The modern nation state is built on the premise that citizens may not indulge in violence of any sort. Contemporary philosophers have argued that the right not to be coerced is a primordial one. An individual ought not to coerce anybody and, extending the same reasoning, ought not to be coerced by others. The exclusive right to coerce is delegated to the State. It has the right to coerce and indulge in acts of violence for two primary reasons — to protect the nation’s sovereignty in the form of national defence and to prevent the perpetration of violence by citizens against other citizens and other institutions.
There are two underlying presumptions about the nature of the State in this regard. The first is that the State is assumed to be impartial and morally fair in executing its right to coerce. The second is that the State frames laws keeping the greater good in mind in the form of rules and regulations, which are laid down explicitly and known to all citizens. Some rights are granted by the State to citizens. Citizens can choose who frames the rules and the process by which they are chosen. Many nations also grant citizens some rights that protect them from unfair or wrongful acts carried out by the State. These are known as civil rights. The well-known, three-way division of the State emerges from these assumptions: the arm of the State that makes the rules; the arm of the State that executes and monitors those rules in practice; and the arm of the State that acts as an umpire to check whether thelaws enacted are in conformity with basic political and civil rights and also ensure that the existing laws are fairly implemented. The third arm is a defence of the last resort that citizens have in the event of the first two arms behaving in a partisan fashion or violating basic rights. Hence the independence and the honesty of the judiciary are vital. Indeed, a well-functioning modern society is described as one where the ‘rule of law’ holds.
In representative democracies, the arm of the legislature is likely to be partisan — even majoritarian— in outlook although it is expected that elected officials keep the greater good of the entire society in mind when enacting laws. If the legislature is partisan, corrupt and greedy, then, inevitably, there will be an impact on the executive too; it will follow in the steps of its political masters. In these instances, where the first two arms of the State act in ways that are contrary to the greater good, the third arm becomes the only way by which checks and balances can be brought into play. Even if a particular political party that has been in power loses in an election, the new formation might behave identically in terms of greed and myopic vision. Hence, the criticality of the third arm’s autonomous role as umpire.
If, however, the judiciary becomes weakened, the rule of law begins to collapse. Outcomes and verdicts of court cases seem illogical, going against the grain of existing laws, and often appear incomprehensible. Laws are made without public discussion, the laws are perceived to be against the interests of many, and the laws are enforced with an arbitrariness by the executive, knowing that their actions will be legitimised by the courts. Signs of social fracture set in when citizens facing coercion or violence do not go to the police. Rather they come to powerful politicians for justice, or should one say, revenge. The second sign of irreversible breakdown is seen when people lose faith in courts and in the judicial system.
The shadow of the eclipse of the rule of law deepens when a citizen can be arrested for no particular reason, or on a trumped-up charge, his house razed to the ground by the authority of the State, the police use mindless violence, and cases continuefor years. Midnight raids and long spells of interrogation by the government’s investigative agencies can happen to anyone who has the nerve to criticise the government’s actions.
What does all this imply? The first implication is that contrary to most textbooks of mainstream political science, no State is ever completely neutral. The State is controlled by people who have a definite agenda and represent specific economic and business interests. The second implication is that once the legislature becomes partisan,the other organs of the State may not remain unbiased. The third implication is that as people lose their faith in the government and the police, they tend to take the law into their own hands. Individual and collective conflicts begin to be settled on the street. Consequently, the political culture engenders violence, counter-violence, and acts of revenge. Revenge becomes legitimised.
In such a situation, the individual compromises with the social environment in many subtle ways. Most people fall in line with the political powers that be, giving direct and articulate support to the State’s legitimacy. Others retreat into silence, in fear and anxiety, not having the courage to speak out about how they feel. A mere handful of people who do speak out face the wrath of the State. It does not matter whether the persons are well-established in society or are the proverbially anonymous ‘men on the street’.The wrath of the State falls on all dissenters.
Most of these trends can be observed in all contemporary societies. There is a wide spectrum of arbitrariness, corruption, the State’s propensity to misuse its monopoly over coercion, and a degree of inconsistency in the courts. Some societies can display a very mild form of erosion of social cohesion, while there can be instances where there is a complete collapse of the rule of law. The latter instances can manifest itself through chaos, like in Afghanistan, or complete subjugation and silence like in North Korea. In such societies everybody is on trial for what one does or does not do to the State.
Those who have read Franz Kafka’s The Trial might remember the first sentence: “Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.”The offence was not clear, the judge and the courtroom invisible, and the verdict unknown. However, the punishment was left hanging till the end where he was killed by two men who appeared to be officers of the invisible court. It was the ultimate encounter of citizen Joseph Kwith the long and strong arm of the State.
