Organizing Violence: Wealth, Power, and Limited Government

1. Introduction Addressing the relationship between political order and development, Samuel Huntington (1968, p. 1) once stated, " the most important … distinction among countries concerns not their forms of government but their degree of government. " Events in Angola, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Zaire illustrate Huntington's point: Political order may not be sufficient, but, these cases suggest, it does appear necessary for the attainment of development. What are the sources of political order? How does political order affect the performance of an economy? How might the use of violence be domesticated, transforming it from a means of preying upon wealth into a means of safeguarding its creation? It is questions like these that motivate this article. 1973) provide a useful starting place for this analysis. Both begin by stressing the costs of political violence. For Olson, the source lies in " roving bandits; " for North and Thomas, in the regional, religious, and tribal conflicts that followed the collapse of Rome. For both, the solution to disorder lies in a self-interested sovereign: a " stationary bandit, " in the case of Olson, or a 2 predatory ruler, in the case of North (see also Levi 1981). In exchange for revenues, such " specialists in violence " enforce the peace. Insofar as they are farsighted, they also provide the institutions and policies that enhance prosperity, thereby increasing their revenues. 1 Both Olson and North subscribe to Weber's conviction that the state is defined by its monopoly of coercion. But even when societies form political communities, citizens can preserve their capacity to fight. In contrast to Olson and North, we therefore view the origins of political as laying not in the state's monopoly of coercive resources but rather in the incentives for citizens to refrain from the use of force. Put another way: Although North and Olson point to Hobbesian incentives for the formation of states – the fear of " such a war, as is of every man, against every man " 2 – their analysis becomes Lockean once a sovereign is in place. They view citizens no longer as warriors, but only as the managers of private endowments. Yet, even with a state, citizens can and do engage in violence. In exploring the origins of political order, we therefore focus on the conditions under which they would choose to devote their energies to productive behavior rather than to violence. …