Is there an elective affinity between political leadership and violence? The case of the English regicides, 1649

Political leaders are often associated with violence. There does not seem to be a century when political leaders have not unleashed violence on their external or internal enemies or have themselves been attacked. But is there an affinity between political leadership and violence, and if so what kind of relationship is that affinity? Are all political leaders prone to violence all the time or just some of them some of the time? This article poses that relationship in terms of an ‘elective affinity’ between the two: some political leaders choose violence, and some choose to avoid it; some give their followers permission to inflict violence, and some prohibit it; some look the other way when violence is deployed, and some stop it. I conclude that there is a strong relationship with violence, but it lies more with ‘command’ rather than ‘leadership’ and is increasingly visible when the situation is either a crisis or infused with elements of the sacred. There are lots of potential examples to draw on, but we can learn more from an extreme case and there are few more extreme than the English Civil Wars. In this case violence was used by a king against some of his own subjects, and those followers responded first with violence and then, most unusually, put the king on trial and executed (sacrificed) him. Desacralizing violence was subsequently inflicted upon the regicides by the new king to resacralize the monarchy. I conclude with some reflections about the contemporary political situation.