lee (1979) remarks:

An alternative but complementary view is toregard the process of social evolution leadingto the state as one of externalizing violencerather than controlling or eliminating it. . . . Ashuman societies have evolved from bands (likethe !Kung) to tribes and chiefdoms, each stepup in the level of sociocultural integration has

318 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

reduced the problems of violence at the previ-ous level of integration, but has opened up newforms of violence at the new level. So, for ex-ample, in the nineteenth century the Batswanachiefdom imposed its order on the band-levelSan hunters in Eastern Botswana, only to wageintertribal warfare on a much larger scaleagainst neighboring chiefdoms such as theMatebele and the Kalanga-Shona, Then at theend of the nineteenth century, the British in-dustrial state brought a Pax Britannica to thewarring chiefdoms of Southern Africa. But ageneration later, the British mobilized thou-sands of Tswana warriors' sons to fight in theMediterranean theater against the German andItalian national states. At each new level of in-tegration, the scale on which violence is prac-ticed becomes greater in terms of the numbersinvolved, the degree of organization, the lengthand intensity of the conflict, and the technologi-cal sophistication, (P, 399, emphases omitted)'

I argue that none of these positions fullycaptures the complex relatiotiship betweenthe state atid the amount of lethal conflictthat occurs. The state does affect rates of le-thal conflict, contrary to Kropotkin's view,but the relationship is neither positive, as Leeholds, nor negative, as Hobbes and othersbelieve. Rather, the relationship appears tobe U-shaped, an argument that draws on re-cent theoretical developments in the sociol-ogy of conflict management.^

The Sociotogy of Conflict Management

The sociology of conflict management seeksto isolate the social conditions underlyingvariation in the way people handle conflict.Early work by Marx (Cain and Hunt 1979),Maine ([1861] 1963), Durkheim ([1893]1964, 1899-1900), Weber (1954) and othersfocused on law, but the subject now extendsto the entire range of formal and informaltactics that individuals and groups use in pur-suing grievances (Black 1984).

Black (1976, 1993) has developed a bodyof theory that explains variation in conflictmanagement regardless of time, place, orstructural level. Theory of that generalitymust necessarily incorporate findings fromseveral disciplines, including anthropology,history, political science, and criminology(Black 1995). An interdisciplinary focus alsocharacterizes much work among the growingnumber of scholars who use Black's ideas tostudy a variety of forms of conflict manage-ment (or "social control"—Black uses thetwo terms interchangeably). These includestudies of collective violence (Senechal de laRoche 1996), international discord (Borg1992), avoidance and nonconfrontation insuburbia (Baumgartner 1988), disputingamong corporate executives (Morrill 1995),cross-cultural patterns of domestic violence(Baumgartner 1993), the treatment of mentalillness (Horwitz 1982), and the handling ofgrievances in nonhierarchical corporations(Tucker forthcoming).

The literature on conflict management cur-rently does not specify an overall relation-ship between the state and violent conflict,but it suggests a question for analyzing theissue: In what ways could the state promoteor inhibit the use of violence among peoplein conflict? The literature also provides somepreliminary answers.

One possible effect of the state on conflict,for example, is to reduce the incidence of le-thal violence by providing disputants with apeaceful means for resolving their differ-ences—law. Not that statelessness should au-tomatically lead to violence. There are manyways of handling conflict nonviolently be-sides invoking law. These include negotia-tion, mediation, arbitration, avoidance, andtoleration (Black 1990). Nevertheless, thepresence of law should, in the aggregate,make violence less likely because it createsanother peaceful alternative.^

' Lee's view is consistent with Hobbes's in im-plying that a worldwide state would be the mostefi'ective way to reduce violence. It diverges fromHobbes's position in its assessment of the overallamount of violence found under a system of mul-tiple states,

2 Although my argument is confined to states,the same relationship may hold for other forms ofauthority (e,g,, domestic, occupational, local).

•* The state suffers from an important limitationas an explanatory variable: It lacks generality. Forexample, it is unable to explain variation in vio-lence within and across stateless societies. Assuch, it is a poor candidate for inclusion in a gen-eral sociological theory of violence (Black 1990:43-49), Consequently, the U-shaped relationshipI propose cannot be regarded as a fundamentaltheoretical proposition.


On the other hand, if state authority growsextremely strong, violence can be expectedto increase again (Black 1993, chap. 8).Strong or centralized states do not merelyprovide institutions and personnel to resolvedisputes, they become directly involved inconflict themselves, as principals. Highlycentralized regimes tend to be intolerant andsevere toward their own citizens and otherstates. Given to persecution at home and ag-gression abroad, they create, find, and pun-ish enemies to a degree unknown in otherstates.

I combine these ideas into a single formu-lation. I argue that lethal conflict is most pro-nounced where state authority is weak or ab-sent and where it is extremely strong."* Be-fore turning to my argument, however, I mustclarify some key terms.

The "State"

I define a state conventionally, as "an autono-mous political unit, encompassing manycommunities within its territory and havinga centralized government with the power tocollect taxes, draft men for work or war, anddecree and enforce laws" (Carneiro1970:733). States differ in many ways, butone key distinction identified by political sci-entists and sociologists is the strength oftheir authority or how centralized they are.'State centralization, in the sense used here,has at least two principal dimensions(Rummel 1995). The first is autocracy-de-mocracy, or the extent to which political de-cision-making is concentrated in the hands ofa single individual or small group. Measuresof autocracy include how few people makedecisions on matters of state importance

"• A reviewer suggested that the empirical pat-terns described here are better explained by thepresence or absence of the rule of law. But therule of law is not a satisfactory explanatory vari-able because law responds to its social environ-ment (Cooney 1995). Hence, even if lethal vio-lence is negatively correlated with the rule of law,the question still remains: What explains the ruleof law? One factor discussed here is the strengthof state authority.

' "Centralization" should not be confused withnetwork "centrality" (Hage and Harary 1983:30-39). Centralization could also be labeled"authoritarianism" or "totalitarianism."

(e.g., finance, security), the absence ofchecks on leaders' decisions, and the lack offree and regular elections. The second is to-talitarianism-libertarianism, or the degree towhich the state penetrates and controls sociallife. Measures of totalitarianism include theextent of state ownership, the size and scopeof the bureaucracy, and the number and in-fluence of state officials in neighborhoods,workplaces, schools, and other institutions.

In highly centralized states both autoc-racy-democracy and totalitarianism-liber-tarianism are strongly developed: The statecontrols most social activity, places its offi-cials throughout the society, and political de-cision-making is in the tenacious hands of asingle person or a small group that is not an-swerable to a popular electorate or subject toreview by other branches of government. Ex-amples are ancient empires. Communist re-gimes, and totalitarian polities (e.g., NaziGermany). The least centralized states arethose in which all citizens participate equallyin decision-making and in which the stateexerts only minimal control over social insti-tutions. Because there are (at least yet) nostates with such minimal centralization,states can be considered noncentralized ifthey have a low overall score on both dimen-sions of centralization. One example is tradi-tional states with political institutions basedon limited representation that levy taxes andmaintain order but otherwise do not penetratethe lives of their citizens. Another is moderndemocracies, which regulate many institu-tional spheres but do not typically dominatethem by subordinating their interests to thoseof the polity, and which distribute public de-cision-making among a variety of officehold-ers elected by popular and periodic vote. Be-cause of the great availability of data onmodern democracies, I use them as the ex-emplar of noncentralized states.

Although centralization is a continuum,the preliminary nature of the present discus-sion requires analyzing state authority interms of a simple trichotomous distinctionbetween stateless societies, noncentralizedstates, and centralized states. This means thatat least four important questions must be de-ferred: (1) how lethal conflict fares under in-termediate forms of pre-state authority, suchas chiefdoms; (2) the extent to which thestate indirectly affects the frequency of lethal


conflict (e.g., by weakening the strong kin-ship groups and local groups associated withfeuding in stateless societies; Thoden vanVelzen and van Wetering 1960); (3) the de-gree of centralization states must attain be-fore rates of lethal conflict begin to increase;and (4) which dimension of political central-ization, autocracy-democracy or totalitarian-ism-libertarianism, has the greatest impacton the incidence of lethal conflict.

"Lethal Conflict"

I define "lethal conflict" as the deliberate orcareless killing of another through physicalmeans in the course of a conflict. A conflictis a disagreement over "right" and "wrong."Excluded are killings believed to be causedby supernatural intervention (e.g., witch-craft), but included are killings by neglect,such as the calculated starvation of an en-emy, individual or collective. The killer orvictim may be an individual, an organization,a sovereign polity (whether state, chieftain-ship, or some other entity) or one of itsagents. This yields four forms of lethal con-flict (Table 1).

Broad though it is, the typology in Table 1excludes lethal violence arising out of preda-tory behavior such as rape, robbery, banditry,and piracy as well as other killings not re-lated to conflict, such as infanticide and se-rial killing.

Since official statistics rarely distinguishclearly between conflict-related killings andother forms of killing, it is uncertain exactlywhat percentage of lethal violence originatesin conflict. Criminologists have long estab-lished that most modern homicides arise outof disputes, altercations, disagreements, ven-dettas, and the like (Wolfgang 1958:190-99).In the contemporary United States, about 70percent of criminal homicides appear to be-gin as conflicts (Block 1986:3-4; Maxfield1989). In other countries, the percentage maywell be higher (Home Office Criminal Sta-tistics 1993:81-82 [England and Wales];Siiverman and Kennedy 1993:55 [Canada];Strang 1993:14 [Australia]). Qualitative eth-nographic evidence reveals that the great ma-jority of killings in preindustrial societies arecommitted in the course of disputes overhonor, sexual fidelity, prior homicides, andthe like (e.g., Hasluck 1954; Koch 1974;

Table 1. Four Forms of Lethal Conflict

Victim

Individual/Group

Polity/Agent of Polity

Killer

Individual/Group

Homicide

Rebellion

Polity/Agent of Polity

Execution

War

Knauft 1990).^ At larger structural levels,conflict also dominates, although numericalestimates are again lacking. Political killingby and against states typically arises out ofdisputes over the imposition of and resis-tance to state authority (Rummel 1994).Similarly, most warfare, between tribes andmodern nation-states alike, is preceded bynonlethal skirmishes such as diplomatic ne-gotiation, the seizure of hostages, the occu-pation of territory, and the assassination ofpolitical leaders. In both types of society,wars tend to arise between physically con-tiguous groups, a good indicator that priorconflict lies behind the outbreak of hostili-ties (Meggitt 1977:42; Bremer 1992). Inshort, the great majority of violence is rootedin conflict, regardless of the structural levelat which it occurs.

Is the aggregate amount of lethal conflictfound in human societies affected by thestate? Anthropologists, criminologists, politi-cal scientists, and others have conducted asubstantial amount of research that helps toanswer that question. However, their infor-mation is far from complete, particularly forstateless societies. Data on lethal conflict isavailable only for societies that have beenstudied by anthropologists who happen to beinterested in the subject. Moreover, only insome of those cases are there reasonably ac-curate counts of the number of people killed.Many of the older ethnographies report theirinformation in relatively vague terms (e.g.,feuding is "frequent" or "very frequent").Consequently, there are few numerical esti-mates of the victims of lethal conflict, and

' I use the convention known as "the ethno-graphic present tense" to refer to stateless societ-ies as described in the anthropological literature.Most have changed substantially since they werefirst studied.


even those present some problems of inter-pretation.

Yet while the amount of lethal conflict thatoccurs in the typical stateless society cannotbe quantified, the quality and quantity of theavailable information is sufficient to makethe general comparisons across the three cat-egories of society required by the issue un-der discussion. The procedure I adopt is tosupport the argument using different types ofdata wherever possible. Thus, by drawing onsynchronic and diachronic analyses, casestudies and cross-cultural surveys, personalnarratives and professional investigations, itis possible to piece together a coherent, con-sistent, and triangulated account of the rela-tionship between the state and lethal conflict.

STATELESSNESS

In its strongest form. Hobbesian theory iseasily refuted. Even a single stateless soci-ety with low rates of violence falsifies itsclaims. Two well-documented examples ofstateless societies in which violent conflict isextremely rare are the Mbuti Pygmies (Turn-bull 1961. 1965. 1978) and the Semai(Robarchek 1977; Dentan 1978. 1979. 1988;Robarchek and Dentan 1987).' Both societ-ies negate the idea that stateless societies arenecessarily violent (also see Howell andWillis 1989).

A weaker version of Hobbesian theory ismore resilient, however. In this version, thestate is but one factor influencing killing.Rates of lethal conflict in stateless societiesshould, therefore, be higher on average thanin state societies, even though particularstateless societies may seldom experiencekilling: "It may peradventure be thought, thatthere was never such a time, nor condition ofwarre as this; and I believe it was never gen-erally so. over all the world" (Hobbes [1651]1909:77).»

^ Both the Mbuti (Zaire) and the Semai (Ma-laysia) are nominally incorporated into nationstates, but the geographical isolation of bothgroups means that the state exercises no controlover the way they handle conflict.

* In places. Hobbes implies that the "state ofnature" is a pre-social state not to be equated withactual stateless societies. But elsewhere (for ex-ample, in the passage cited above) he suggestsotherwise (Wrong 1994. chaps. 2 and 4).

From a conflict management perspectivethis weaker version of Hobbesianism is con-siderably more plausible because violence isonly one way of pursuing a grievance in theabsence of law. Although a dearth of precisestatistical data precludes a multivariate test,weak Hobbesianism receives strong supportfrom two comparative analyses: a synchroniccomparison of the incidence of lethal conflictin selected stateless and state settings, and adiachronic comparison of the effect on lethalconflict of the introduction of the state.

Stateless and NoncentralizedState Societies

Several synchronic cross-cultural studies re-port that as political institutions becomemore complex and state-like, violence de-clines (Koch and Sodergen 1976; Masamura1977; Rosenfeld and Messner 1991).' Be-cause they are not based on firsthand obser-vational data, a criticism sometimes made ofthese studies is that they reflect more thewidespread fear of violence than its actualoccurrence (Gluckman 1956. chap. 1; Hoebel1971; Moore 1972; Colson 1974:40^3).

More recent evidence indicates, however,that violence occurs at extremely high levelsin at least some stateless societies. The evi-dence—indirect but comparatively hard—isof two kinds: violent mortality statistics andper capita rates of lethal conflict. Becauseanthropologists are likely to report informa-tion of this kind only when they are struck byhow much lethal conflict there is. these sta-tistics may represent the most violent state-less societies. Even so. they are instructive.

' Cross-cultural studies further suggest that thestate reduces internal homicide gradually ratherthan suddenly. Otterbein and Otterbein (1965)and Otterbein (1968) show that feuding (i.e..blood revenge following a homicide within a po-litical community) and internal warfare (i.e..armed combat between political communitieswithin the same culture) are compatible with theexistence of a state in preindustrial societies. Thismakes sense: Historical evidence shows thatstates establish their authority slowly, particularlyin preindustrial settings when states are relativelysmall and remote from many of the regions theypurport to rule (Stone 1965. chap. 5; Tilly1986:171-72). Early states therefore experiencedmore citizen violence than do modern states(Giddens 1985; Mann 1993:15).


Table 2. Percentage of Deaths Caused

Society

Att AduttsWaorani (Ecuador)Gebusi (New Guinea)

MatesAchuara Ji'varo (Ecuador-Peru)Highland Albania

Yanomamo (Venezuela-Brazil)

Grand Valley Dani (New Guinea)Mae Enga (New Guinea)Huli (New Guinea)

FemalesAchuara Ji'varo (Ecuador-Peru)

by War and

Period

Homicide in Selected

Percent Killedin Conflict

5 generations 611940-1962

a

1901-19051964-1987

_ b

c

d

u

39

5940

3028

2513

27

Stateless Societies

Source

Yost (1981:687)

Knauft (1985:116)

Benneu Ross (1984:96)Coon (1950:25)

Chagnon (1988:986)

Heider ([1979] 1991:114)

Meggitt (1977:110)Glasse (1968:98)

Bennett Ross (1984:96)

^ Not available. Based on "a mortality sample of over 250 relatives of Achuara informants" (BennettRoss 1984:96),

'' Not available. Based on genealogies of 350 deceased males and 201 deceased females,

" Not available. Based on "a sample of genealogies drawn in 1955-57 from [14 clans] with reference tothe stated cause of death of men before 1950" (Meggitt 1977:109; also see p, 12),

'' Not available. Based on genealogies of 409 male deaths and 360 female deaths.

Table 2 presents mortality statistics fromwar and homicide compiled by anthropolo-gists for several stateless societies. The soci-eties in Table 2 exhibit considerable diver-sity. They are based on both foraging and ag-ricultural economies, located in different re-gions of the globe, and have varying degreesof contact with state societies. Thus, at thetime covered by the data, the Albanians (c.1900) lived in a region dominated by states.The South Americans were more removed,but several were connected by trade to statesocieties (Ferguson 1995). The most remotewere the New Guinea groups some of whomappear to have been almost entirely free ofexternal influence (Knauft 1993), State con-tact is therefore unlikely to explain the vio-lence of stateless societies (cf. Ferguson andWhitehead 1992; Ferguson 1995),

The statistics in Table 2 may depict the ex-treme rather than the typical stateless society.However, a survey of the available archaeo-logical evidence reveals comparable levels ofviolence: In 14 societies widely separated inspace and time, the percentage of violentdeaths ranges from 2 to 41 percent (Keeley1996:197). Thus, even if the societies in Table2 are unusual, they are by no means unique

(also see Keeley 1996:195-97),By contrast, violent mortality statistics in

modern democratic state societies are muchlower. Even in the United States, wherecriminal homicide is considerably more fre-quent than in most industrialized countries(Reiss and Roth 1993:52-53), only 1 percentof deaths are caused by homicide (calculatedfrom U.S, Bureau of the Census 1995:94),

Comparisons of this kind are, however,somewhat misleading because the statisticsfor stateless societies embrace all violentdeaths, including those incurred in warfare,while those for modern states include onlypeople killed in criminal homicide (Lee1979:397-99), But bringing war back in doesnot change the overall picture (Harris 1993:299)10

Table 3 compares the annualized rate ofdeath from war and homicide per 100,000people for several pre-state societies for

'" The most lethal international conflict of thetwentieth century was World War II, but in thatwar just "9 percent of the USSR's and 5 percentof Germany's population were killed, while forEngland and France it was only 1 percent, and forthe United States an infinitesimal 0,2 percent"(Livingstone 1968:5),


Table 3. Approximate Annual Rates of Death perSelected Stateless Societies

Society

Stateless SocietiesGebusi (New Guinea)Omu (New Guinea)Goilala (New Guinea)Auyana (New Guinea)Murngin (Australia)Yanomamo (Venezuela-Brazil)Ju'/hoansi (Botswana)

Democratic State SocietiesFranceGreat BritainUnited States

and Democratic

Period

1940-1962

1896-19461896-19461924-19491906-19261970-19741920-1955

1900-19901900-19901900-1990

100,000 Population from War and Homicide:State Societies

Rateper 100,000

68362053342033016642

582613

Source

Knauft (1985:376-77)McArthur (1961:321)Hallpike (1977:120)Robbins(1982: 211)Warner ([1937] 1958:157-58)Melancon (1982:33,42)"Lee (1979:382, 397)

b

b

b

" Calculated by Knauft (1987:464). Because the Yanomamo data cover only four years, interpretive cau-tion should be exercised. However, a high incidence of violence among the Yanomamo has been docu-mented independently by Chagnon (1988) and Lizot (1994).

'' For the three modern democracies, criminal homicide rates are taken from Reiss and Roth (1993:52).War homicide figures for the United States come from the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1995:366) (U.S. total= 426,000). For Britain, war data are from Clodfelter (1992:558, 590, 625-26, 627, 628, 629, 631, 632, 637,638,641,784,957,981, 1012, 1040, 1086, 1124, 1131-32, 1193) (Britain total = 1,118,950). Likewise, forFrance, war data are from Clodfelter (1992:629-30, 634-35, 640, 619, 783, 955, 997, 1012, 1013, 1122)(France total = 2,105,180). In all three cases, calculation of the rate is based on the 1950 population (toprovide a few years to recover from the effects of the war) as provided by U.S. Bureau of the Census (151million) (1995:8), and estimated from Mitchell (1992:4, 8) for France (41 million) and Britain (49 million).

which it can be calculated, with the annual-ized combined criminal homicide and wardeath rate of three twentieth-century demo-cratic states. The numbers for the three de-mocracies are approximations because infor-mation on the number of civilians killed inWorld War I is incomplete. Moreover, miss-ing data for the early part of the centurymeans that an average criminal homicide ratecannot be calculated for the entire period.Although criminal homicide has increased inthe United States (and probably in Britainand France as well) since the early 1960s(Zahn 1989:219), the contemporary rate isused so as not to bias the results in favor ofthe argument. Note that the democratic rateof lethal conflict does not include (1) "justi-fiable homicide" (i.e., killing deemed to benoncriminal, such as many police-civilianhomicides) or (2) killing occurring in thecourse of rebellion. Neither figure would belikely to have much impact on the overallrate, however. For instance, in 1994, therewere 816 justifiable homicides known to po-

lice in the United States (Federal Bureau ofInvestigation 1995:22). Round this figure upto 1,000, double it to correct for under-reporting, and the homicide rate still in-creases by only .8 per 100,000.

Although Table 3 contains information ononly three modern democracies, states at ornear the top of the world political order, suchas the United States, Britain, and France dur-ing the twentieth century, are typically theones most involved in war, and experiencethe greatest number of war casualties (Singerand Small 1972:287). If these three states areatypical, then it is probably because they suf-fered more rather than fewer war deaths thanother democracies."

" Because Table 3 is based on the number ofpeople a state loses in war (the measure most rel-evant to the issue addressed) it does not directlyrefute Lee's idea that states externalize violence.However, the greater number of violent deathsgenerally experienced by leading powers calls histheory into question. Moreover, Lee (1979:398)cites Vietnam as an example of a country that suf-


The high level of lethal conflict for thestateless societies in Table 3 does not appearto be a product of temporary and exceptionalcircumstances (although longer observationperiods would be helpful).'^ Among theGebusi. for example, most lethal conflictconsists of the killing of people suspected tohave killed others through sorcery. This is aningrained cultural pattern that has enduredfor at least 40 years (it has survived the ar-rival of the state).

The absence of Western medical knowl-edge and facilities does not seem to explainthe difference in lethal conflict between thestateless societies and state societies in Table3 either, and for two reasons. First, the ac-companying ethnographic evidence revealsthat most of these stateless societies experi-ence such elevated levels of aggression thattheir rates of lethal conflict would surely behigh even if they did have scientific medicalcare. Second, the more advanced medical re-sources of modern state societies is offset tosome degree by their more sophisticated (andlethal) weapons technology. To assess therelative impact of these contrary effects isdifficult. For lethal conflict involving indi-

fered from American externalization. But includ-ing the North and South Vietnamese casualtiesdoes not generate a lethal conflict rate anywhereclose to those of the stateless societies in Table 3(except for Lee's example, the Ju/'hoansi). Ap-proximately 1.55 million Vietnamese died in thewar involving the United States. 1965-1975(Clodfelter 1992:1323). If. as Lee recommends,these casualties are added to those of the UnitedStates (58.000) and if the combined population ofVietnam (39 million; Europa Year Book 1971:1664. 1670) and the United States in 1970 (203million; U.S. Bureau of the Census 1995:8) isused as a base, the annual rate of war deaths isstill only about 62 per 100.000 for the years1965-1975. Widen the time frame and the ratedrops even lower.

'̂ The observation period for the state societ-ies in Table 3 is 90 years (on the theory that thelonger the period, the more reliable it is); for thestateless societies it averages (mean and median)approximately 30 years. However, this differencedoes not appear to bias the comparison. Considerthe most bloody 30 (or so) years for any of thethree states: France. 1914-1945. During that pe-riod. France had a rate per 100.000 of approxi-mately 155. a figure that does not change its rank-ing as the fourth least lethal society listed inTable 3.

viduals or small groups, such as most mod-ern criminal homicides and raids inpreindustrial societies, the medical effectmay be more important because of the smallnumbers involved. In addition, althoughthere is some evidence that the introductionof more sophisticated weaponry intopreindustrial settings results, at least undersome conditions, in elevated levels of lethalconflict (Vayda 1976. chap. 4; Bennet Ross1984:92-93). guns may not have much im-pact on modern homicide rates (Kleck 1991).As regards war between large armies, how-ever, weapons may be more important. Mostof the British and French lethal conflict ratesin Table 3 are made up by war killing, a goodproportion of which is surely attributable tothe extremely lethal weapons used in twenti-eth-century wars.

The data in Table 3. then, are influencedby the technology found in the two types ofsociety. But whatever its precise effects,technology clearly cuts both ways, both in-flating and depressing the comparative le-thality of stateless societies. It is thereforehighly probable that the great difference inrates of lethal conflict evident in Table 3 isdue. at least in part, to underlying differencesin the amount of aggressive social controlfound in these societies. Thus, the conclusionto be drawn from Table 3 seems clear: Themore violent stateless societies have ex-tremely high lethal conflict as compared tothe more violent democracies, even when thedestructiveness of modern war is taken intoaccount.

Stateless Societies Generally

Are the stateless societies in Tables 2 and 3exceptional? Unfortunately, incomplete datapreclude a definitive answer. The availableevidence, however, suggests that the typicalstateless society experiences comparativelyhigh levels of violent conflict. For example,although neither mortality percentages norlethal conflict rates can be calculated, someother groups are known to have been ex-tremely warlike over sustained periods oftime. Thus, violence looms large in certainstateless societies in New Guinea (Harrison1993; Pospisil 1994). Amazonia (Murphy1957; Harner 1972;). Australia (Warner[1937] 1958; Hart and Pilling 1979). and


North America (Nabokov 1967; Jorgensen1980, chap. 9).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, highlypeaceful stateless societies appear to be rela-tively rare. In a preliminary analysis, Fabbro(1978) identified seven societies with little orno violence, internal or external. But moreintensive investigation has revealed that oneof these—the Ju/'hoansi—in fact has a non-negligible rate of homicide (Table 3). And asecond case is questionable, as one observersuggested that homicide is relatively frequentamong the Copper Eskimos (Fabbro1978:75). In general, current scholarshipviews lethal conflict, offensive or defensive,as a feature of most stateless societies (e.g.,Gregor 1990:106-107). After examining 186mostly preindustrial societies. Ember andEmber (1992), for instance, argue that ". . .war is a nearly universal fact of life in theethnographic (anthropological) record" (p.242). Other cross-cultural studies, based onsamples of 50 or more societies, reach thesame conclusion, typically showing thatabout 90 percent of preindustrial societies(most of which are stateless) experiencedviolent conflict, internal or external, whenthey were first described (Ross 1983:179,182-83; Otterbein 1989:143-49). Moreover,during war preindustrial societies tend tomobilize a higher percentage of their popu-lations and deploy as combatants a higherpercentage of those mobilized than do mod-ern state societies (Keeley 1996:33-36). Fac-tors such as these lead the most comprehen-sive reviewer of the evidence to concludethat "a member of a typical tribal society, es-pecially a male, had a far higher probabilityof dying 'by the sword' than a citizen of anaverage modern state" (Keeley 1996:93).

The Advent of the State

The synchronic material just considered, al-though helpful, suffers from the limitationthat the state itself represents only one ofmany differences between stateless and statesocieties that might affect the incidence oflethal conflict. For instance, the citizens ofmodern democracies are vastly more func-tionally interdependent than are their coun-terparts in stateless societies. Several theo-rists have argued that longer and more elabo-rate chains of interdependency reduce vio-

lence (Durkheim [1893] 1964, book 1; Elias[1939] 1982; Black, 1990:47). Thus, crimi-nal homicide shows a long-term decline associeties develop a modern division of labor(Chesnais 1981). Although the English state,for example, was well-established by thefourteenth century, English homicide ratestoday are about 10 times lower than theywere 600 years ago (Gurr 1981). Perhaps,then, modern rates of lethal conflict are com-paratively low solely because of factors likeincreased interdependence.

Diachronic anthropological evidence onlethal violence before and after the advent ofthe state suggests, however, that some por-tion of the reduced rates of violence experi-enced by modern democracies should becredited to the state (Tilly 1990:68-70). Atheme in many ethnographies has been thesystematic suppression and reduction of le-thal conflict following the arrival of a state(e.g., Middleton 1965:48; Harner 1972:210;Sorenson 1972; Hart and Pilling 1979:83,note 3; Rodman and Cooper 1979; Heider[1979] 1991:96, 160; Boehm 1984:6-7;Chagnon 1988). For example, after the ad-vent of the colonial Australian administra-tion, the Fore of Highland New Guinea in-creasingly brought their conflicts before pa-trol officers for settlement, and "anantifighting ethic quickly spread throughoutthe region" (Sorenson 1972:362).

Coming under the jurisdiction of a state is,however, only one of a series of changes thata stateless society typically undergoes whenit establishes contact with a more technologi-cally developed society. So while the reduc-tion in lethal conflict cannot usually be at-tributed to developments internal to the soci-ety itself, it may be the result of externalchanges brought about by contact other thanthe arrival of the state (e.g., access to West-ern medicine). Here the case of the Gebusiof New Guinea is particularly valuable be-cause it presents an unusually pure case ofstate imposition. Except for a brief period ofwage labor, virtually the only contact Gebusihave had with Western culture has been withgovernment patrols. At the time Knauft(1985:12-16) conducted his research, theirsubsistence, settlement, and cultural patternsremained largely unchanged by contact—they had no specialization, stores, missions,or clinics, spoke only their own language.


and did not migrate from their communitiesto seek employment. Even so:

The rate of homicide has decreased graduallysince contact, from a high of 39.0 percent (97/249) of all adult deaths in the pre-contact era(c. 1940-1962) to 23.3 percent (24/103) duringthe period of Australian administration (1963-1975), and to 19.0 percent (8/42) under the na-tional administration of Papua New Guinea(1975-1982). The possibility of a five- to ten-year prison term for willful murder is clearlyrecognized by Gebusi as a cause of this decline,though the beliefs and motives that underliehomicide are unaffected by outside cultural in-fluences. (Knauft 1985:116)

Note that the state's presence did not just re-duce the Gebusi homicide rates in the shortterm, but did so for at least 20 years (i.e., un-til Knauft finished his field work in 1982).Note further that despite the introduction ofthe state, Gebusi homicide rates remained ex-tremely high, thereby supporting the weakerversion of Hobbesianism in which the stateis but one factor influencing lethal conflict.

Contrary Arguments

But even in its weaker form the Hobbesianargument is not devoid of difficulty. Thereare at least four reasons for thinking that theadvent of the state does not reduce, and mayeven increase, rates of lethal conflict.

First, people sometimes resist the state,preferring to prosecute their conflicts vio-lently. In New Guinea, for instance, the co-lonial Australian government's initial successin pacifying many warring tribal groupsproved to be ephemeral (Strathern 1992).Other illustrations of intractable violence in-clude fighting between rural Mexican fac-tions (Greenberg 1989), urban Americangangs (Shakur 1993), and political violencein various parts of the world (van Creveld1991; Tilly 1995).

Because the state is but one relevant fac-tor, the existence of violent conflict withinstate societies is, however, inconsistent withthe weak version of Hobbesianism only if thescale of killing is greater than it would havebeen in the absence of the state, a possiblebut improbable scenario. States can usuallylimit violent conflict even when they cannoteliminate it.

Second, contact with Western societies can

and often does have catastrophic effects onstateless people, effects that include outrightslaughter. Throughout the globe, there aremany examples of the devastation and eventotal elimination of indigenous groups fol-lowing contact with technologically moredeveloped societies (Bodley 1990, chap. 3).'^

It is indisputable that contact with Westernculture has often destroyed stateless peoples,especially those occupying territory covetedby newcomers who enjoy the protection of astate. However, once the issue of land own-ership is settled, the state typically exerts itsauthority by prohibiting violence and provid-ing alternative methods of dispute resolution,measures that usually result in less killing.In other words, the increased level of lethalconflict that stateless people experience inthese circumstances appears to be attribut-able to the conflict over land or other mate-rial resources rather than the coming of thestate. But should evidence emerge that thearrival of the state caused lethal conflict toincrease, even when land or resources werenot being sought, this argument would be se-riously challenged (provided the state wasnot highly centralized).

Third, contact with Western culture cansharply increase interpersonal homicide. Forinstance, Thomas (1994:78-79) recordedonly 6 homicides among the Ju/'hoansigroup she studied during the hunting-gather-ing period. But in the 20 years since thegroup has attached itself to the fringes ofsedentary communities, at least 20 of the 200people she had known have become victimsof lethal violence, usually inflicted in thecourse of drunken arguments.

Although the increased incidence of Ju/'hoansi lethal conflict occurred after contactwith a state society, several other factors ap-pear to be responsible for the increase: (a)Adopting a sedentary life can increase vio-lence among former hunter-gatherers becauseit undermines one of their principal peace-keeping mechanisms—the ability of dispu-tants to move away from or to avoid one an-

'•̂ A related point is that the advent of a statemay intensify the warfare of neighboring peoplenot under its direct control by, for example, de-pleting resources or increasing inequality basedon access to new goods (Bennett Ross 1984;Ferguson and Whitehead 1992; Ferguson 1995).


Other (Black 1990:49-53). (b) Proletarianiza-tion—their transformation into "the poorestof the poor" (Thomas. 1994:79)—means thatthe Ju/'hoansi have become a low status mi-nority group within a larger state society, astructural position commonly associated withelevated rates of homicide (Reiss and Roth1993:69-72; Silverman and Kennedy 1993.chap. 8; Strang 1993:25. 31). (c) Cooperationand interdependence have given way to in-creased individualism (e.g.. hoarding re-sources) and dependence of women (e.g..only men can find jobs), factors also knownto raise levels of violent conflict (Black1990:43-49).

Fourth, several writers have speculated thatthe advent of the state may weaken indi-genous forms of social control and therebyincrease violence (Kluckhohn 1944:94-95;Stirling 1960:73-75; Black 1989:80). Theyargue that what was previously held in checkby the menace of violent retaliation is subse-quently only weakly deterred by the threat ofa prison sentence, usually of short duration.Consequently, where indigenous rates of ho-micide are low (i.e.. lower than the Ju'/hoansirate), the coming of the state might causethem to rise.

Although plausible, this argument is notsupported by any firsthand evidence.''' Weresupporting evidence to emerge it wouldqualify the weak Hobbesian thesis by sug-gesting that the state has mixed effects: re-ducing homicide rates when they are highand raising them when they are low.

On balance, then, the arguments againstthe weak Hobbesian argument fail. Some failfor a lack of data. Others fail because factorsapart from the state (e.g.. proletarianization,resistance to the expropriation of land) seemto lie behind increased levels of lethal con-flict following contact with the state. Shouldnew findings emerge to alter these conclu-sions, however, the weak Hobbesian thesiswould have to be narrowed or abandoned.

Virtual Statelessness

A final set of supporting data is the distribu-tion of homicide within modern state societ-

ies. Black (1983) points out that the amountof violence, including homicide, among dif-ferent groups tends to be inversely related tothe amount of law found among thosegroups. Black's (1976) earlier work proposeda theory of the social distribution of law. Cit-ing a large body of cross-cultural informa-tion. Black showed that law tends to befound among strangers, the wealthy, the in-tegrated, the conventional, and the respect-able, as well as among members of ethnicand racial majorities. Conversely, the poor,intimates, marginals, the unconventional, theunrespectable. and members of ethnic and ra-cial minorities tend, to occupy what hetermed "stateless locations" within modernstate societies. (To distinguish these from ac-tual stateless societies they might be called"virtual stateless locations".) The character-istics of these virtual stateless locations arethat people use law relatively rarely amongthemselves, have hostile relationships withlegal authorities (e.g.. are often reluctant toprovide information or testimony to legal of-ficials), and receive relatively little assistanceor satisfaction for their problems when theydo invoke the legal system (Shakur 1993;Canada 1995). Alienated from law. virtuallystateless people are more likely to resort toviolence to settle their disputes.

Homicide data support this idea that mod-ern people kill when the state is weak or dis-tant. In all modern societies for which thereis information, homicide is strongly concen-trated among the poor, unemployed, mem-bers of cultural minorities, intimates and ac-quaintances, young people in their late teensand early twenties, and those with criminalrecords (Cooney forthcoming a) ."

To summarize the argument thus far:Within modern state societies, homicide ratesare typically highest among people occupy-ing virtual stateless locations. The cross-cul-tural evidence suggests that actual statelesssocieties generally have elevated levels of le-thal conflict. Democratic state societies, by

'* However, there is evidence that the incidenceof rape increased after the introduction of colonialrule among the Gusii of Kenya (Le Vine 1959).

" Gender appears to be an exception. Becausemen are generally wealthier and more indepen-dent of informal social control than are women,law is more readily available to them (Black1976. chaps. 2 and 6). Even so. men are morelikely to kill and be killed (Daly and Wilson1988. chaps. 6 and 7).


contrast, tend to generate relatively little le-thal conflict, even when warfare is taken intoaccount. However, states in which politicalauthority is strongly developed are in an al-together different category.

CENTRALIZATION

In centralized political systems, lethal con-flict is once again frequent but for reasonsthat are typically distinct from those prevail-ing in stateless societies. Whereas the ab-sence of government means that people haveto solve disputes on their own, centralizedgovernment makes the state a party, actual orpotential, to every conflict. If the formertends to produce "warre," the latter veers to-ward tyranny. Tyranny manifests itself,above all, in large-scale executions. But italso creates more war fatalities and about asmuch rebellious homicide as noncentralizedstates do.

Although the twentieth century may be themost lethal of recent centuries (Tilly1990:70-76), it holds no monopoly on statekilling. The historical record abounds withaccounts of large-scale slaughter—from theZulu (Walter 1969, chaps. 6-10) and Asante(Wilks 1975) kingdoms of Africa to the Az-tec empire of Central America (Davies 1981,chap. 9), from the Mongol (Saunders 1971)and Chinese (Rummel 1994:51-54) empiresin the East to the Spanish Inquisition in theWest (O'Brien 1973). However, the recentinformation, for all its imperfections, is in-comparably better than that for earlier peri-ods. Hence, in comparing execution, war,and rebellion in centralized and noncentral-ized regimes, I concentrate here on the twen-tieth century.

Execution

Available data suggest that rates of interper-sonal homicide are relatively low in central-ized states (Archer and Gartner 1984, part 3;Reiss and Roth 1993:52). However, the ho-micide rates at least of socialist countries donot appear to be any lower than those ofdemocratic countries at the same level of so-cioeconomic development. In other words,state centralization does not seem to pur-chase any additional reduction in criminalhomicide.

More certain is the fact that highly central-ized states commonly exhibit high rates ofstate-citizen killing (execution). Black (1993,chap. 8), building on earlier theoretical for-mulations found in Durkheim (1899-1900),Wittfogel (1957), and his own writings(Black 1976:92-97, 1990:47^9), proposesthat inequality—including state centraliza-tion—increases the tendency to create andpunish enemies (also see Rummel 1994,1995; cf. Tilly 1995:167).

The evidence supports this proposition.Because centralized states are highly suspi-cious of their populations, everybody is vul-nerable to denunciation by his or her enemies(Gross 1984). The result is a high rate of ex-ecutions, often for political crimes for whichthere is little evidence of actual wrongdoing(Beck and Godin 1951; Bergesen 1977).'^But precisely how high the rates are is diffi-cult to establish. The political scientist, R. J.Rummel (1990, 1991, 1992, 1994) estimatesthe number of people killed by governmentsin the twentieth century (actually from 1900to 1987). He notes that even for the best-studied case—the Nazi genocide of theJews—estimates of the numbers killed givenin five of the most thorough studies vary byas much as 40 percent:

This is for a genocide carefully administeredby a regime that was better than most aboutkeeping records and statistics, whose survivingarchives were completely available after theNazi defeat, and about which there has been fornearly half a century many historians dedicatedto uncovering the truth. If then the estimate ofthe Jewish Holocaust can vary so much, weshould hardly expect to get the true figure onother genocides or mass murder. (Rummel1992:5-6)

Rummel reviews all the available data be-fore "narrowing the range of estimates towhat a hypothetical, reasonable analystwould arrive at from the available informa-

"• The cross-cultural literature also providessome supporting evidence for the link betweencentralization and execution, although typically itdoes not yield estimates of the number of peoplekilled. Thus, in a study of 53 societies, Otterbein(1986:94) found that despotic states, in which theleader alone makes decisions to execute, havemore capital offenses than do polities in whichdecisions are shared between the political leaderand other groups (e.g, victim's kin).


tion, and then defining within this range aprudent figure that somewhat reflects the cen-tral thrust of the statistics and historicalevents" (1992:6). On this basis, Rummel cal-culates that the German government killedover 20 million European citizens during theyears 1939 to 1945. This translates into anannual lethal violence rate of 1,008 per100,000. For the Japanese occupation ofChina, Korea, Indonesia, Burma, and else-where in Asia in the years 1937 to 1945 heestimates the lethal violence rate as 999 per100,000 (Rummel 1992:20-21). For Cambo-dia under the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) his estimate is 8,160 per 100,000(Rummel 1994:194).''' These rates are calcu-lated over short periods of time and hence areinflated. But his estimate for CommunistChina of 120 per 100,000 is based on 39 years(1949-1987) (Rummel 1991, chap. 8). And,most striking of all, his estimate for the So-viet Union of 450 per 100,000 covers 71 years(1917-1987) (Rummel 1990, chap. 1).'^

'•' Unlike the comparison between stateless so-cieties and noncentralized state societies, that be-tween noncentralized states and centralized statesis not strongly affected by differences in medicalresources. In highly centralized regimes, medicalcare, along with adequate food, clothing, andshelter, are often deliberately withheld from en-emies of the state. For example, in Cambodia un-der the Khmer Rouge government, for a doctor topractice medicine among the general populationor even to admit that he or she had done so underthe previous regime was to invite almost certaindeath, most likely after prolonged torture (Ngor1987). Indeed, in some cases, the best-known ofwhich is the Nazi genocide of the Jews, central-ized states have employed medical knowledgeand personnel to facilitate their mass killing(Lifton 1986). The absence of medical care forvictims of homicide under modern centralized re-gimes should be seen, therefore, not so much aconfounding factor as an indicator of the violentinclinations of the state.

'* It must be emphasized that the statistics onwhich Rummel relies are inexact. Thus, somewriters, drawing on newly available material, ar-gue that the scale of state repression and killingunder the Soviet regime has been considerablyexaggerated (cf. Conquest 1991; Wheatcroft1992; Nove 1993, 1994). Even if this criticism iscorrect, however, it is clear that highly central-ized societies, of which the Soviet Union is butone example, are characterized by rates of statekilling that greatly exceed those found in moredemocratic regimes.

Table 4. Average Annual Rate per 100,000Population of People Killed by the Stateby Type of Regime, 1900 to 1987

Type of Regime

Democratic

Authoritarian

Totalitarian

Communist

Rate per 100,000

10

210

400

520

Note: These figures (and those in Table 5) arebased on the number of years a regime fell into aparticular regime category. The rate for "Commu-nist," therefore, includes the enormous amount ofslaughter perpetrated by short-lived Communist re-gimes, such as that in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

Source: Rummel (1994:15).

Rummel (1994) argues that the central fac-tor in explaining state killings is the degreeof unrestrained power, or centralization, ofthe state. Drawing on classifications used inpolitical science, Rummel divides regimesinto four categories of increasing "regimepower": democratic, authoritarian, totalitar-ian, and Communist. Table 4 displays his es-timates of the rate of killing engaged in bythese four types of regime in the first 88years of the twentieth century.

In a subsequent multivariate analysis,Rummel (1995) reports that even after con-trolling for various measures of a society'ssocial diversity, culture, and socioeconomicdevelopment, the best single predictor of do-mestic governmental mass killing (which becalls "democide") in 214 state regimes from1900 to 1987 was the centralization of po-litical authority (as measured by the concen-tration of political decision-making and tbeextent of state control over social institu-tions). Democide is rare in democracies, fre-quent in semi-centralized regimes, and ex-tremely common in centralized states." In

'« Rummel (1995) also found that the nature ofthe regime does not explain external democide—the amount of governmental killing of foreigncitizens. He argues, however, that this too sup-ports the hypothesis because external democideis strongly correlated with war, and during war-time, the military tends to be given strong author-ity. Even in otherwise democratic societies, then,the military will often form an island of totali-tarianism during wartime.


short, the more centralized the regime, themore democide it commits (Harff 1988, ascited in Fein [1990] 1993:40).

War

Centralized states are more violent towardtheir own citizens than are democratic states,but it is possible that democracies lose morepeople in war so that in the end, their citi-zens may be just as likely to die violently asthose in centralized states.

One reason for believing that, for democ-racies, deaths in warfare do not outweigh ex-ecutions in centralized states is that, at leastin the twentieth century, the killing of citi-zens by states has claimed vastly more livesthan the killing of soldiers in combat.Rummel's estimates include the number ofpeople killed from 1900 to 1987 in both war-fare and political violence. His results are ap-proximations, but they yield a very clear pat-tern: Even excluding the estimated 39 mil-lion civilians of other countries that govern-ments have killed, almost four times as manypeople have died at the hands of their owngovernments than have been killed in battlecombat (129 million versus 34 million)(Rummel 1994:15). Noncentralized stateswould therefore have to be substantiallymore warlike than centralized states to com-pensate for the greater internal violence ofcentralized states.^'' In fact, as Rummel'sdata also show (Table 5), centralized regimestend to suffer more war casualties than dotheir less centralized counterparts.

Rebellion

Data on the number of casualties arisingfrom rebellions against governments are not

Table 5. Approximate Average Percentage ofPopulation Killed in InternationalWars, by Type of Regime, 1900 to 1987

^̂ The research literature typically frames theissue in terms of how warlike democratic and non-democratic nations are. One of the strongest find-ings is that democratic nations rarely fight oneanother (Small and Singer 1976; Ember, Ember,and Russett 1992:573). But it is unclear whetherdemocratic nations are less warlike in general.Most writers seem to think they are not—that de-mocracies are just as warlike overall asnondemocracies (Small and Singer 1976; Buenode Mesquita and Lalman 1992:152-53). Othersfind, however, that democracies are less likely togo to war (Bremer 1992; SchweUer 1992).

Type of Regime

Democratic

Authoritarian

Totalitarian

Communist

Note: See note to TableSource: Rummel (1994:

4.

15).

AveragePercentage Killed

.24

.33

.64

.53

as plentiful as those on executions by gov-ernments. What information is availablepoints toward two unsurprising conclusions:In general, (1) killings due to rebellions areconsiderably less frequent than killings dueto executions, and (2) killings due to rebel-lions are more frequent in nondemocraticthan in democratic states.

The most direct empirical evidence on thecomparative frequency of executions and re-bellions comes from a large cross-nationalstudy of lethal political conflict (e.g., gue-rilla warfare, coups d'etat) in 50 countriesduring the 1960s. The study found that 71percent of casualties were rebels, while 29percent were soldiers and police. Thus, forevery 100 people killed by soldiers and po-lice, only 41 soldiers and police were killedby rebels (Gurr and Lichbach 1979:155, in-cluding note 5).- '̂

^' Using The New York Times Index and othersources, Taylor and Jodice (1983) code the num-ber of victims of executions and assassinationsworldwide from 1948 through 1977. For theirpurposes, a "political execution is an event inwhich a person or group is put to death under or-ders of the national authorities while in tbeir cus-tody" (p. 63), while a "political assassination is apolitically motivated murder of a national leader,a high government official, or a politician" (p.43). Neither concept fully describes all relevantpolitical killing and hence must be interpretedwitb caution. Nevertheless, it is of some interesttbat Taylor and Jodice (1983:75, 46) report a to-tal of 1.69 million executions compared to 2.866assassinations. Most of tbe executions come fromtwo extreme cases, Cbina 1948-1952 (1.63 mil-lion executions) and Poland 1953-1957 (31,000executions). But even excluding tbese outliers,executions (27,973) are still almost 10 times morenumerous than are assassinations.


In the United States today, most lethal con-flict involving the state and its citizens doesnot arise from collective political conflict butfrom individual crime. Even so, the same gen-eral pattern is evident. Although there are noreliable national statistics on the number ofcitizens U.S. police kill annually, researchershave used a variety of data sources to estab-lish that police kill at least three times morecitizens every year than citizens kill police(Milton et al. 1977:32-34; Fyfe 1988:174-80; Peterson and Bailey 1988:209).

On the issue of which states experiencemost rebellions, research reveals that levelsof lethal rebellion are generally low in demo-cratic states. Killing in the course of rebel-lions seems to be most common in states withintermediate degrees of centralization. Thus,there appears to be a curvilinear relationshipbetween state authority and lethal rebellions:Rates of lethal rebellion are low in demo-cratic states (in which other forms of politi-cal opposition are available), and low againin the most centralized states (in which oppo-sition is severely repressed); between theseextremes, lethal rebellion is more pronounced(Muller 1985; Boswell and Dixon 1990).

The evidence on lethal rebellions is con-sistent, then, with the view that democraticstates experience less lethal conflict thanthose with a high degree of centralization.

Stateless and Centralized Societies

My argument here is that high rates of lethalconflict are found when state authority is ab-sent and also when it is extremely strong.This does not imply that the rates of the mosthomicidal centralized states will be the sameas those observed in the most homicide-prone stateless societies. Nevertheless, acomparison of the two kinds of societies andtheir rates of lethal conflict is instructive.

First, though, I must reiterate a point madeearlier. Rates of lethal conflict per capita arean extremely crude indicator of rates of con-flict across different types of societies be-cause, even when accurate, they also measurethe effectiveness of medical care available tovictims of violence and the sophistication ofweaponry available to perpetrators. Thus,numerical data should be interpreted cau-tiously as indicating broad trends rather thanexact patterns.

With that qualification in mind, considerthe Soviet Union, one of the most homicidalstates in the twentieth century. Approxi-mately 20 million Soviet citizens are be-lieved to have perished during World War II(Rummel 1990:181). Combining this figurewith the previously cited number of citizensexecuted by the Soviet state outside of waryields a total estimate for the Soviet Unionof 81.5 million people killed in the periodfrom 1917 to 1987. This represents a rate ofapproximately 620 per 100,000, comparableto the highest rate recorded in stateless soci-eties. Moreover, the Soviet rate emergesfrom a society with an average population of184 million spread across many millions ofsquare miles.

In contrast, high rates for stateless societ-ies occur among small populations located indiminutive territories. The Gebusi homiciderate, for example, is based on a population ofjust 450 people occupying 65 square miles(Knauft 1985:6). In a group of this size, asingle homicide represents a rate of over 220per 100,000. With populations varying soradically in size, standardized homicide ratesper 100,000 are necessarily somewhat mis-leading. No doubt there are small towns andvillages within the Soviet Union that experi-enced rates well in excess of 620 per 100,000.A better comparison, then, would be to com-pute the lethal conflict rate of the whole ofstateless New Guinea and compare it to amodern centralized state, but these figures arenot available.^^ In these circumstances, thesafest conclusion is that, at the extremes, cen-tralized state societies generate quantities oflethal social control that are at least as highas those found in the most violent statelesssocieties.

Lethal conflict in stateless and centralizedstate societies must also be seen in light ofthe overall amount of conflict management orsocial control that they produce. (Recall thatfor Black [1990] these terms are interchange-able.) In general, stateless societies haverelatively little social control. Foragingpeople handle their conflicts primarilythrough a mixture of negotiation, criticism.

^̂ Similarly, same-scale data might reduce thecontrast in the number of violent deaths experi-enced by stateless societies and noncentralizedstates evident in Tables 2 and 3.


and avoidance (Balikci 1970, chap. 9; Lee1979;Woodburn 1979). Stateless agriculturalpeople behave similarly, except that theirmore sedentary lifestyle breeds less relianceon avoidance and more on gossip and third-party settlement (e.g., mediation) (Colson1953; Gulliver 1963; Jones 1974). In bothtypes of society, people may kill one another,perhaps even at high rates, but typically it isbecause of the absence of third parties whocan interrupt episodes of violence once inmotion. Stateless people do not arrest, im-prison, torture, and kill for political crimesthat nobody has committed. In centralizedstates, by contrast, lethal social control is justthe peak of the mountain, the most extrememanifestation of a whole social machinery ofrepression that includes secret police, in-formers, detention without legal representa-tion, tortured confessions, rigged trials, andlabor camps (Solzhenitsyn 1973; Conquest1990; Feng 1991; Kiernan 1996). To summa-rize: In stateless societies people kill one an-other in the absence of other ways of han-dling conflict; centralized states, by compari-son, kill their citizens despite a vast array ofalternatives.

Lethal social control, then, can exhibit twowholly different patterns. The first is discon-tinuous: Social control is either mild or le-thal with little found in between the ex-tremes. The second is continuous: Socialcontrol exists at all gradations of severitysuch that the high volume of lethal violenceis matched by a high volume of social con-trol of every kind (see also Knauft 1987).

In sum, then, while the most homicidalcentralized states generate about the sameamount of lethal social control as the mosthomicidal stateless societies, they generatevastly more social control in general.

CONCLUSION

Social theorists from Hobbes onward haveoften argued that in the absence of the state,life would be unendurably violent. Yet untilnow the empirical basis of that claim has notbeen subjected to systematic analysis. Viewedin the light of Black's (1976, 1993) theoreti-cal work on conflict management, the evi-dence currently available suggests severalconclusions:

(1) Statelessness is compatible with low

rates of lethal conflict. Contrary to a stronginterpretation of Hobbes, in the absence ofthe state, life is not automatically nasty, brut-ish, and short because peaceful nonlegalforms of handling conflict may be highly de-veloped.

(2) The existence of the state is compat-ible with high rates of lethal conflict. Life instate societies is not invariably peaceful, civi-lized, and long—other factors can foster theviolent resolution of conflict.

(3) The advent of the state, however, tendsto reduce rates of lethal violence by provid-ing alternative mechanisms for resolvingconflict. As a weaker version of Hobbesiantheory predicts, citizens of states, at least ofless centralized states, generally appear tohave a lower risk of being killed in violentconflict, whether it takes the form of war,execution, rebellion, or homicide, than dotheir counterparts in stateless societies.

(4) States with strong or centralized sys-tems of authority tend to have a high inci-dence of lethal conflict, especially killings ofcitizens by the state itself. Centralized statescreate enemies, internal and external, and arequick to resort to lethal violence, sometimeson a massive scale.

(5) Lethal conflict is most frequent, then,when state authority is either absent or verystrong. In stateless societies, conflicts be-come lethal because other forms of conflictmanagement are unavailable; centralizedstates kill as part of a general regime of re-pression and aggression.-^^

(6) Lethal conflict is least frequent innoncentralized states. Noncentralized statestend to be less violent than stateless societ-ies because they provide their citizens withadditional peaceful means of handling con-flict; they are less violent than centralizedstates because they are not dominated by a

^̂ My argument should not be taken to implyany evolutionary trend in social control. As withother aspects of the state, centralization does notfollow a single trajectory, but waxes and wanesover time, exhibiting cyclical rather than linearregularities (Goldstone 1991:40-44). Early mod-ern states were often more highly centralized thanmany twentieth-century states. Authority in theabsolutist states of early modern Europe, for in-stance, was both highly concentrated and ex-tremely punitive (Spierenberg 1984). The same istrue of many agrarian empires (Wittfogel 1957).


central power that creates and punishes en-emies at home and abroad.

This entire argument—that the relationshipbetween state authority and lethal conflict isU-shaped—is based on a limited number ofsocieties, and must be taken as tentative andprovisional. It is possible, for example, thatthe stateless societies studied by anthropolo-gists and archaeologists to date are not rep-resentative of stateless societies in general.Moreover, the noncentralized regimes ana-lyzed earlier are all twentieth-century de-mocracies, and hence the argument, even ifvalid, may be limited to that historically un-usual type of state. In addition, plausibletheoretical arguments suggest that the non-centralized state may, at least on occasion,actually increase lethal confiict. For all thesereasons, the side of the curve that is consis-tent with weak Hobbesian theory must be re-garded as especially tentative. But though itrests on stronger evidence, questions remainabout the centralized side of the curve aswell. For instance, some extremely violentstates are not all that highly centralized. TheRwandan genocidal massacre of 1994, forexample, occurred in a state that, while cer-tainly not democratic, was not a dictatorial,single-ideology regime, like, say, the SovietUnion in the 1930s (Prunier 1995). Thus,there are several ways in which the argumentcould be falsified. '̂* The claim that rates oflethal conflict are lowest in the least central-ized states, especially, provides a hypothesisfor further investigation, not just of the typesof polity considered here, but of the broaderuniverse of regimes not addressed (e.g., an-cient empires, city-states, feudal monar-

25

'̂' Testing would require that other variablesrelevant to explaining violent conflict be heldconstant (Black 1990).

^' One implication of my argument is that themost common criticism of anarchism—that itwould inevitably increase violence—appears tobe true only under some conditions (Taylor1982). In highly centralized nations that are ex-periencing a wave of political executions, lethalconflict would surely decrease in the absence ofthe state. But in democratic polities, the suddendisappearance of the state among people long ac-customed to legal means of resolving disputeswould create a void likely to be filled, at least inpart, by violence (Taylor 1976:141). However, agradual reduction in state authority might allow

From a confiict management perspective,the state is important primarily because itprovides an elaborate system of third-partydispute settlement (law). But even when thestate settles confiicts peacefully, it is neverthe only institution to do so. In all societies,individuals and groups (e.g., elders, neigh-bors, teachers, employers) can, and often do,settle the disputes of others without recourseor reference to the state (Black 1990:56-58;also see Ellickson 1991:138-47). Thus, in re-ducing lethal conflict the critical factor maynot be the state but the presence of some sys-tem of third-party settlement, legal or otherwise (Cooney forthcoming b, chap. 2). Di-verse though the state's many forms are,then, a fuller understanding of violence willnecessitate viewing the state in a more ab-stract and generalized light.

Mark Cooney is Assistant Professor of Sociologyand Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law at theUniversity of Georgia. His primary interests arelaw, vioience, and the relationship between them.He is currently completing a book on the role ofthird parties in interpersonal violence, provision-aiiy entitled Warriors and Peacemakers: HowThird Parties Shape Violence (New York Univer-sity Press, forthcoming).

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