What’s a government?

I’m not carefully distinguishing between “government” and “state” here. Max Weber’s definition of a state is:

a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.

Now let’s modify it.

First, I’m not crazy about Weber’s use of the term “community”. My interest is the question of legitimacy, which is a question about institutions, not communities. So let’s replace “community” with “institution”.

Second, I don’t think government has to claim a monopoly on violence. It only has to claim a monopoly on regulating violence. A government is still a government if it tells people, “you can use self-defense if you are attacked by another” or “you can use force to exclude others from your property.” It’s also a government if it initiates no force itself, but only prohibits certain uses of force within its domain.

On the other hand, I would say an institution is not a government if it says “just do whatever you want, we are not going to use any violence or make or enforce any rules about violence. Our function is limited to designating state birds and flowers and declaring national holidays.”

I think this shows that to be a government, an entity has to claim that it is the sole legitimate regulator of violence in a geographical area. Weber seems to agree with this. He says: “the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it.” He just doesn’t incorporate it into his definition.

Of course, the right to regulate violence within a geographical area includes the right to use violence within that area. The government can use its regulatory power to decree that it and its agents may use violence. It could also use its regulatory power to give itself a monopoly on legitimate violence. It just doesn’t have to.

Third, the claim on monopoly doesn’t need to be completely successful. A government can still be a government if its regulation of violence is not widely accepted, if its regulatory regime is successfully evaded by many, and even if a rebel group challenging the government’s legitimacy is on its way to victory. I think a government needs to have substantial recognition, but it does not need to be universal or even majority recognition.

I do think that in addition to recognition, a substantial number of people in the geographical area need to conduct themselves in such a way that shows government sovereignty. A government in exile is not a government of an area, even if it claims to be the the legitimate government and is recognized as the legitimate government by a substantial part of the population, if the population grudgingly submits to the illegitimate actual government.

So here’s my proposed definition of government:

A government is a human institution that claims to be the only legitimate arbiter of physical force within a given territory, with substantial acceptance of its legitimacy and of its rule among the people in the territory.