The monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force, also known as the monopoly on violence , is a core concept of modern public law, which goes back to Jean Bodin's 1576 work Les Six livres de la République and Thomas Hobbes' 1651 book Leviathan. As the defining conception of the state it was first described in sociology by Max Weber in his essay Politics as a Vocation (1919). Weber claims that the state is any "human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory"; thus, "the modern state is a compulsory association which organizes domination." In other words, Weber describes the state as any organization that succeeds in holding the exclusive right to use, threaten, or authorize physical force against residents of its territory. Such a monopoly, according to Weber, must occur via a process of legitimation.