War,+Trade,+and+State+Formation

Summarized by: Kate Tennis [NOTE: Much of this reads like a lit review, so I’m not going to go into the details of who argued what – I’m just going to try to mention the main hypotheses that are cited and how they’re grouped.] Spruyt tries to summarize the scholarship on state formation and regime type. He looks primarily at European state formation, and defends this by claiming that this is a key referent point – even though new states do not at follow the same patterns of state formation, we can compare them to the processes by which European states formed, since they’re basically aiming for the same territorial nation-state end-goal. Also, he says that European state formation provides ‘a useful template to generate causal hypotheses regarding regime development’. __Intro__: Key features of modern states is that they have (1) a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, (2) rationalized-legal administrations/i.e. rule of law which in turn legitimizes the government, (3) the loyalties of the population (to some degree) within a fixed territorial space. __Hypotheses on how states are formed__: __How the different processes explain the expansion of the state system:__ __How the processes of state formation favored the emergence of different regime types:__ Hypotheses: - frequent and intense warfare => authoritarian regimes - land-based militaries are more likely to lead to authoritarian regimes than naval militaries - lots of money => decreased likelihood of absolutism - high volume of trade => strong urban base => hard to be a dictator - catch-up modernization from the top down => authoritarianism - In reverse: democratic regimes have and easier time mobilizing resources for war, but are less likely to engage in war because people would rather trade with them __What about modern state formation and state failure?__ Most new states try to conform to the same European territorial nation-state model, but this is hard because they emerged in very different ways. - Many emerged ‘by fiat’ rather than through warfare, and thus skipped the period in which European states fought for control of territory and thereby unified their populations. ‘The lack of frequent intense [interstate] conflict retarded the development of strong states in regions such as Africa’ - Also, despite having pre-established strong societies, the state systems lack authority and strength. - Boundaries tend to be permeable and lack legitimacy as territorial borders. - Some states completely lack the monopoly on violence, and see the emergence of ‘shadow states’, or what in Europe would have been called ‘proto-states’ within their borders. - Economically, the ‘traditional mercantilist junction between state making and modernization ‘ have been weakened because of the ‘barriers to interstate war’ [hmmmmm.....] - Mercantalism is also impeded by the spread of liberal capitalism and pressures for international convergence. - They suffer from resource problems, taxation problems, economies of scale problems, etc. This all makes it very hard for these states to develop legitimacy – they lack the constructed concept of a state containing a single ethnic ‘nation’, and also have threats to their territorial boundaries. Also, it naturally doesn’t help that many emerged in the wake of imperial rule, and are either post-colonial or post-Soviet. BUT the nice thing about the post-Soviet states is that they give us a great testing-ground for our Europe-based theories on the links between state formation and regime type, because they are relatively similar units undergoing different treatments in similar time periods. Yay social science!
 * Spruyt, Hendrik (2007), War Trade and State Formation. In Charles Boix and Susan C. Stokes (ed.s) //The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics.//**
 * 1) Warfare explanation: changes in military needs favored the mobilization of large armies over select knights and this necessitated greater central administration, internal mobilization and taxation. Kings were better at providing this type of protection and thus gradually came to replace lesser lords.
 * 2) Economic explanations: Says that economic change cause the demise of personalized feudalistic rule as the rise of trade led to early capitalism and the bourgeoisie began making their living outside of the traditional barter economy
 * 3) neo-Marxists say that states allied with the bourgeoisie against the peasants and thus overthrew the feudal order
 * 4) neo-institutionalists say that the state emerged out of contracts between the ruler and the subjects whereby the ruler got power and in return increased societal welfare, for example by providing protection. Because kings were more attractive to peasants than feudal lords, they eventually took over [OK, I admit, I don’t really get the mechanisms here... ]
 * 5) Ideology explanation: there was a dramatic shift in collective beliefs towards individualism and rationality which undermined the legitimacy of rulers, and led to the abandonment of feudal orders
 * 1) The military explanation takes a Darwinian/natural selection approach, arguing that the stronger states with bigger militaries were eventually consolidated at the expense of smaller weaker units.
 * 2) Neo-institutionalists claim that big consolidated states bring reduced transaction costs and improve the public provision of goods and are therefore favored by populations.
 * 3) Ideational approaches say that through interaction, groups begin to mimic each other and only those that conform to state ideals are deemed legitimate.