State Terror, State Violence Global Perspectives
The volume critically discusses theoretical discourses and theoretically informed case studies on state violence and state terror. How do states justify their acts of violence? How are these justifications critiqued? Although legally state terrorism does
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tional territory, state authority, and a people form the modern state (Georg Jellinek). In a certain territory, a people shapes the institutional form of a nation state that has been proven successfully for centuries. Since the French Revolution, the nation state could overcome dissent within a gesellschaft/society that had disintegrated earlier versions of power over others that were short of full modern statehood. At the heart of the state lies its sovereignty (Jean Bodin); a realm that is not sovereign is not a real state (Hermann Heller). Yet, from absolute sovereignty to state failure it is not necessarily a long way. Only a state, however, can guarantee a people’s security, freedom, and prosperity. No international organization can guarantee that. Just a few years ago, it seemed as if the traditional sovereign nation state had reached its limit. In the long run, the nation state was supposed to be replaced by supranational institutions like the European Union—or maybe even a cosmopolitan global state. Presently, the people’s consent to more integration decreases while, simultaneously, Eurocracy aims at accumulating even more power. Democratic legitimacy of political decisions is jeopardized; trust in politics vanishes. States and institutions like NATO, the E.U., or the U.S. have lost parts of their meaning and influence in creating a new and future-compliant order. It is in this situation that the sovereign nation state, the “sparkler of occidental rationality” (Carl Schmitt), has become the last anchor that provides security and certainty for the people. In this context it appears to be almost irrelevant whether a nation has been artificially “made” (Benedict Anderson) or whether the nation is something pristine—because the concept of the nation state refers to what Cicero has coined the “fatherland of right,” it does not refer to the ethnically defined and determined nation state. Thus, for the political scientist the abstinence from the concept of the state seems to have come to an end. But what should be the state of the future? The interdisciplinary series State—Sovereignty—Nation aims at discussing this thematic problem in monographs and edited volumes to which scholars/researchers from different disciplines present their findings to a wider intellectual audience. The editors of the book series are particularly interested in presenting all facets of a state to students of political science and the next generation of political scientists. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/12756
Bettina Koch Editor
State Terror, State Violence Global Perspectives
Editor Bettina Koch Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, USA
State – Sovereignty – Nation ISBN 978-3-658-11180-9 ISBN 978-3-658-11181-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955139 © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, speci
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