 First, satisfaction of the traditional jus ad bellum requirement of “rightful authority” to make war, as suggested above, is more difficult in the case of revolution, especially at the beginning of the conflict, when an often tiny minority undertakes armed struggle against the government and does so supposedly in the name of the people, but where the standard institutional forms or processes for legitimizing the use of violence are unavailable to the revolutionaries. In different terms, the problem is that revolutionaries claim to act on behalf of the people, but under conditions in which it is difficult to see how they could be authorized to do so. Later we will see that attempts to solve this problem by invoking notions of consent, approval, or representation are inadequate in many of the circumstances in which revolutions actually occur—and ironically, especially under those conditions in which the just cause for revolution is most compelling. 