Public Authority

The role of public authority is abundantly clear when considering that of nations. There, the government of choices flexes their authority so that taxes are paid, lawbreakers are imprisoned, and in some cases, that the government itself undergoes scheduled changes, like the US system of electing a new leader every four years. In other situations, the origin, continued existence, and raison d’etre for public authority is rather murkier.

I write, as Phillip Williams has previously done much more eloquently, of ‘unofficial’ groups who wield their own version of public authority either as part of a nation-state, or as their own, separate entity. Some of them are traditional, in that we the residents of superpowers, have simply become accustomed to seeing them scroll across our news channels; FARC, the Mafia, the Taliban. Others are newer. The elephant in the room, ISIS, is arguably less than a decade old, but its so imprinted on our collective social subconscious that is too is headed for the category where you shrug and click to the next channel.

How did these groups establish themselves so that we, in our American indifference, grant them the courtesy of growing tired of their news? They have authority, granted to them in a rather Hobbesian way. The people of the nations in which they operate; Colombia, Italy, Afghanistan, Syria, for quick example, in part give them legitimacy by taking part in their activities and following commands passed down the chain. In a way, its just like obeying traffic laws or volunteering at voting booths. It’s the use of violence that makes everything a bit trickier.

These state-less groups sometimes act as mini-states, even collecting their own form of taxes. Unfortunately for the residents of their controlled territories, they care less about applying physical violence than the US does if you’re not paying your taxes. Which brings us to a point made in class and in our weekly readings. What happens if a group like ISIS gets ahold of a nuclear weapon. We’ve mostly established that large countries with nuclear weapons, see India and Pakistan, realize that they can’t afford a nuclear war, which sometimes simmers conflicts down. I should briefly note that I do not advocate for the possession of nuclear weapons as an anti-war-mongering technique.  Terrorist groups like ISIS, who aren’t elected and have already quashed most local opposition to their tactics or presence, do not have the same moral qualms imposed on them by their population. Should they obtain a nuclear weapon, or synthesize their own nuclear materials, what constrains them from using it? They have much of the same authority as their ‘official’ state brethren, but none of the constraints that come with operating in an international system with trade agreements and treaties and old friendships. There is no real answer to this, at least that I have, but it is an important question to ponder, moving forward into a career in the international sphere.

References

Phil Williams, “Transnational Organized Crime and the State,” in The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, ed. Tom Biersteker and Rodney Bruce Hall (Cambridge, 2002).