War: The Tyranny of a Concept
Abstract
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.
Abstract
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.