Civility becomes a rational self-protection strategy when states fail

Evidence

There is a perverted Hobbesian logic at work here: Where the drive for personal security and fear of one’s demise is threatened because of the failure of the state system to protect one, rational choice would have one not first and foremost resort to the most violent means necessary for self-protection, as standard readings of Hobbes would seem to suggest. Rather, one would try rationally to generate the diffusion of social civility as the bulwark against initial incursion “from the outside,” so to speak. One’s security would be the better maintained, sustained, or guaranteed the more likely one could rely on the decent dispositions of those with whom one interacts, both locally and globally, intraand inter-nationally, as personal politics and the logic of international relations. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 203

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s threatened-privilege mechanism: where institutional protection fails, individuals fall back on interpersonal dispositions as their bulwark. — connects to: Civility functions as the behavioral glue binding civil society and state — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 287; The protective state’s hidden principle is obedience owed even when protection fails; Widespread civility and flourishing civil society reduce to shared personal trust

Broader Connections

• Civility functions as the behavioral glue binding civil society and state #expands (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 287
• The protective state’s hidden principle is obedience owed even when protection fails #contradicts (0.75)
• Widespread civility and flourishing civil society reduce to shared personal trust #contradicts (0.72)