Any political philosophy has to deal with the issue of violence and be able to explain its current forms, as well as the institutions and natural patterns which cause and inflame it. Hobbes wrote Leviathan partly in a response to the constant civil warring in England. Many of his points of unitary sovereignty are related to those events (a kingdom divided cannot stand). Republicanism is a technology for dispersing sovereignty into the people and restricting state violence as the state has a habit of seeing any violence what-so-ever as a threat to its monopoly on force; which then produces such things as sedition laws which are not intended to end or deal with the violence, but prop up the current political order.
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An interesting article
by Stephen Pinker which suggests that violence is lessening in the world and over history
. This is consistent with Harpur's and Deniehy's republican thesis that decreasing tyranny and increasing liberty allow individuals to express themselves morally - which includes less violence.
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