Prevention of violence is also provided by institutions we would not call states. There are lots of historical examples of stateless or semi-stateless societies, where there was nothing we would recognize as a state preventing people from using violence against each other and yet most people, most of the time, did not find doing so a pra…
Prevention of violence is also provided by institutions we would not call states. There are lots of historical examples of stateless or semi-stateless societies, where there was nothing we would recognize as a state preventing people from using violence against each other and yet most people, most of the time, did not find doing so a practical option. My old example is saga period Iceland, but the traditional Somali system would be another, and some of the Amerind societies such as the Commanche. I discuss some of them, and how private, decentralized law enforcement works, in my _Legal Systems Very Different from Ours_, http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsContents.htm.
And, of course, states do lots of things other than control of violence. So I don't think the definition you support works very well, prefer the one I offer.
Consider that in a modern western state, control of private violence, police and criminal courts, represent a tiny fraction of total expenditure. Defense against foreign states is larger, but still pretty small, especially in western Europe — something like 2% of GNP, 4% of government expenditure.
Prevention of violence is also provided by institutions we would not call states. There are lots of historical examples of stateless or semi-stateless societies, where there was nothing we would recognize as a state preventing people from using violence against each other and yet most people, most of the time, did not find doing so a practical option. My old example is saga period Iceland, but the traditional Somali system would be another, and some of the Amerind societies such as the Commanche. I discuss some of them, and how private, decentralized law enforcement works, in my _Legal Systems Very Different from Ours_, http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsContents.htm.
And, of course, states do lots of things other than control of violence. So I don't think the definition you support works very well, prefer the one I offer.
Consider that in a modern western state, control of private violence, police and criminal courts, represent a tiny fraction of total expenditure. Defense against foreign states is larger, but still pretty small, especially in western Europe — something like 2% of GNP, 4% of government expenditure.
Since we live in world of states those aren't relevant.