When States Kill Their Own: Evaluating a Positive Theory of Legitimation Work in progress, Comments especially welcome

In this paper, I present a positive theory of legitimation to explain why governments offer official statements after killing their own people and to ascertain whether the intuition behind Weberian legitimacy – that rule is most stable when subjects voluntarily comply – is accurate. Data for testing the theory is drawn from qualitative analysis of official responses to 156 cases of state violence against subjects. Specific reference is made to finer-grain analysis of cases of state violence against workers and students as well. Three unexpected findings are presented: First, government death is strongly associated with successful legitimation for democracies but temporary or failed legitimation for dictators. Second, democracies get away with state violence against subjects much better than dictatorships, and therefore are more compatible with state violence than dictatorships. And third, governments relying on a persuasive rhetorical strategy are more frequently associated with successful legitimation than governments relying on either a coercive or accommodating rhetorical strategy. Funding for this project has been provided by the United State Institute of Peace.