The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond
Authors: Jared Diamond
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as the various non-state systems that we discussed share features in common while differing among themselves in other respects, state systems also share other common themes amidst their diversity. My comments about state dispute resolution will mostly be based on the system most familiar to me, that of the United States, but I shall mention some differences in other state systems.
Both state dispute resolution and non-state dispute resolution have two alternative procedures: mechanisms for reaching mutual agreement between the disputing parties, and then (if those mechanisms are attempted but fail) mechanisms for reaching a contested solution. In non-state societies the flip side of the compensation process for reaching mutual agreement is escalating violence ( Chapters 3 , 4 ). Non-state societies lack formal central state mechanisms for preventing dissatisfied individuals from pursuing their aims by violent means. Because one act of violence tends to provoke another, violence escalates and becomes an endemic threat to peace in non-state societies. Hence a prime concern of effective state government is to guarantee or at least improve public safety by preventing the state’s citizens from using force against each other. In order to maintain internal peace and safety, the central political authority of the state claims a near-monopoly on the right to use retaliatory force: only the state and its police are permitted (with sufficient cause) to employ violent retaliatory measures against the state’s own citizens. However, states do permit citizens to use force to defend themselves: e.g., if citizens are attacked first, or if they reasonably believe that they or their property are in imminent serious danger.
Citizens are dissuaded in two ways from resorting to private violence: by fear of the state’s superior power; and by becoming convinced that private violence is unnecessary, because the state has established a systemof justice perceived to be impartial (at least in theory), guaranteeing to citizens the safety of their person and their property, and labeling as wrong-doers and punishing those who damage the safety of others. If the state does those things effectively, then injured citizens may feel less or no need to resort to do-it-yourself justice, New Guinea–style and Nuer-style. (But in weaker states whose citizens lack confidence that the state will respond effectively, such as Papua New Guinea today, citizens are likely to continue traditional tribal practices of private violence.) Maintenance of peace within a society is one of the most important services that a state can provide. That service goes a long way towards explaining the apparent paradox that, since the rise of the first state governments in the Fertile Crescent about 5,400 years ago, people have more or less willingly (not just under duress) surrendered some of their individual freedoms, accepted the authority of state governments, paid taxes, and supported a comfortable individual lifestyle for the state’s leaders and officials.
An example of the behavior that state governments aim to prevent at all costs was the Ellie Nesler case in the small town of Jamestown, California, a hundred miles east of San Francisco. Ellie ( Plate 35 ) was the mother of a six-year-old son, William, whom a camp counselor named Daniel Driver was suspected of sexually molesting at a Christian summer camp. At a preliminary courtroom hearing on April 2, 1993, at which Daniel was being charged with abusing William and three other boys, Ellie fired five shots at close range into Daniel’s head, killing him instantly. That constituted retaliatory force: Ellie was not defending her son against an attack in progress, nor against the imminent prospect of an attack, but she was retaliating
after
a suspected event. In her defense, Ellie declared that her son had been so distraught over being abused that he was vomiting and incapable of testifying against Daniel. She feared that
Both state dispute resolution and non-state dispute resolution have two alternative procedures: mechanisms for reaching mutual agreement between the disputing parties, and then (if those mechanisms are attempted but fail) mechanisms for reaching a contested solution. In non-state societies the flip side of the compensation process for reaching mutual agreement is escalating violence ( Chapters 3 , 4 ). Non-state societies lack formal central state mechanisms for preventing dissatisfied individuals from pursuing their aims by violent means. Because one act of violence tends to provoke another, violence escalates and becomes an endemic threat to peace in non-state societies. Hence a prime concern of effective state government is to guarantee or at least improve public safety by preventing the state’s citizens from using force against each other. In order to maintain internal peace and safety, the central political authority of the state claims a near-monopoly on the right to use retaliatory force: only the state and its police are permitted (with sufficient cause) to employ violent retaliatory measures against the state’s own citizens. However, states do permit citizens to use force to defend themselves: e.g., if citizens are attacked first, or if they reasonably believe that they or their property are in imminent serious danger.
Citizens are dissuaded in two ways from resorting to private violence: by fear of the state’s superior power; and by becoming convinced that private violence is unnecessary, because the state has established a systemof justice perceived to be impartial (at least in theory), guaranteeing to citizens the safety of their person and their property, and labeling as wrong-doers and punishing those who damage the safety of others. If the state does those things effectively, then injured citizens may feel less or no need to resort to do-it-yourself justice, New Guinea–style and Nuer-style. (But in weaker states whose citizens lack confidence that the state will respond effectively, such as Papua New Guinea today, citizens are likely to continue traditional tribal practices of private violence.) Maintenance of peace within a society is one of the most important services that a state can provide. That service goes a long way towards explaining the apparent paradox that, since the rise of the first state governments in the Fertile Crescent about 5,400 years ago, people have more or less willingly (not just under duress) surrendered some of their individual freedoms, accepted the authority of state governments, paid taxes, and supported a comfortable individual lifestyle for the state’s leaders and officials.
An example of the behavior that state governments aim to prevent at all costs was the Ellie Nesler case in the small town of Jamestown, California, a hundred miles east of San Francisco. Ellie ( Plate 35 ) was the mother of a six-year-old son, William, whom a camp counselor named Daniel Driver was suspected of sexually molesting at a Christian summer camp. At a preliminary courtroom hearing on April 2, 1993, at which Daniel was being charged with abusing William and three other boys, Ellie fired five shots at close range into Daniel’s head, killing him instantly. That constituted retaliatory force: Ellie was not defending her son against an attack in progress, nor against the imminent prospect of an attack, but she was retaliating
after
a suspected event. In her defense, Ellie declared that her son had been so distraught over being abused that he was vomiting and incapable of testifying against Daniel. She feared that
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