ABSTRACT
There are few norms in International Relations as pervasive as the Weberian notion of the state as the set of institutions that legitimately monopolise the use of violence. Using Yemen as its case study, this chapter examines the assumptions that underpin the norm of state-monopolised violence, and how they break down when unhinged from their Western origins. It proposes first that a monopoly on violence is not necessarily something that all states strive for all of the time as a function of universally rational self-interest. The chapter suggests that the logic of state-monopolised violence implicitly establishes a clear separation between state and non-state actors, which has been unquestioningly taken up in many scholarly analyses of the norms bound up with statehood. It also argues that in conceptualising the links between the coercive capacity of the state and political stability so rigidly, the norm of state-monopolised violence can help to produce the threats to stability it is believed to contain.
