New Perspectives on the Origins of State Building

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

An enormous variety of theoretical frameworks have been applied to the question of state building, including explanatory factors such as modernization, social mobilization, elite cohesion, class conflict and social coalitions, networks, ethnicity, warfare, diffusion, and historical conjunctures. There is also substantial variation in terms of how state building is conceptualized and approached empirically. Some studies mainly focus on tax revenue and public finance, others on bureaucratic reform, yet others on more fundamental features of state reach such as control over territory.

The purpose of this panel is to present novel cutting-edge empirical research on the origins of state building. The four papers all put state building center stage, but concentrating on different facets of the concept. Whereas the first paper looks at state administrative reforms as the outcome variable, the second looks at one potential outcome of such reforms: bureaucratic rationalization. The third paper instead hones in on taxation and public spending, whereas the fourth looks at territorial representation in the legislature and cabinet originating from the initial state-building bargain. The papers also highlight different explanatory factors. The first paper is primarily concentrated on the interaction between regime type (democracy/dictatorship) and the role of power sharing. The second brings back the classic issue of the martial origins of state building and the causal impact of warfare. The third and fourth, finally, concentrate on how urbanization and industrialization interrelates to regional concentration of economic power.

Empirically, all four papers cover the late 19th and early 20th century, but the second paper goes all the way back to the 17th century, and the fourth reaches all the way to the 21st. The panel’s geographic coverage is broad, covering two countries on the Southern Cone (Chile and Argentina), the Unites States as well as Britain. Collectively, these papers contribute with both new theoretical insights and new empirical data, drawing on both statistical inference and case study methods.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Chair

• David Stasavage New York University

Discussant

• Didac Queralt Yale University

Individual Presentations

• Power Sharing and Administrative Reforms: The Case of Chile, 1925–31 - Per Fredrik Andersson, Stockholm University; Oriol Sabaté, University of Barcelona; Jan Teorell, Stockholm University

• War, Politics, and the Birth of Modern Bureaucracy - Matteo Bertoli; Alexander Lee, University of Rochester

• Industrialization, Representation, and Fiscal Development in Northern States - Jeffrey Louis Jensen, New York University-Abu Dhabi; Giuliana Pardelli, New York University Abu Dhabi; Jeffrey Timmons, NYU Abu Dhabi

• The Federal State-Building Bargain: Legislative and Executive Malapportionment - Victoria Paniagua, London School of Economics; Joan Ricart-Huguet, Loyola University Maryland

• What Counts as a State? Historical State Formation and Fragmentation in Europe - Scott Abramson, University of Rochester; Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University; Casey Petroff, University of Rochester