The monopoly on the use of force and paradoxes of security – discrepancies between objective and subjective security in the Central African Republic and Lebanon

恢复国家对合法使用武力的垄断仍然是平息冲突地区和重建所谓的“脆弱国家”的关键战略。与此同时，国家武装力量在全国范围内的扩张对人民安全的实际可衡量影响充其量也是矛盾的。在许多被视为脆弱和需要干预的国家，如南苏丹、叙利亚或刚果民主共和国，国家部队本身对人民的不安全感的贡献大于对他们的安全感的贡献。在其他国家，如中非共和国和黎巴嫩，国家机构的目标一般是促进人民的安全。然而，即使在国家扩大其影响力确实导致实际安全增强的情况下，它仍然可能导致感知到的安全下降。地方安全竞技场的安全生产过程与居民对自身安全的看法之间往往存在着矛盾的关系。因此，本项目提出的问题是：为什么国家垄断使用武力的企图有时会造成客观和主观安全水平的不同？安全性参数描述了通过降低主观安全性或降低客观安全性与增加主观安全性并行来实现可测量安全性的改善的情况。我认为，在某些条件下，垄断使用武力的延伸具有自相矛盾的安全效应：即使它增加了事实安全，它也会通过威胁人们的身份和安全惯例来负面影响主观安全。我通过安全竞技场的概念来分析这一悖论，安全竞技场是由围绕选定的研究中心就身体完整性问题进行互动的行为体组成的。虽然中非共和国和黎巴嫩的国家安全机构从未垄断过使用武力，但它们被许多社会成员和国际建国倡导者视为跨越社会分歧的潜在桥梁。然而，对另一些人来说，国家被认为是压迫和历史上的边缘化。军队部署到多元化的地方安全领域对一些人的主观安全产生积极影响，对另一些人产生消极影响。第二，向地方安全领域部署军事人员往往使安全进程脱离地方问责制。因此，即使国家部队能够控制明显的不安全事件，当地居民也可能因为主权被削弱而感到不那么安全。

Reinstating the state monopoly on the legitimate use of force continues to be the key strategy used to pacify conflict zones and rebuild so-called ‘fragile states’. At the same time, the empirically measurable effects of state armed forces extending their reach throughout their country on people’s security are at best ambivalent. In many countries deemed fragile and of need of intervention, such as South Sudan, Syria or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, state forces are themselves contributing more to people’s insecurity than to their security. In other countries, such as the CAR and Lebanon, state institutions generally aim to contribute to people’s security. However, even in those cases where the state’s extension of its reach does lead to factual security increases, it can nevertheless lead to perceived security decreases. There is often a paradoxical relationship between the processes of security production in the local security arena and inhabitants’ perceptions of their own security. This project thus asks: Why do states’ attempts to monopolize the use of force at times create divergent objective and subjective levels of security? Paradoxes of security describe instances where improvements in measurable security are paralleled by decreasing subjective security, or decreasing objective security parallels increasing subjective security. I argue that under certain conditions, the extension of the monopoly on the use of force has paradoxical security effects: even when it increases factual security it can negatively impact subjective security by threatening people’s identity and security routines. I analyse this paradox through the concept of a security arena, which is composed of actors who interact on the issue of physical integrity around a selected centre of study. While the CAR’s and Lebanon’s national security institutions have never held a monopoly on the use of force, they are nevertheless seen by many members of society and international state-building advocates as potential bridges across societal divides. For others, however, the state is identified with repression and historical marginalization. Army deployment into pluralized local security arenas impacts subjective security positively for some and negatively for others. Second, military deployment to local security arenas often detaches security processes from chains of local accountability. Thus, even when state forces can rein in observable incidences of insecurity, local inhabitants might feel less secure because their sovereignty is reduced.