Current Example of State Defintion
In Iraq, the federal army is pushing out the Mahdi Army which is the the Militia of al-Sadr.
The good news is, Iraqi forces are heavily engaged with the Mahdi Army with U.S. troops in a supporting role, all over the place. The weird part is, al-Maliki has supposedly taken a lead role in directing operations against his erstwhile bedfellow al-Sadr. The key question, in all matters requiring an element of trust in either al-Maliki or al-Sadr, is which one can you throw farther? The Sadrists are claiming it’s all political, to cut them out of provinicial elections, and if al-Maliki’s that interested, there’s got to be a sleazy political angle to it. On the other hand, if it in fact has the effect of ending Shiite infighting and lawlessness, and edges out Iran, then there is a distinctly unsleazy strategic angle to it. Al-Maliki has given the Mahdi Army 72 hours to lay down their weapons. Disarming illegal militias is a legitimate act of government.
For those of you less than enthralled with defining the state as the entity with a monopoly on coercion I ask what purpose does the Iraq federal goverment serve in disbanding this militia? Why should the federal state force a local armed force to put down their weapons and obey the state?
Just to head off the obvious criticism, the argument is that the essential definition of the state is it’s monopoly on coercion. Its clear that the state can be defined in many different ways, but if you strip away all the properties of the state which property do you find present in every state? Most certainly the common property that connects states together is their monopoly on coercion.