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“脆弱国家”的关键战略。与此同时，国家武装力量将触角伸向全国各地对人民安全产生的经验上可衡量的影响，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的贡献大于对他们的安全的贡献。在其他国家，如CAR和黎巴嫩，国家机构的目标通常是为人民的安全做出贡献。然而，即使在国家范围的扩大确实导致实际安全增加的情况下，它仍然可能导致人们感觉到的安全下降。地方安全领域的安全生产过程与居民对自身安全的看法之间往往存在一种矛盾的关系。因此，这个项目提出的问题是：为什么各国试图垄断使用武力，有时会造成客观和主观的安全水平不同？安全悖论描述了可测量安全性的改善与主观安全性的降低或客观安全性的降低与主观安全性的增加相平行的情况。我认为，在某些条件下，扩大对使用武力的垄断具有自相矛盾的安全效果：即使它增加了事实安全，它也可能通过威胁人们的身份和安全惯例而对主观安全产生负面影响。我通过安全领域的概念来分析这一悖论，安全领域由围绕选定的研究中心就人身完整性问题进行互动的行为者组成。尽管这辆车和黎巴嫩的国家安全机构从未垄断过武力的使用，但它们仍然被许多社会成员和国际国家建设倡导者视为跨越社会分歧的潜在桥梁。然而，对于其他人来说，政府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了积极影响，对另一些人则产生了负面影响。第二，在地方安全领域的军事部署往往使安全进程脱离地方问责的链条。因此，即使国家军队能够控制可观察到的不安全事件，当地居民也可能感到不那么安全，因为他们的主权被削弱了。

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.