International relations scholarship has a long tradition of arguing about what types of violence are justifiable. The realist tradition argues that warfare is a necessary instrument of statecraft; the just war theory tradition argues that warfare can be justified if it combats aggression by other states. Comparatively few scholars in international relations have defended a position of complete pacifism – i.e. that warfare and other forms of violence are never justifiable. Despite this tolerance for violence at the interstate level, when we consider sub-state level violence there is virtually no tradition that says political violence by individuals is either necessary or justifiable under any conditions. This essay explores this normative hierarchy of political violence by comparing the long tradition of theorizing about interstate violence with the comparative absence of theorizing about riots (a form of sub-state political violence). The essay will argue that this contradiction is the result of a strong statist bias in our traditions of political theorizing and that this statist bias, once exposed and confronted directly, cannot be justified.
