State and Fiscal Capacity: Integrating Historical and Contemporary Approaches

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

While historical and contemporary work on state capacity and development is often separated, this panel brings together a set of papers ranging over 1,000 years of history, from the Holy Roman Empire to modern-day Malawi. Together, the papers show that, despite significant differences across each state and historical period, there are also commonalities in constraints rulers face, including the role of information and the threat of citizen opposition. The first two papers examine African fiscal development at different points in time. In “Her Majesty's Aid: Imperial Subsidies and State Building in the Late British Empire”, Didac Queralt presents new evidence on the role of interwar colonial policy on the expansion of fiscal capacity in colonial governments. In Finding the Win Set: Evidence on citizen and government tax preferences in Malawi, Lucy Martin, Brigitte Seim, & Simon Hoellerbauer examine the challenges that modern post-colonial African states face in increasing fiscal capacity, focusing on the challenges post-colonial states face in finding policies accepted by both citizens and government; a different challenge than that facing colonial administrators. The final two papers examine earlier periods of state development. In Lost Maps: Colonial Governance and Local Development in Ireland, Jeremy Bowles & Gabriel Koehler-Derrick use new historical data on Irish land maps to examine how exogenous reductions in the state’s informational capacities exert lasting effects on taxation and local development. The final paper, Rulers on the Road: Itinerant Rule in the Holy Roman Empire, AD 919–1519 (Carl Müller-Crepon, Clara Neupert-Wentz, Andrej Kokkonen, & Jørgen Møller) examines state incentives and strategy in a setting where power is less centralized: the early Holy Roman Empire. By studying the politics of itinerant rule, they show the ways that rulers were able to strategically structure itineraries to shape power over marginal nobles. By putting these papers into conversation, we hope to push both the historical and modern political economy literatures forward.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• Lost Maps: Colonial Governance and Local Development in Ireland - Jeremy Bowles, University College London; Gabriel Koehler-Derrick, New York University Abu Dhabi

• Finding the Win Set: Evidence on Tax Preferences in Malawi - Lucy E. S. Martin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Brigitte Seim, University of Minnesota; Simon Hoellerbauer, Vassar College

• Her Majesty's Aid: Imperial Subsidies and State Building in the British Empire - Didac Queralt, Yale University

• Rulers on the Road: Itinerant Rule in the Holy Roman Empire - Carl Müller-Crepon, London School of Economics and Political Science; Clara Neupert-Wentz, Aarhus University; Andrej Kokkonen, University of Gothenburg; Jorgen Moller, University of Aarhus

Chair

• Jessica Gottlieb University of Houston

Discussants

• Lucy E. S. Martin University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• Joan Ricart-Huguet Loyola University Maryland