Failed or collapsed democracy left no checks on state power

Evidence

If we ask now what the original sin was which allowed this to happen, the collapse (or non-emergence) of democracy seems to be the most convincing answer. In the absence of traditional authority, the only checks and balances capable of keeping the body politic away from extremities can be supplied by political democracy. The latter is not, however, quick to arrive, and it is slower still to take root once the hold of the old authority and system of control had been broken – particularly if the breaking was done in a hurry. Such situations of interregnum and instability tend to occur during and after deep-reaching revolutions, which succeed in paralysing old seats of social power without as yet replacing them with new ones – and create for this reason a state of affairs in which political and military forces are neither counterbalanced nor restrained by resourceful and influential social ones. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 322

Categorization

• XREF: Core scaffolding concept: the mechanism by which unchecked state power becomes genocidal — a causal link for the biopolitics/necropolitics toolkit. — connects to: A party is an embryonic state and can permit no division of power; State power requires mobilized bodies and collapses without them — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 697; Narrow concepts of legal validity fail to prevent official abuse of power — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 502 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the interregnum condition — state power unopposed by social forces — as the enabling precondition for genocide.

Related

• A party is an embryonic state and can permit no division of power (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Narrow concepts of legal validity fail to prevent official abuse of power #qualifies (0.80) — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 502
• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy #expands (0.78)
• State power requires mobilized bodies and collapses without them #complicates (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 697
• A ruling party exercises hegemonic power without formal juridical rule #qualifies (0.75)