Crises of the Republic

In "On Violence", the third of these essays, Arendt breaks with the predominant conception of power as derived from violence, and that violence is an extreme manifestation of power. Power and violence are separate phenomena:

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. [3]

The explanation is that governmental violence requires organisation, i.e. power:

In a contest of violence against violence the superiority of the government has always been absolute; but this superiority lasts only as long as the power structure of the government is intact — that is, as long as commands are obeyed and the army or police forces are prepared to use their weapons. ... Where power has disintegrated, revolutions are possible but not necessary. [4]

More generally, Arendt defines power as property of a group:

Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is "in power" we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. [5]

Though violence is not a precondition for power, it may nevertheless be a means of power.

Power is indeed of the essence of all government, but violence is not. Violence is by nature instrumental; like all means, it always stands in need of guidance and justification through the end it pursues. And what needs justification by something else cannot be the essence of anything. [6]

Bureaucracies then attract violence since they are defined as the "rule by no one" against whom to argue. Thus, Bureaucracies exclude the relations with the people they rule over. [7]