Charles W. King

Vladimir Putin was recently re-elected for another term as President of the Russian Federation. Egypt held a poll in which the erstwhile opponent of Abel Fattah el-Sisi told reporters that seeing el-Sisi’s name on the ballot he could not help but vote for him. The People’s Republic of China has jettisoned its post-Mao restrictions on ten year terms for President, cementing Xi Jinping’s position as the most powerful Chinese ruler since Mao Zedong. While the latter was not technically an election, it did require the accession of the National People’s Congress. All of these recent events speak to the question of states derive legitimacy in the twenty-first century.

For centuries the divine right of kings was the leading theory of legitimacy in Europe. By the dint of the will of God, the royal houses of England, France, Austria, and many more were the legitimate rules of their domains. In a very real sense both Putin’s Russia and the People’s Republic of China since Deng Xiaoping have rested the legitimacy of their governments on economic prosperity. All of these belie what political scientists consider to be the root of sovereignty; a monopoly of violence.

The crowned heads of Europe, before they claimed the divine right of kings, were feudal warlords. Historically it is after establishing a monopoly of violence over a territory that legitimacy is established. A conqueror imposes their will through violence, and over time legitimates their continued rule and the rule of their successors through the sanctioned use of violence by the state as well as other means. For many states this meant transitioning to constitutional and republican systems.

In democracies that derive from the traditions of Locke and Rousseau sovereignty comes from the consent of the governed.Elections are not only a way for the people to select their representation, but also serve to re-legitimize the state. In countries like Russia and Egypt where elections are not free what purpose do they serve? For decades African and Central Asian dictatorships have used sham elections to prove to the outside world that their rule was legitimate. The Soviet Union used similar elections to legitimize the creation of communist satellite states after World War Two. But in most cases these rigged contests are seen for what they, so they must serve another purpose.

An election is a large and complicated process, taking hundreds or thousands of people to organize. Rigging an election takes even more manpower. The ability to mobilize the people required to have the kind of turn out and margin that re-elected Putin is a clear demonstration of the power of the Russian state and Putin’s control of it. The ability to stage rigged elections is a stand in for more obvious and bloody forms of violence, but at its core it is a form of state violence. Rigged elections like those in Russia and Egypt have not only foreign but domestic audiences. They demonstrate to the population that the state is powerful and organized, and that opposition to that system is futile and dangerous. They are relatively cheap in blood and treasure compared to putting down riots in the streets.

Democracies attempt to put as much distance as possible between their legitimacy and the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence through elections and representative government. It is important to recognize that in the late twentieth and early twenty first century elections can serve another purpose, as a relatively bloodless demonstration of the state’s monopoly of violence.