More refs of interest on situations where the state doesn t have a monopoly on violence USMC Small Wars Manual 1940ed A classic how to manual for those little problems that requre sending in the Marines Still widely read on the mandatory reading list for USMC officers Much of the book is about re establishing a state monopoly on violence There are sections on disarmament of populations and setting up a constabulary and a military government USMC Small Wars Manual new rev to appear With all the small wars lately the Marines are updating their manual It s not out yet The Modern Nation State and Regimes of Violence Reflections on the Current Situation A recent paper on the subject by Kossler a German academic writing for a Japanese audience Pages 15 18 have a good summary of the history of the concept Hobbs Weber Marx etc He views the monopoly on violence as the result of the consolidation process which turned Europe from a collection of feudal regions into nation states Rather than trying to define legitimate violence Kossler speaks of the public dimension of violence Kossler also sees an economic dimension The guarantee of sound market conditions therefore is also dependent on the effective exercise of sovereignty by the state After covering the classic position Kossler points out that non state actors mess it up The post 9 11 situation forces important and disconcerting qualifications on this rather conventional picture This goes back to the fact that an act of outrageous violence emanating from a non state source which can not be defined in territorial terms has been interpreted as an act of war to be countered by military means including the targeting of certain state bounded territories such as Afghanistan and later Iraq He also mentions the rise of networked organizations including crime cartels that operate across borders as challenging state monopolies on violence In 2004 George Will wrote about the US Iraq war The first task of the occupation remains the first task of government to establish a monopoly on violence Because that effort wasn t successful there s a lot of later material on what happens when the state can t establish a monopoly on violence See also Arab Spring Please read some of these and contribute to the article Thanks