Sentence:  The justification for this was that individual human beings were either fragile, fearful and slaves to themselves, or beastish and prone to the war of all against all (Bauman 2000: 20), which meant that humanity needed expert social architects to provide the perfect models of the common life and also a<WSD> strong-handed</WSD> political agency to make these models work. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Firm; strict and harshly enforced.