-Judicial Institutions: The Tool for Aspiring Rulers, with Ana Arjona
Justice has always seemed endogenous in the study of political order and political authority. The mundane process of conflict adjudication seems epiphenomenal to powerful macrodynamics. In Tilly’s influential theory, for example, it is the pressures of war that trigger the incentives for rulers to secure control over territory and population. Dispute resolution is only one of the public goods rulers will provide, after the key public goods of internal order and external protection have been secured. In contract-based theories across the social sciences, systems of adjudication are typically assumed as the institutional framework in the protection of property rights. In both views, there is nothing distinctive about this service. Similarly, in scholarship on counterinsurgency, peacebuilding, and post-conflict reconstruction, which often focuses on how to strengthen the state, consolidate order, and promote governance, dispute resolution is secondary to security and to the provision of ``essential services'' such as health care and education. We build on insights from different literatures, including our own work on premodern European state building and on rebel and criminal governance in contemporary Colombia, to argue that dispute adjudication is crucial for aspiring rulers to centralize authority and consolidate power. |
-Kings as Judges: Power, Justice, and the Origins of Parliaments, Cambridge University Press, 2021
How did representative institutions become the central organs of governance in Western Europe? What enabled this distinctive form of political organization and collective action that has proved so durable and influential? The answer has typically been sought either in the realm of ideas, in the Western tradition of individual rights, or in material change, especially the complex interaction of war, taxes, and economic growth. Common to these strands is the belief that representation resulted from weak ruling powers needing to concede rights to powerful social groups. I argue instead that representative institutions were a product of state strength, specifically the capacity to deliver justice across social groups. Enduring and inclusive representative parliaments formed when rulers could exercise power over the most powerful actors in the land and compel them to serve and, especially, to tax them. The language of rights deemed distinctive to the West emerged in response to more effectively imposed collective obligations, especially on those with most power. For Awards, Endorsements, and more Information see here. For Commentary see here. |
-The More War, The Less State: The Inverse Relationship between War, State Size, and “Stateness,” Revise and Resubmit The impact of war on state-formation is widely acknowledged, based on European history. The logic and evidence of foundational state-formation accounts is questionable however. I show that, for key European states, war is inversely related to state-formation: the more war, the less “state.” I examine four main mechanisms linking war to state formation: endogenous border definition, military technology, capital and coercion levels, and the “ratchet effect” on fiscal size. Existing claims are hampered by poor definitional clarity and operationalization. I introduce new GIS data on borders, and new data on coercion, capital, revenue and GDP to support my main claim, that “stateness” was a function of historically (not war-) defined borders, high early extractive capacity, sequencing in urban growth, and increasing legitimacy of central authority. |
-No Taxation of Elites, No Representation: State Capacity and the Origins of Representation, Politics and Society, September 2015
Does state weakness lead to representation via taxation? A distinguished body of scholarship assumes that fiscal need forced weak(ened) states to grant rights and build institutions. The logic is traced to pre-modern Europe. However, the literature has misunderstood the link between state strength and the origins of representation. Representation emerged where the state was already strong. In pre-modern Europe, representation originally was a legal obligation, not a right. It became the organizing principle of central institutions where rulers could oblige communities to send representatives authorized to commit to decisions taken at the center. Representation thus presupposed strong state capacity, especially to tax. The revision amends our understanding of the historical paradigms guiding the literature, as well as the application of these paradigms to policies in the developing world. It suggests that societal demands for accountability and better governance (the assumed aims of representation) are more likely to emerge in response to taxation already effectively applied. For Commentary see here |
-Urbanization before 1500: A Flawed Proxy for Capital
Urbanization has long been considered the best proxy for wealth in the pre-modern period, due to lack of direct measures. This research note examines the latest data on GDP per capita, carefully derived by economic historians on the basis of extensive micro-historical work, for the most important European cases and then tests how well they are proxied by existing urbanization datasets, by Paul Bairoch and Jan de Vries. It concludes that urbanization is a very unreliable proxy for wealth for the period pre-1500 and only slightly better for the period 1500-1800. Only after 1800 does it correlate well with some cases at least. The retrojection of a modern association into the pre-modern period risks distorting econometric studies; it also reflects by now discarded assumptions about the role of towns in pre-modern growth, ones which survive in the literature on the developing world. |
-Security of Property Rights, Ownership, and Development: A Misguided Paradigm
Property rights have been at the epicenter of the theory and practice of development, especially since the emergence of the neo-institutionalist paradigm. Securing property rights to ensure development has meant mainly the extension of ownership rights, primarily to land, to increasing numbers of the population in developing countries. To the great surprise of property rights advocates, most titling programs have failed to generate expected results, often creating deep social dislocations. Current thinking on the land question seems to be skeptical and cautious. Given this theoretical confusion, it is important to revisit the historical record that generated the neo-institutionalist paradigm. Little in this record suggests that ownership is the key mechanism that enabled growth in the European case, and it is not clear why it should be expected to do so in other parts of the world. The crucial point to emerge from the European case is that it is tenancy, not ownership, that provided the incentives for growth and gains in efficiency. Moreover, given the English experience with communal agriculture and its replacement with individualized plots through enclosures, its parallels with the developing world are striking and potentially fruitful. The implications of this revision are important for our understanding of the preconditions of development. However, they are not necessarily comforting as far securing better living conditions for producers is concerned. The assumption that economic growth means greater “security” of property rights for individual actors is deeply flawed. |
-Balance of Power, Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Ed. M. T. Gibbons. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. October 2014
The balance of power is one of the oldest and most criticized concepts in international relations. Predicated as it is on power, it is considered a core principle of the realist tradition and has thus elicited theoretical and practical objections directed to the tradition as a whole. Critics thus view it as an alternative to liberalism, institutionalism and constructivism in international relations theory. The concept does not have a single canonical definition – a source of much confusion and critique – but most current meanings converge on the idea that the interaction between sovereign states/units interested in protecting their security prevents the hegemony of any single actor. |
-The Balance of Power: The International Wanderings of a Liberal Idea, Perspectives on Politics, 2007
Scholars in international relations have failed to note a paradox about the balance of power: the concept of checks and balances and equilibria underlie classical Liberal constitutional and economic theory. Interest balancing interest lies at the core of the Liberal solution to the problem of anarchy, power, and human nature, whether in politics, economics, or the international sphere. Liberal scholars have adopted instead a rationalist utilitarian or a normative democratic approach. At the same time, Realists in international relations predict a balance, which realist scholars in domestic politics, like Schattschneider, have effectively questioned. This intellectual confusion denies Liberal theory a robust view of international politics, not least because the balancing principle is erroneously rejected as conservative. The confusion also undermines the coherence of Realist theory, which has hitherto tried to accommodate opposing predictions (balance of power and power concentrations) under one paradigm. I offer an explanation of how this conflation of theories arose. Conflating Liberalism with idealism leaves Realism as the only prudent alternative in international politics. The relation between the two theories is not zero-sum: both capture important aspects of international dynamics, and each can ignore the other only at serious cost. Divisional Nomination for Franklin L. Burdette Award |
-The Democratic Peace as a Limiting Case of Balance of Power Theory
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-Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War: Causes, Pretexts and Realist Traditions, Hellenic Studies
The article questions the Realist reading of Thucydides. The classic statement of the book invokes "fear" of the rising power of Athens as the truest cause of the war, though also the one least spoken of. However, fear of both adversaries was the recurrent argument raised by small powers in speeches pleading for support from both cities. This becomes clear once the speeches of the main actors are examined. The article thus encourages a more skeptical view of Realist arguments claiming to specify "true causes." It also highlights the role of peripheral, smaller powers in exacerbating rivalries between major powers, whilst seeking to pursue their local interests and to obtain major power help in dealing with local foes. Thucydides resonated greatly during the Cold War, but his argument may have even greater relevance for the post-Cold War period. |
-The Equalizing Hand: Why Adam Smith Thought the Market Should Produce Wealth Without Steep Inequality, Perspectives on Politics, 2013
That the market economy inevitably leads to inequality is widely accepted today, with disagreement confined to the desirability of redistributive action, its extent, and the role of government in the process. The canonical text of liberal political economy, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, is assumed even in the most progressive interpretations to accept inequality, rationalized as the inevitable trade-off for increasing prosperity compared to less developed but more equal economies. I argue instead that Smith's system, if fully implemented, would not allow steep inequalities to arise. In Smith, profits should be low and labor wages high, legislation in favor of the worker is “always just and equitable,” land should be distributed widely and evenly, inheritance laws liberalized, taxation can be high if it is equitable, and the science of the legislator is necessary to put the system in motion and keep it aligned. Market economies are made in Smith's system. Political theorists and economists have highlighted some of these points, but the counterfactual “what would the distribution of wealth be if all the building blocks were ever in place?” has not been posed. Doing so encourages us to question why steep inequality is accepted as a fact, instead of a pathology that the market economy was not supposed to generate in the first place. See also Commentary. |
-Adam Smith and Positive Liberty: A Response to Lisa Herzog's, Inventing the Market: Smith, Hegel, and Political Theory, Oxford University Press, 2013, Adam Smith Review, Vol 10, 2017
Lisa Herzog has written an admirable book that presents a bold and much overdue comparison between Adam Smith and G. W. F. Hegel, two thinkers typically taken as paradigmatic of diametrically opposed political sensibilities. Herzog uses the naturalism of supply and demand and of the natural price to shape her analysis of Smith's theory of wages. Her long consideration of supply and demand thus tilts the analysis, in this and in other aspects, in favor of the naturalist interpretation, despite the powerful claims she makes elsewhere of qualifying it. Her contrast between Smith's "impartial legal system" securing rewards to "industry and parsimony", and Hegel's system, where the value of labor sinks the more workers work is a powerful one, but seems valid mostly as it refers to workers. She insightfully cautions that Smith's concept of desert should be sharply contrasted to the libertarian one that rejects desert as irrelevant to market workings. |