Every state requires both coercive arms and legitimating belief.

Evidence

Guicciardini’s assertion that two things are absolutely necessary for the life of a State: arms and religion. Guicciardini’s formula can be translated by various other, less drastic formulae: force and consent; coercion and persuasion; State and Church; political society and civil society; politics and morality (Croce’s ethical political history); law and freedom; order and self-discipline; or (with an implicit judgement of somewhat libertarian flavour) violence and fraud. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2187

Categorization

• XREF: Renaissance political thought here supplies the historical lineage for modern theories of legitimation and ideological state apparatuses. — connects to: In the state of nature every individual holds the right to punish lawbreakers. — , Second Treatise of Government and A…, 281; State power always rests on the doubled forces of force and consent. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2187; Law operates through coercion in every state including secular ones — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 1234 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The state is an equilibrium of coercion and consent run through civil society #corroborates (0.95) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1869
• Law operates through coercion in every state including secular ones #expands (0.85) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1234
• All state powers are organs of hegemony in varying degrees #expands (0.85)
• State power reproduces a common, diffused subjectivity across every citizen #expands (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 201