Governance and the decline of violence

Historians and political scientists alike have confirmed a decline in inter and intra state violence. There is broad consensus regarding this decline. The world never will be perfectly safe, but many correlates of violence are known and therefore it is possible to manage safety and security. War, is neither a fate of nature nor a whim of Gods. In this chapter the relation of governance and safety and security is studied. Therefore, we look at the interplay of agency and the opportunity structure, or the interplay between the governance triad and the governance opportunity structure. In more plain words, one should study the tensions between actors within the context of the historically grown structure. This structure restricts action and the degrees of freedom to human action but it is also an enabler. It enables actors to realize their objectives within the limits of political feasibility and these limits are in fact a balancing act. Governance develops from the tensions between actors and the interplay of these tensions with the dimensions of the opportunity structure and governance in its turn is correlated with a decline of violence. To understand the mechanism at work better we should look more closely into the dimensions of this opportunity structure and study how the monopoly of violence and taxation, the rule of law and the moral order contributes to safety and security. The chapter concludes that although in general governance is on the rise, and violence is declining, serious challenges will have to be dealt with