Containment is distinct from suppression in that it uses less state violence and is only triggered by armed group activities that rise above the politically acceptable thresh old of unrest established by the state. The intensity of violence and size of force deployments are lower than what would be necessary for full-scale suppression, but containment still involves repression toward armed groups. Gov

Suppression is a strategy that deploys sustained lethal targeting of a militia and its supporters in hopes of breaking its fighting power to the point that it will be either disintegrate or be forced into making major concessions. Coordinated campaigns of targeted and/or indiscriminate violence against suspected members and supporters, attempts at large-scale population control/dislocation, consistent willingness to use lethal force, and hard-line public statements from policy makers are indicators of a su

This typology of strategy captures important variation that has been missed in existing work. Each strategy reflects two dimensions: whether the state is highly motivated to eliminate a group as an independent actor and which mix of conflict and cooperation it chooses to pursue that goal. Suppression and incorporation both seek the elimination of an armed group as an independent actor, but through differ ent po

772 Journal of Conflict Resolution 59(5) Governments have varying political preferences rooted in historically contingent ideological projects. I use this simple, but overlooked, fact to create a typology of militias' political roles drawn from their ideological fit with and operational utility to a government. Militias can occupy different roles within a political system, rang ing from armed allies to mortal enemies of rulers. Different types of militia are tar geted with strategies that reflect these roles. As regime and armed group ideologies change, and as militias become more or less useful, so do militias' relationships with state power. This is not a full-fledged theory of armed order, but taking ideas seriously fills in a crucial analytical gap. Existing work ignores the political salience of militias, framing them as thugs manipulated by governments. Yet comparative evidence from militia-state relations in India and Pakistan shows that my argument helps to explain patterns that the conventional wisdom struggles with. The political space available to collude with religious and ethnolinguistic militias varies dramatically across these countries because of the ideological foundations upon which they are built. This article concludes by identifying implications of these arguments for future research on state-armed group relations. First, the commonplace dichotomy between strong and weak states should be replaced by analysis of the bargains and deals that structure state-armed group interactions. In countries like India, Nigeria, and the Philippines, state power can be quite substantial, but only when there is polit ical motivation to use it. The politics of coercive deployment and restraint may be more important than raw state capacity. Second, we need to rethink conventional distinctions between types of armed groups. Like insurgent or criminal groups, militias can be suppressed, contained, incorporated, or colluded with. Over time, their political positions can also change: militias may become insurgents, and vice versa, or shift into crime or electoral pol itics. In tum, insurgents and armed political parties can become militias. Rather than static and intrinsic, the political roles of armed groups are potentially fluid and changeable. Finally, the approach developed here merges previously isolated work on insur gency, militias, electoral violence, and state building into an integrated research agenda. Political violence does not exist in a political vacuum as states and armed groups interact with one another in fascinating forms of armed politics (Staniland 2015). Systematically theorizing and measuring these patterns of competition, coop eration, and coexistence provides a valuable new way of grappling with fundamental questions about violence and political order. State Strategies toward Militias This section outlines four common strategies states can use toward militias, and armed groups more generally: suppression, incorporation, containment, and collu sion.

ohen and Nordas 2015; Eck 2015). But this is only one possible state strategy. Militias may also be violently targeted by regimes, absorbed into the state apparatus, or contained as a low level but endemic challenge. They are not intrinsically subser vien

ut state-militia interaction. First, governments and militias engage in a much wider range of political orders than existing research can explain. The dominant con ceptualization of this dynamic is one of supportive collaboration, with regimes straightf

ression. It then argues that regime ideology shapes how governments perceive and deal with militias. A new theory of armed group political roles brings politics back into the study of militias. Comparative evidence from India and Pakistan shows that varying regime ideological projects contribute to different patterns of militia-state relations. These findings suggest that political ideas ought to be central to the study of political violence, militias should be studied in direct dialog with other armed groups, and a traditional focus on civil war should be replaced by the broader study of "

Furthermore, these countries had small, undiversified economies that did not lend themselves to myriad side-payment regimes. Rising export-ers therefore imperiled the basis upon which ruling coalition members main-tained cooperation.

In Colombia, Ghana, and Nigeria, where political elites led the ruling coali-tion, governments refused to provide public goods to export-oriented actors. I 1hese countries consequently missed an opportunity to expand state capacity from public goods provisio

I emphasize how threats-negative inducements for action-spur proj-ects of momentous institutional change. Threat refers to the costs that a group (or coalition) expects to incur if it acts or fails to actY The shifts in relative economic power that commonly accompany good economic times can create perceived threats from inaction, particularly the fear "that existing benefits will be taken away or new harms inflicted" due to a failure to ac

conomic actor B, by contrast, will perceive economic actor A to be an elemental threat and consequently strengthen institutions to ensconce its power. According to my heuristic, economic actor B targets sector A for mate-rial side-payments and knows that, if it is displaced as the coalition leader, it will be targeted to fund actor Xs side-payments. The situation is intractable. Yet this threat goes beyond a redistribution of wealth-though, as studies of regime dynamics demonstrate, the targets of such redistributive policies often regard them as categorically intolerable. 57 Actor B will likely interpret the threat posed by actor A as impinging upon its future economic prospects, too. States and markets are actively embedded, and economic actors regularly need government assistance to maximize their economic power. 58 Coalitional exclusion therefore suggests a future inability to maximize economic power, and the fear of future losses is a particularly salient form of threat, prospect theorists argue. 59 Economic actor B will perceive that it faces a diametrical, exigent, and potentially catastrophic threat and therefore initiate the move-ment toward unmediated institutions to preserve its current distributional political advantage

9 In sum1 although good economic times often give rise to preferences for new public goods1 coalitional politics accounts for why those desires may go unfulfilled

Good economic times have straightforward implications for economic actors: they want to maximize their wealth and profit from new economic opportu-nities. But often they cannot because their pursuits reveal obstacles that did not constrain prior levels of economic activity. Economic actors regularly conclude that state-supplied public goods can assuage such barriers. In

If political elites are the coalition leader, they have considerable flexibility in coalition building because they can tap sectors A and/or B for side-payments. Their side-payment strategy can be fluid and responsive to changing circumstances. Such flexibility is unavailable to economic actors A and B, according to this heuristic. Economic actor A has but one source for material side-payments: economic sector B. And vice versa. Economic actors A and B would consequently find themselves in an intrac-table situation when one of them leads the ruling political coalition, as one economic actor is necessarily the fiscal target of the other (see table 2.

Political elites-sometimes referred to as political entrepreneurs-are dis-tinctive because they do not principally derive power from the economic realm. Their power is ultimately ideological or symbolic in nature. 39 Such extra-economic power can be formidable1 particularly as triggers of collec-tive mobilization.40 Yet symbolic power is "predominantly diffused'141 and relatively ineffectual as a durable side-payment. Political elites therefore usually have difficulty augmenting their collective power in the longer term through symbolic or ideological appeals alone. 4

Economic activities may not be purely consensual1 and their outputs may be unevenly distributed (hence1 class dis-tinctions). But over time1 population growth1 technological innovations1 and natural resource exploitation have led to a massive growth in collective power in the economic realm. 37 Overall1 economic actors' generative aim is to maxi-mize their economic wealth and pow

I segregate coalitions into two analytic types based on a coalition lead-er's ultimate origin of power. Doing so highlights how coalition leaders' social background can vary fundamentally. To preview1 I describe how "economic actors" derive power from control of economic resources and regard political power as a means to achieve their economic ends. I juxtapose them with "po-litical elites/' who lack noteworthy economic power and instead derive their well-being from their ability to cultivate a political following. Political elites thus regard political power as an end1 not a means to an end. 36 I contend that this elemental difference profoundly affects these actors' state building incli-nations. For now1 I consider a simplified world in which economic actors and political elites not only designate a coalition's leader but also describe its mem-bership. I proceed as if coalitions led by economic actors are only populated by economic actors1 and vice versa. Coalitional membership is rarely so homo-geneous in actuality1 of course1 and later in the chapter1 I relax this restrictive assumption. Meanwhile1 the analytic clarity afforded by simplifying what is admittedly a complex world helps lay bare how economic actors and political elites strive to gain and maintain po

A basic way that social actors pursue their goals is by forming political co-alitions. Coalitions are groups of social actors that support a leader and tend to receive benefits for doing so in return. A "leader" can be thought of as the preponderant force or senior member within a coalition. 31 Leaders initiate and manage coalition-building efforts by offering side-payments to attract followers. Side-payments are "compensatory measures aimed at facilitating agreement between actors ... by roughly balancing inequities arising from cooperation."32 Many things can function as side-payments, from actual or quasi-pecuniarypayments to promises about future policy, threats, or even cul-turally rooted charismatic appeals. 33 Coalition leaders may use side-payments that are narrowly political (e.g., the promise of an exclusionary regime) or so-ciocultural (e.g., appeals to religion, ethnicity, or ideology). But, in the end, coalition leaders almost always employ side-payments that provide followers tangible, material benefits

1hroughout the non-European world, there is great variance in the prevalence of public goods, the strength of institutions, and state capacity. 1his book helps to account for such variation by showing how coalitional politics affects how countries respond to the contingent state building possibilities encap-sulated within resource booms.

Historically1 most governments have exerted their authority through me-diated institutions. Michael Mann1 in his sweeping history of social power1 notes that rulers have typically employed one of two strategies of mediated rule. First1 they have ruled indirectly through local elites. This low-cost strat-egy was (and1 for many contemporary rulers1 remains) appealing because of its simplicity.

ssistance with credit accessibility was another impure public good that social actors sought in the case studies. I detail how exporters pursued policies to promote credit accessibility1 though the content of the policies varied1 from the establishment of joint stock banking and facilitation oflong-term mortgage lending to a reform of land registration laws and changes in monetary policy.

This book provides insights into the development of aspects of state capac-ity that are not integrally connected to revenue extraction. Specifically, it looks to how social actors have generated bottom-up pressures for the provision of new public goods and stronger institutions,

The term "public goods" covers an expansive class of goods that can be pro-vided by the state or private actors. I use this general term throughout the book because it covers the various types of public goods sought in the cases under investigation. "Pure" public goods, such as clean air or national defense, are the best known type of public goods.

In its essence, state capacity means what Michael Mann terms infrastructural power: "the capacity of the state to actu-ally penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm."1 Politic

Top-down theories of state formation feature the self-interested ruler as the driving force behind state building. 1his book examines how self-interested social actors can prompt a growth in state capacity from the bottom-up. Some-times social actors are unintentionally beneficent, as their narrow pursuit of economic goals leads them to demand new public goods from the state that can trigger an expansion of state capacity

Although com-modity booms in Chile1 Argentina1 and Mauritius spawned impressive state building1 export-oriented actors in each country narrowly pursued their self-interest in ways that harmed vulnerable communities.

Mauritius was dominated po-litically by a narrow stratum of export-oriented sugar elites1 similar to ruling coalitions in Chile and Argentina. Sugar planters continually pressed the state for public goods throughout the nineteenth century1 including for coercive labor "regulation/' new transportation infrastructure1 credit accessibility1 and research and development initiatives.

Even after the Buenos Aires government subjugated the Argen-tine Confederation in 18611 and re-forged "Argentina/' porteflo ranchers be-lieved that upstart ranchers in former Confederation territory were conspiring to undermine wool production in Buenos Aires. Ruling coalition members felt the threat posed by these economic and political competitors was so severe that they embarked on institution building to derail their ascent

Perhaps the most provocative contention of this book is that the state building pathologies associated with natural resource wealth are as much, if not more, a function of coalitional politics than the fiscal properties of export commodities. Chile and Mauritius are commonly lauded as exceptions to the resource curse, since both have historically depended on commodity exports but feature capable states. The arguments I present in the next chapter sug-gest that they only seem peculiar because existing scholarship has not devoted enough attention to how coalitional politics mediates the contingent state building possibilities encapsulated within resource booms.

In three other countries-Chile, Argentina, and Mauritius-exporters held similar preferences for public goods, and because they were part of the ruling coali-tion, their governments assisted their economic and political goals. Coali-tional politics was the crucial mediating factor accounting for which states benefitted from commodity booms, and which ones did not. 2

Yet some of the countries examined in this book impressively strengthened their state capacity during resource booms, and for reasons unconnected to the revenue imperative. Instead, bottom-up, demand-side motives propelled their state building projects. Commodity booms in Chile and Argentina, for example, fundamentally altered politics by enriching economic competitors to the ruling political coalition.

This book explores how these demand-side motives have influenced state build-ing in the non-European world. Although the arguments made herein could conceivably be applied to various circumstances, I emphasize how the pur-suits of profit and distributional political advantage have affected state build-ing during good economic times. First, boom times transmit clear incentives for economic actors to expand production

In particular, it examines how good economic times can impel social actors to press for new public goods and stronger institutions, as well as the circumstances under which governments are inclined to fulfill these requests. As a point of departure, I recognize that the less hostile security environment facing more recent state builders has al-tered the sources of state capacity in the non-European world. 1he enveloping bellicist pressures of early modern Europe could very well spawn public goods provision and stronger institutions, especially for the purpose of taxation. But, as many scholars trenchantly demonstrate, geopolitical conditions in the non-European world have not triggered such comprehensive state building. One must therefore investigate motives other than the revenue imperative in order to account for the many ways in which states get built, given the rich variation in outcomes throughout the developing worl

many developing countries are apparently locked in a dually disadvantageous position: they are not subject to the bellicist pressures that impelled state building in early modern Europe1 and their lucrative ex-portable resources obviate the need to enhance the state's extractive prowes

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund1 once champions of strict neoliberal conditionality and steadfast critics of government involvement in the econ-omy1 now underscore the role of "good governance" and well-functioning state institutions in economic development. This about-face fundamentally reverses their understanding of the state's role in the economy. State capacity is now widely accepted as a pivotal concept to understand the developmental differences observed throughout the world.

e existence of state capacity likewise facilitates the pro-vision of public goods and thereby enhances public well-being.

ry, the city-states slowly transformed themselves into sovereign, territorial states. Nevertheless, even then the unification of weights and measures was not com- pleted. That only occurred under Napoleonic occupation in 1807. I argue, therefore, that city-states, unlike city-leagues, were compatible with a system of sovereign states, Consequently they survived with the German prin- cipalities for many centuries after Westphalia. They acknowledged territorial delimitation of their political control and a final locus for external interactions. However, because of their imperfect territorial integration and absence of a fully articulated sovereign authority, they proved to be less competitive than their sovereign, territorial counterparts. Lo

I can be short on this point. City-states behaved no differently in international affairs than sovereign, territorial states. Externally the city-states resembled sovereign states rather than city-leagues. Because their authority was bound by specific territorial parameters, they were able to participate as equals with states. The dominant Italian actors had recognized the territorial status quo among themselves after the Peace of Lodi in 1454, and they made elaborate lists identifying which towns were allies (amici and collegati) of specific domi- nant towns. There were thus circumscribed spheres of jurisdiction. It has been argued that Venice started the first systematized diplomatic service in history. Moreover, the dominant city monopolized the foreign relations of the subject towns.!®! As far as the other actors in the system were concerned, the city-state provided a clear focal point for negotiations. Wit

A disproportionate share of the tax burden was placed on the surrounding countryside and subject cities.'“* Legnano, subject to Verona, constantly con- tested its taxation and duties. Later it was Verona’s turn to protest domination by Venice on similar grounds. Although the share of tax on trade declined dramatically in the course of the seventeenth century, the amount of taxes provided by the Terra Ferma went up dramatically.

Towns, perceiving the benefits of territorial entities, increasingly defected from the league. This went beyond freeriding. They allied with local lords, now increasingly acting as sovereign, territorial rulers. The estates basically agreed with the princes to construct states made up of contiguous territories.“° The tasks of organizing long-distance commerce were increasingly taken over by states and their consular services, thereby making the Kontors and offices abroad less necessary." Some Hansa towns simply failed to appear at the diets or refused to pay their dues.* Rather than remain part of the transterritorial league, towns were in- corporated within the borders of existing sovereign states or became small ter- ritorial states in their own right. Hamburg, Bremen, Liibeck, and other German cities became independent actors and signed treaties just like any other state. Al

onsequently, the Hansa did not fit well within a system of sovereign states. This clarifies its precarious position at the Peace of Westphalia where the league sought representation.!2! The league had considerable difficulty obtain- ing standing at the conferences in Osnabriick and Minster. The German princes particularly wished to deny the Hansa legal standing. They argued that “1. The Hanseatic cities are either intermediate cities, who are represented by their lords, or imperial cities, and in that capacity naturally represented at the conference. 2. The Hansa cities were not mentioned in the religious treaty of Augsburg of 1555. 3. One does not really know what the Hansa in essence is,”!22 Although the Hansa was eventually mentioned in the final draft, the towns were only consulted on the issue of repayments. Because its nonterritorial logic of organization did not mesh with that of the state system, and because the league could not bind all its members to the agreements, the Hansa was not acceptable as a player in international politics.

The inability of the Hansa to credibly commit had several consequences for the league’s survival. Because the league could not control defection, it could not credibly consign itself to long-run agreements with joint gains.’ Game theory corresponds here with some of the sociological literature. Institutions originate where repetitive behavior occurs between two actors. The more this repetition occurs, the more the actors expect a typical pattern of behavior from the other. Social roles develop which signal what type of behavior one may expect. When these roles are passed on to actors not immediately involved in the initial interactions, these roles become externalized."% Actors should, therefore, prefer those types of institutions that clearly indicate the type of behavior one might expect from that actor. In short, political elites should prefer systems of rule in their environment that can commit their members. The representatives of the Hanseatic Diet were often not able to give such guarantees

e Hansa, by contrast, lacked a theory legitimating sovereign power. This was partially due to the absence of clear internal hierarchy and diffuse demarcation from non-Hansa authorities.®° There simply was no clear center that could operate as a sovereign.

The king had two bodies—the person was gradually distinguished from the office. Whatever might happen to the individual as king did not affect the status of the crown. Although this was originally justified within the medieval mental- ity which perceived duality as pervading many physical phenomena, it was increasingly grounded in Roman law, wherein the king was the fountain of law, Ecclesiastical kingship was transferred to law-centered kingship, thereby opening the way to national states and absolute monarchies.” Salisbur

Sovereign actors capitalized on this mutual distrust. The Danish king only recognized the treaty for ships flying the flag of the Wendish towns, in the hopes of creating a rift. The king exacted tolls on the Prussian ships that crossed through the Sound but took care not to demand tolls from Wend ships. Simi- larly, England was eager to close deals with individual Hansa towns and thus circumvent the protectionism of the entire league. When obstructed from ac- cess to Bruges, where the Hansa had a major trading office (Kontor), the En- glish moved their trade to Antwerp which was a relay station for trade with Cologne, thus fostering competition between Cologne and other Hansa towns.

o sum up, the Hansa proved to be less efficient in reducing transaction costs and providing collective goods than the sovereign state. It did not manage to provide standardization of weights and measurements, enforce centralized jus- tice, establish a general system of coinage, or establish a regular means of rais- ing revenue for a general fund.

The kings managed to standardize metal content and institutionalized a system based on the pound, the shilling, and the penny (livre, sol, denier), a system that originated first in the Carolingian Empire. The king thus reduced the number of mints in the kingdom and thus increased certitude in transactions. “So that in the later Middle Ages the only effective non-royal coinages in France were those issued by a handful of the greatest, near-autonomous princes ... such as the duke of Brittany and the duke of Guyenne who was also the king of England.”*!

Empirical evidence suggests that the general tendency was the more consclidated the central government, the less debasement cf coinage.” Fur- thermore, it could be argued that the level of tolerance toward debasement is at least equal within all systems of rule, whether league, city-state, or territorial state, because capital always had the option to exit. French kings had an inter- est in establishing exchange rates to prevent such flight from occurring.™ The burghers at times could put a halt to debasing.* In any case, on the issue of variation in minting, the French king brought some standardization to the mul- titude of mints and coinage types.

The French state fared better than the Hansa in centralizing the minting of coin.” The league did not manage to standardize a particular coinage, and many towns continued to mint their own. “They [attempts at reform] remained without significant success until the great coin reform movement of the 16th century, and then only in a very limited way. In France, by contrast, the Crown, since Louis IX, had successfully curtailed the coining privileges of the lords, and took coining back into its control.”*

reover, although the king had only limited success in changing this situation, he did manage to institutionalize methods of converting different measures. Kings tried to draft tables of conversion to make it easier for com- moners and traders to deal with the plethora of measurements. The Hansa lacked an actor that could enforce such standardization on relatively indepen- dent towns.

n all, the process of standardization was of dubi- ous success. “But with the other measures such standardization was not achieved. ... The same must be said for measures of length. ... With regards to measures of weight, there was no standardization either.” Merchants of course made the most of local control over measures. In other words, cheating was not beyond Hanseatic traders. They would, for example, use a smaller barrel or a double-bottomed barrel but put the Rostock benchmark on it. The common saying was that the Dutch preferred to sell wood rather than butter, because of their use of extremely thick barrels.“ Enforcement of Hanseatic decisions rested with municipal councils. But such councils were often dominated by the very merchants who were responsi- ble for their violations. Enforcement of standardization therefore remained problematic. The German cities lacked a sovereign authority who could exer- cise such justice. Although all towns would have benefited from standardiza- tion, they had individual incentives to freeride.** In France, kings took it upon themselves to attempt to standardize measures as early as the twelfth century. Philip Augustus tried to standardize measures for the water merchants of Paris.°° Attempts to introduce some standardization throughout the kingdom date from Philip the Long (1316-1322) and started

If some forms of organization failed because of comparatively inadequate territory and population, how, then, could the Dutch success against Spain or France, or the rise of the Portuguese, be explained? The Dutch Republic and Portugal each had populations of about 1.5 million—comparable to Venice— yet they succeeded in becoming leading powers of the international system of the early sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”

lem with this type of account is that the synchronic alternatives to the sovereign states, that is, city-leagues and city-states, were also superior to feudal forms of organiza- tion, As we have seen in the past few chapters, the ability of states to develop new military technologies, hire mercenaries, and use artillery were also part of the repertoire of the states’ rivals. The Hansa had the ability to raise consider- able numbers of troops and to equip large fleets. Its successes against Den- mark, England, Holland, and Sweden attest to that. When Liibeck aided Den- mark against Sweden in the sixteenth century, it did so with some of the largest and most advanced ships of the time.” City-states were even closer to the cutting edge of military developments. Italian military engineers were eagerly sought after. For example, Italians were hired by the English Crown to build its fortifications against the Scots." The city-states also institutionalized the con- dotierri, the professional captaincy with its specialized military entourage. In short, the question remains as to why the sovereign state proved to be superior to these synchronic rivals, not why it was superior to feudal organization.

sover- eign states have also risen and declined, but that has not led to the disappear- ance of the sovereign state as an institutional form. Quite the contrary. We need, therefore, to go beyond the historically particular to theorize about the general implications of certain institutional arrangem

illy’s perspective and similar accounts that focus predominantly on war- fare. If, as Tilly proposes, war making is the crucial selecting mechanism, then it is difficult to explain why so many small states survived. Why, for example, were the minuscule German states recognized as treaty signees equal to France or England, even in the middle of the nineteenth century? As Tilly him

simply by the amount of resources under control, not by the particular mix of coercive-intensive or capital-intensive means. The national state centralized and accumulated more coercive means than its rivals. The physical size of the state makes the difference. Tilly suggests, for example, that “large states” re- placed other types.** T

For Tilly, selection is rooted in the unit’s security performance. From my perspective, the critical variable is institutional structure. This in turn explains the ability to wage war. Whether or not a particular type of organization will survive depends on its ability to prevent freeriding, its credibility to commit in international treaties, compatibility with other types of organization, and the benefits that it provides to its subjects (in order to prevent defection).

ccount is based on the impact of economic change and subsequent politics of coalitional bargaining. I see the economic transformation of medieval Europe as the primary independent variable which made. new political coalitions possible. These coalitions embarked on different institutional paths prior to the military revolution. Second, Tilly explains selec- tion among rival modes of organization by their ability to wage war. From my perspective, the ability to wage war is itself determined by the efficacy of par- ticular institutional arrangements. For example, the ability of a particular mode of organization to raise revenue and prevent freeriding will affect its war-mak- ing capacity. That is, the ability to wage war is an intervening variable, itself determined by institutional makeup. Third,

Systemically, from a top-down perspective, there are three main reasons why states survived and displaced other forms of organization. First, the internal logic of organization of the sovereign state had less deficiencies than its rivals. Sovereign, territorial states were better at rationalizing their economies and mobilizing the resources of their societies.** Second, state sovereignty proved to be an effective and efficient means of organizing external, interunit behavior. Sovereign states could more easily make credible commitments than their non- sovereign counterparts. Third, sovereign states selected out and delegitimized actors who did not fit a system of territorially demarcated and internally hierar- chical authorities. The organizational principles of territorial states and city- leagues were mutually incompatible, exactly because the latter had no specific borders

For these reasons, my research tries to inductively ascertain what prefer- ences individuals actually had and what choices they made. I further examine how preferences were aggregated and played out in political bargaining. In doing so, the role of beliefs and norms must be taken into account, in conjunc- tion with the material interests of the individuals in question. Beliefs and norms inform one’s preferences. Hence, in order to ascertain the actual preferences of an actor, that individual’s belief system must be examined. To label particular types of behavior, for example, a noble’s pursuit of honor, as irrational by hold- ing it to a strict cost-benefit logic misses the point. The choice of that individual should be understood by the conceptual context through which that individ- ual’s preferences are formed.”* Webe

view, change can be dramatic and very quick. It takes the form of “punctuated equilibrium.” Stages of relative tranquility are interrupted by sudden and dra- matic changes. Such broad exogenous change—punctuation—will lead to a flurry of radically new forms.” In the long run, some of these forms may die out and a period of relative tranquility will ensue—a period of relative equilibrium. Whatever forms survive are not explained by reference to the types preceding the exogenous shock but by reference to the new environment and the now simultaneously existing forms which emerged after the shock.“ Gould’s discus- sion of this two-staged nature of evolution is worth emphasizing in detail.

Third, there are good reasons why actors do not redesign institutions unless conditions force them to do so. Transaction costs, set belief systems, and stan- dard operating procedures mitigate against frequent overhaul, Moreover, given the fact that institutions reflect a particular distribution of power, such changes are unlikely to occur without fundamental shifts in that distribution. Once one form has established itself as dominant, relative stability in institutional types should follow.” There is a certain path dependency in institutional design.

rticular type ‘of unit comes to dominate the international system, it transforms the deep structure of the system. The more frequent changes in interactions and rank order occur without affecting the particular character of this deep structure. For example, diplomatic practices and the rank order of states have changed in the past de- cades, but all this has happened without affecting the existence of a system of sovereign, territorial states. These historical periods in which particular types of units tend to dominate constitute the longue durée of international politics

In the Braudelian scheme, the tempo of change thus varies between the instant, the cyclical, and the longue durée. The task of the historian is to dem- onstrate the interplay between these three. Seen from another perspective, Phistoire evenementielle and longue durée occupy opposite ends of the spec- trum of agency and structure. Through microlevel choices, individual agents create a history of events. Conversely, factors such as weather and mortality rates often structurally determine the course of history over a long time frame.

argue that a change in the constitutive units of the system is only likely to occur after a broad exogenous change, or an environmental shock, if you will. Such an exogenous change will lead to political and social realignments.

ation in individual characteristics of states rather than in relations among the

By abandoning the idea of unilinear progress and by acknowledging the vari- ety of political institutions, one can better identify the causal sequences of insti- tutional development. Moreover, by recognizing the wide range of empirical possibilities, one does not conflate the reasons for the decline of the feudal order with the reasons for the success of the sovere

However, it is also clear that the alternatives to the state have died out. The powerful city-leagues that organized northern commerce and united consider- able urban resources are no more. Similarly, the city-states, which consisted of the rule of one predominant city over others, have ceased to exist. Any exp

As I will argue in Part I, this is theoretically and empirically incorrect. Theo- retically, unilinear theories of change affirm the consequent. Because these theories only focus on one observed outcome—the rise of the sovereign state— a variety of explanations appear plausible. Such theories might, for example, argue that increased economic interaction, new military technology, or shifts in medieval mentality led to the decline of the old feudal order. However plausi- ble these may be, in fact such views are descriptive accounts. In order to see which variables were relevant in bringing about change, a theory of change should account for variation in the observed outcome.®

dern state is based on these two key elements, internal hierarchy and external autonomy, which emerged for the first time in the Late Middle Ages.* When scholars focus on the emergence of the state, they often really mean the growth of formal govern- ment. The critical question in my analysis is instead why some governments took the form of sovereign, territorial rule whereas others did not. This book

atabases are a tool that can allow researchers to trace these changes, rather than presenting religion as monolithic over place and time. Seshat’s reliance on generic sources pasted across wide spans of space and time makes it an unhelpful tool for this purpose.

Even a cursory glance at the coding justifications makes it clear that that this haphazard process has undermined data quality: large swathes of the religion and ritual codings are incorrect, missing proper justifications, or based upon irrelevant sources, and the coding justifications in general reflect a minimum amount of research on the part of RAs, most of whom lack any specific area expertise. This lack of expertise leads to coding errors that undermine the authors’ analysis.

fact have both sets of variables checked, 24% have only one checked, and 63% have no expert vetting at all.5

Large-scale, quantitative databases of the cultural/historical record are a relatively recent innovation. There are currently no shared standards concerning best practices, such as how to manage trade-offs between rate of data collection and data quality or expert-sourced vs. Research Assistants (RA)-sourced data, documentation of expert data vetting, etc.3 Nonetheless, we feel that the approach adopted by the Seshat team has—at least with regard to the data reported in this most recent study—produced codings of crucial variables that are systematically flawed and unlikely to stand up to close scrutiny. Most worrying is the fact that the apparent lack of appreciation for historical scholarship that this coding strategy displays runs the risk of permanently alienating the community of academic historians, who are essential future collaborators in any project devoted to large-scale historical data analysis

Empire overseas did not build up state structure to the same extent as land war at home. Nevertheless, the connection between state and empire ran in both directions: the character of the European state governed the form of its expansion outside of Europe, and the nature of the empire significantly affected the metropole's operation. Capital-intensive statc..s_ such as Venice and the Dutch Republic reached out chiefly by the ruthless pursuit of trading monopolies, but invested little effo rt in military conquest and colonization. Coercion-intensive states such as the Norse and the Spanish devoted more of their energy to settiement, enslavement of the indigenous (or imported) labor fo rce, and exaction of tribute. The in-between/st�es, such as Britain and France, entered the imperial game relativel�te,) and excelled at it by combining the capitalist and coercive strategies

Some historians speak of a "ratchet effect" by which an inflated wartime buaget fa ils to return to its prewar level (Peacock and Wiseman 1 9 6 1 ; Rasler and Thompson 1 9 83, 1 9 85a). The ratchet does not occur universally, but it does appear quite often, especially in states that have not suffered great losses in the war at hand. It occurs fo r three reasons: because the wartime increase in state power gives officials new capacity to extract resources, take on new activities, a.n.d defend themselves against cost-cutting; because wars either -Ca"ti s¢ �f -reved new problems that call fo r state attention; and because the wartime accun;ulation 'of debt places new burdens on the state.

The five kinds of taxes form a kind of continuum with respect to their dependence on monetization of the ambient economy. They also differ in terms of the amount of continuous surveillance the collector must apply (see figure 3 . 3 ) . In general, taxes that require little surveillance rely on open use of fo rce more fr equently than those that entail continuous surveillance

nstead, they have coped with the shortfall by one form of borrowing or another: making creditors wait, selling offices, fo rcing loans from clients, borrowing from bankers who acquired claims on future governmental revenues. If a government and its agents can borrow, they can separate the rhythm of their expenditures from that of their income; and s�J;l4-ahead of their income. Sp-cnding, ah ead of inC.9me J�IaJs.�s. .expensiY� warmakJ!!g e_asier, s�"-£�_e�endl�r�s,�or ,��,n, arm�" a�d �!he� �equisites of war �u�ly' come_ in �urges, while potential an� actual state revenJ.1es ordinarily f1u�_tuate,much I�s,s frgm one year to J hl:. ��x�. A state that borrows quickly, furthermore, can mobilize fa ster than its enemies, and thus increase its chances of winning a w

hird, states involved themselves increasingly in roducin the means ofwaWre whic!u:esta�ed e estion ali _ a choice be een seizin ;Wd bu ' the means of roduction instead 0 e r . ourth, the mass of the su ject population resisted direct seizure of men, fo od, weapons, trampo)!1, .. md other means of war much more vigorously and effectively than they fo ught against paying fo r them. Although various fo rms of conscription have continued to our own time, European states generally moved toward a system of collecting taxe�_ in mon,ey,.payin_g fo r coercive means withJ_1!£_mo� tliiiscoIIecte"d'; and using smne- o(t�e coercive means to fu rther the collectio_n of taxes

Americans, it turned to Hesse. As a result, in American fo lk history "Hessian" signifies crass and unpatriotic -in short, , ercena . On the basis of military business, Frederick II ( 1 760-85) built an en ened despotism complete with poor relief and maternity hospital; most of the programs, however, collapsed as the American war ended and as Europe's states turned to recruiting their own national armies (Ingrao 1 9 8 7 : 1 9 6-201 ) . The age of mercenaries was then ending

War did not merely entail recruiting and paying troops. Warmaking states had to supply them as well. During the later seventeenth century, a typical army of 60,000 men, with its 40,000 horses, consumed almost a million pounds of food per day - some carried with the army, some stored in magazines, the great bulk procured wherever the army was located, but all of it requiring massive expenditure and organization (Van Creveld 1977: 24). At the prices and wages of the time, a million pounds of grain cost the equivalent of the daily wages of about 90,000 ordinary laborers (calculated from Fourastie 1 9 66: 423). In addition to food, armies had to acquire weapons, horses, clothing, and shelter; the larger the armies, the less fe asible to have each individual supply his own. From Wallenstein to Louvois, the great seventeenth-century organizers of war involved themselves in supply as much as in battle. That made their big business even bigger.

Nevertheless, the figures make their main point eloquently. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. cspeciaJlr, armies expanded. They bec,!JIle big business

What was happening to the Italian state system? The national states in fo rmation north of the Alps, by competing for hegemony in Italy, were forcibly integrating it into a larger system spanning much of Europe. Soon after, the Ottoman Empire was expanding deep into European territory, and putting pressure on Italy from the southeast; the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent ( 1 5 20-66) brought the Turks to the summit of their European power. The Ottoman advance, in its tum, started a four-century struggle with Russia, aligning the strategically-located Crimean Tatars with the Ottomans and against the Russians for the first time. In Italy, the alteration of warfare had devastating consequences. By the 1 5 20S, Habsburgs and Valois were fighting their dynastic wars on Italian territory. In 1 5 2 7, the Habsburg emperor's mercenaries sacked Rome. As of 1 5 40, Milan and Lombardy had fallen under Spanish rule, France occupied much of Savoy and Piedmont, Florence had become a Medici-ruled duchy nominally subject to the empire, and Naples was an appanage of the Spanish crown. Of the greater Italian powers, only the most maritime, Venice and Genoa, had maintained their oligarchic institutions. Even they lost their pre-eminence in the Mediterranean. As the northern states generalized their wars and drew Italy into their struggles, war on land became more important, and the ability to field large armies more critical to a state's success.

late fifteenth century marked_�n imE��t_ant �l!!!.2on: ��!.ge �!.tary�,��!��_��g�.� t� _���.l!h.e.. stim,:!lus of capitan� expansio� the advantages of the small mercantile states began to disappear.

Eventually, however, those states that recruited and maintained huge armies from their own national resources - France, Great Britain, and Prussia are the preponderant models - prevailed over all the rest

l� du�i!l�. ��, n,'ltel��.mh Cl;!pn!JLc!�.Iurop.ean states est��lish _ unifo���..J,...�!l�,i�LQ':!r.s!H!�!�t!c;:.,P2fu:�...fo�"5;.e�" s.P����� control of the civili3:I! .. QQ.P.'l�.!!i9 .. Q. They thus freeq tht;ir armi.�l,t<!s<!.n£c:.!:l.!!,�!c:. on external cQnqu,�§!.MIJJ...in.tero3tiP1Hl�

As a consequence of these and other differences, cities generally developed distinct police fo rces well before the countryside, and the separation of police fo rces from other military organizations occurred earlier in relatively urban states

If war drove states, it did not exhaust their activity. On the contrary: as a by­product of preparations fo r war, rulers willy-nilly started activities and o.!8'anizations that eventually took on lives of their own: courts. ste s of taxation, regional administratio . more.

During the sixteenth century, a.!. �ultipli��t�t�. expenditures through most of _t ht:_ continent, European states began to r�gula�e �nd_ exp�nd b�dgets,taxes, and ·d�e�ts ;"lik�. States'(qture reyenue� b.egan .to . ..5en£e.a8 security fo r.long-term debt

hey also suggest that preparation fo r war, paying fo r it, and mending its damage preoccupied rulers throughout the five centuries under scrutiny. In the five centuries before ] 5 0 0, fu rthermore, European states concentrated even more exclusively on the making of war. Over the millennium as a whole, war has been the dominant activity of European states.

During the sixteenth century, that is, states that ever participated in great power wars were at war during about one year in three (0. 3 4 ) ; during the twentieth, one year in five (0.2.0).

(The rise and fall reveals the development of the general war among most or all of the great powers, counterbalanced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the tendency of Western states to start or intervene in local conflicts outside of the West.

Some conditions fo r w a r varied, however. Every state 's particular brand o f warmaking depended on three closely-related fa ctors: the character of i t s major rivals, the external interests of its dominant classes, and th.e lOgIc of the protective activity in which rulers engaged on behalf of their own and dominant classes' interests.

Europeans fo llowed a standard war­provoking logic: ev�one who controlled substantial coercive means tried to maintain a secure area within which he could enjoy the returns from coercion, Ius a fo rb e u er zone, ossibl run at a oss, to rotect t e secure area.

The Pruss ian monarchy's chief tax-collection agency came into being as the General War Commissariat. During the later seventeenth century, England's successive republican and monarchical governments, intent on countering French and Dutch naval power, built royal shipyards into the country's largest concentrated industry. Such empire-building organizations as the Dutch East India Company became enormously influential elements of their national governments (Duffy 1 9 80). From AD 990 onward, major mobilizations fo r war provided the chief occasions on which states expanded, c�,nS:<..>Tia�eg;:�a:!!.it�created n�'Y' fo rms of political organization.

�link bctW� ;;-� warmaking and state structure sttcngtlfened� Max Weber's historically contestable definfiiorf or the sta'te '� ·"a- 'state'is a human community that (successfully) claims the mfJnfJpob' fJf the legitimate liSt qf phys icalforce within a given territory" (Gerth and Mills 1 9 46: 78) - finally began to make sense fo r European states

Disarmament of the civili��,!!atio_n took place in many small steps: general seIZures of weapons at the ends of rebellions, prohibitions of duels, controls over the production of weapons, introduction of licensing fo r private arms, restrictions on public displays of armed fo rce

But surely a �ignificant contrib.u.tiOJl came fr o� �e_i!lcreasing !en�e�cy of s�at_e.s tCi? lr!o!l.itQ.l:L control,. and��onoJ?olj� the effective ����.�!�l�nc

If it were not fo r war J..!.�te re ression, the automobile, and sui9de...tbe odds of violent death of any kind would be incompara y s immer in most of the Western world today than they were two or three hundred years ago.

We can read the contrast between great power e� .. perience with war and that of other states optimistically or pessimistically. Optimistically, we might suppose that the great powers eventually found less costly ways of settling their differences than incessant wars, and that the same thing will eventually happen to other states. Pessimistically, we might conclude that the great powers have exported .war to the rest of the world, and have saved their own energy fo r destroying each other in concentrated bursts. In either mood, we see an increasingly belligerent world in which the most powerful states enjoy a partial exemption from war on their own terrains and therefore, perhaps, become less sensitive to the horrors of war

Wars directly involving great powers have, on the average, declined in frequency, duration, and number of participating states since the sixteenth century.

Since 1 9 00, by one careful count, the world has seen 2 3 7 new wars - civil and international - whose battles have killed at least 1 , 000 persons per year; through the year 2000, the grim numbers extrapolate to about 2 7 5 wars and 1 1 5 million deaths in battle. Civilian deaths could easily equal that total. The bloody nineteenth century brought only 205 such wars and 8 million dead, the warlike eighteenth century a mere 68 wars with 4 million killed (Sivard 1 9 86: 26; see also Urlanis 1 9 60)

The Protestant ethic left a double legacy for the modern political world. The first, illustrated by the Netherlands and other constitutional republics, was a set of organizational and political strategies through which disciplined, militant minorities could capture power. Indeed, one might fairly see the Calvinist movements of Western Europe as the first revolutionary parties

Using these distinctions, it is possible to differentiate four ways in which disciplinization affects state formation (see summary in fig. 4): (1) elite mobilization, (2) administrative rational- ization, (3) popular pacification, and (4) mass socialization/social control

State structure, I argue here, was determined by the intersection of two factors-level of economic development and the pres- ence or absence of disciplinary revolution (see fig. 2)-with three main outcomes-constitutional republics, centralized monarchies (divided into court-based and military-bureaucratic subtypes), and despotic empires

Thus, in the Prussian case, the formation of a strong, centralized ("absolutist") state faced two hurdles: (1) the political power of the Estates and (2) a scarcity of material and human resources. Frederick William largely surmounted the first obstacle. By striking a bargain with the nobility at the expense of the burgers and peasants and by systematically favoring Calvinists and "foreigners" over Lutherans and indigenous nobles, he laid the foundations for a central- ized, administrative system. The second obstacle was overcome by Fred- erick William I. By improving the economic base of state finance and by reforming the central administration, he made Prussia into a powerful bureaucratic state.

At the same time, the role of the Pietist movement in Prussian state building was twofold. As a source of elite training and personnel, it helped forge a loyal and diligent caste of state servants. As a popular reform movement, it contributed to the formation of an obedient and quiescent population of royal subjects. Pietism acted simultaneously as a stimulus to elite mobilization and popu- lar pacification.

Between 1713 and 1740, total state revenues increased from approxi- mately 4 million to 7 million talers. In order of importance, the expansion in state income derived from (1) expansion and intensified cultivation of domain lands (Skalweit 1906), (2) growth in excise revenues (due largely to population growth and economic development; see Rachel 1911, vols. 1-2, "Beilagen"), and (3) a more effective collection of the land taxes (Hintze 1901, pp. 25 ff.; Terveen 1954, pp. 17 ff.). It should be stressed, moreover, that Prussian finance did not rely on common-but inefficient and ultimately expensive-expedients such as loans, tax farming, ex- traordinary or increased taxes, lawsuits, expropriations, or the sale of offices.35 On the cost side, it should also be emphasized that, while the royal bureaucracy was small and notoriously underpaid (ABB, 3:681 ff.; Torinus 1935, pp. 45-49), it was known for its diligence and its lack of corruption. It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that the probity and diligence of the bureaucracy simultaneously lowered administrative costs and increased state revenu

Another channel of Pietist influence could be found in the military chap- lains (Feldprediger). Under Frederick William I, these posts were monop- olized by theology students from Halle. Moreover, the king ordered that military chaplains be given preference when filling vacant parishe

Frederick also established programs to train future civil servants in the "cameral sciences" in Halle and Kdnigsberg,30 the intellectual centers of Pietism (Maier 1980; Bleek 1972). This campaign to recruit loyal and disciplined civil servants was accompanied by a radical reorganization of the civil service itself.

"He who is not faithful to God," he characteris- tically proclaimed, "less will he be faithful to me, a man" (ABB, 3:311). He regarded a good royal servant as a selfless man who displayed "tire- less diligence, dutiful fidelity and continual and pauseless application" (ABB, 2:563-64) and "who after God values nothing higher than his king's pleasure and serves him out of love and for the sake of honor rather than money" (ABB, 2:128). During the reign of Frederick William I, the social and confessional bases of the state service underwent another dramatic shift. While the old Calvinist families remained a powerful force (Thadden 1959, pp. 91 ff.), Lutherans-and especially Pietists-began to enter the state service in increasing numbers.2

Frederick William displayed the same aggressive approach in his re- forms of the military and the church. Like his grandfather, he served as his own field marshall. In addition to acting as commander-in-chief dur- ing wartime, he also functioned as drillmaster during peacetime with his own private regiment in Potsdam (the famous "tall grenadiers") and with other regiments during his regular tours through the kingdom (Jany 1967, vol. 2; Delbruck 1988, vol. 3). Nor did "the soldier king," as he came to be called, fail to exercise his rights as the head of the church.27 In 1713, he created a superior reformed consistory (reformiertes Ober- konsistorium), and reorganized the entire Reformed church along pres- byterian lines into classes and synod

In order to secure control over all available material resources, Frederick William I pushed forward the process of administrative centralization which had begun under his grandfather.

Francke saw his educational experiments as the cornerstone for a "gen- eral reformation" of church and state in Brandenburg-

As the number of indigenous Calvinists was small, he recruited a great many "foreigners" (Opgenoorth 1967; Erbe 1937), a practice that drew vocal protests from the Estates, which were overwhelmingly Lutheran except in Cleves and Mark (Muehler 1846, pp. 99 ff.; Lackner 1973; Hintze, n.d., pp. 64 ff.), who decried it as a violation of the ius indigenatus, by which all secular offices were reserved for their own members (Hahn in Baumgart 1969). But Frederick William sidestepped these objections, either by ennobling the candidate in question or by simply ignoring the protests (Opgenoorth 1971). The result was a slow but deep shift in the composition of the Prussian administrative elite.

Composed over- whelmingly of indigenous nobles and including representatives from all the Hohenzollern territories (Oestreich 1971, p. 24), it was the corner- stone of the policy of cooperation and conciliation toward the Estates that Frederick William (in imitation of Dutch and Swedish models) pur- sued during the first decade of his reign (Opgenoorth 1971). Relations with the Estates gradually soured, however, especially after 1651 when the Estates of Cleves undermined Frederick William's attempt, through military force, to assert his inherited claim to the neighboring province of Jillich. From this point on, he pursued a more confrontational course

Frederick William also expanded the military and commissarial offices directly under his control and filled these posts with Calvinists and foreigners loyal only to him. While it is unclear-and indeed doubt- ful-that these policies were part of a conscious plan or strategy on Frederick William's part, their end result was a progressive centraliza- tion of administrative power

The geopolitical situation of Brandenburg was not particularly favorable either. Through a combination of dynastic accident and great-power diplomacy a number of new territories had devolved to the Hohenzollerns during the first half of the 17th century: the Rhineland provinces of Mark and Cleves, the Duchy of Prussia, a Polish fief, and the Baltic kingdom of Pomerania. But the geographical dispersion of the new territories and their proximity to larger powers (i.e., France, Holland, Sweden, and Poland) made them extremely difficult to defend. And indeed, Frederick William would spend much of his reign preparing for or actually waging war:

The forma- tion of constitutional republics in early modern Europe, then, resulted from a confluence of religiocultural, structural, and geographical factors. But at least one disciplinary revolution also occurred outside the core. In Prussia, we observe a case in which disciplinary revolution succeeded under conditions of economic backwardness and urban underdevelop- ment. The resulting state, however, was not a constitutional republic but a military-bureaucratic monarchy.

Constitutional republics emerged only in the North Atlantic region, an area distinguished by at least two of the following structural features: urban or municipal independence, a high level of commercial develop- ment, and a "rising" bourgeoisie (or "declining" aristocracy).

And indeed, it is one of the key theses of this essay that disciplin- ary revolution was a necessary condition for the formation of constitu- tional republics. But by the same token, disciplinary revolution alone was not sufficient to bring about successful republican state formation.

A working division of labor was established between the provincial states and the States Gen- eral. Henceforth, the latter assumed control over public finance, military defense, and international affairs. In return, the provincial and local governments were given a free hand in managing their day-to-day affair

t is unclear from existing research what relation (if any) these reforms had to Calvinism, other than the fact that Maurice himself was a devout Calvinist. 16 But there can be no doubt of their immense international influence.

Their aim was not to punish but to reform. Through a daily regimen combining hard labor with strict supervision and moral education, they sought to transform ne'er-do-wells into productive citi- zens. Most of the inmates were vagrants and petty criminals forcibly incarcerated by the city government. But some were also wayward scions of the well-to-do who were voluntarily committed by their parents or relatives

Poor relief, in short, was being rapidly transformed from an ex- pression of Christian charity to an instrument of social control.

One of the most important arenas of cooperation was the realm of social welfare. Both the city councils and the Reformed church main- tained their own systems of poor relief, administered, respectively, by the Masters of the Holy Spirit, or Masters of the Domestic Poor (Huiszit- tenmeesters) and the deacons or deaconesses. However, patterns of infor- mal cooperation between the city councils and the consistories (Reformed church councils) emerged in many cities. 15 It is even more significant that a system of stringent qualifications was introduced. Henceforth, only the "helpless poor"-children, women, the sick, and the elderly-were to receive aid.

Regular members of the congregation were also encouraged to play an active part in maintaining church discipline. It was the duty of each church member to "remonstrate" with errant "brothers and sisters" and to bring their sins to the attention of the elders if necessary.

The process of religious and political polarization that accompanied the revolt also thinned the ranks of the "politiques," moderates who opposed Philip's religious and political policies but nevertheless advocated a compromise with Spain (Woltjer 1962, pp. 292 ff.; 1976). In the aftermath of the revolt, the Calvinists stood virtually unchallenged. This allowed them to assume a pivotal position in the process of political reconstruction that followed

Artisans, petty tradesmen, and workers took the lead in demanding freedom for Re- formed worship and representation in city government.

When Margaret of Parma, the regent of the Netherlands, introduced a policy of religious moderation in 1566, it was "misinterpreted" by the Calvinists as a proclamation of religious toleration. The Calvinist movement, which had grown rapidly during the previous decade (Reitsma 1949, pp. 62-111; Knappert 1911), burst into the open, with itinerant preachers organizing mass hagepreken, open-air services or "hedge sermons" (Mack-Crew 1978). In August 1566, the Netherlands were swept by a two-week-long campaign of Cal- vinist-led iconoclasm (Jong 1964; Scheerder 1974). Then, in the north, a band of lesser nobles-many of whom were Calvinists-staged a small and unsuccessful military uprising under the leadership of the baron of Brederode.

To summarize, what gave Calvinism its revolutionary potential was that it conjoined (1) an ethic of self-discipline with (2) potent organizational strategies and (3) a world-changing vision of a godly commonwealth.

Calvin's followers refashioned his ideas into a revolutionary defense of traditional privileges and communal lib- erty which packed considerable appeal among traditional urban and landed elites whose power was threatened by the encroachment of the crown. Calvin's political thought therefore provided an intellectual and religious basis for republican theories of governmen

In order to maintain self-discipline, the Calvinists employed a wide variety of techniques, many of them derived from long-standing monastic practices. These in- cluded regular devotional readings, frequent prayer, and moral logbooks or journals (Hill 1967; Morgan 1966; Cohen 1986). Yet why would any- one voluntarily adhere to such a harsh creed? Part of the answer no doubt lies in purely religious needs and interests. But self-discipline also contained a status claim, that is, a claim to moral superiority.

Since Weber, social scientists have generally traced the historical impact of Calvinism to John Calvin's theology, especially as expressed in his doctrine of predestination and its importance for economic action (Eisen- stadt 1968). I will offer a somewhat different interpretation of Calvinism as doctrine, movement, and ideology. Weber stressed how Calvin's doctrine of the "calling" harnessed the ideal interest of the believer to work and accumulation

Using the terms developed above, I can now state that disciplinary revolution occurs when a "rising" carrier group uses disciplinary institu- tions to cement its status and domination. While they represent impor- tant preconditions for disciplinary revolution, the appearance of new disciplinary techniques or ethics do not themselves constitute disciplinary revolutions

A further problem with Fou- cault's and Elias's theoretical perspectives is that they offer no coherent framework with which to differentiate various levels or dimensions of disciplinization.

While Foucault generally reduces discipline to its strategic dimension (i.e., to a means of control and domination), Elias tends to reduce it to the individual level (i.e., to self-discipline). Here, a synthetic approach (see fig. 1) is devel- oped, which takes account of both the normative dimension and social level of discipline. On the individual level, a distinction can be made between disciplinary ethics and disciplinary techniques: the first pre- scribes the control of drives and affects and the systematic channeling of psychic energies toward the realization of ideal interests; the second con- sists of the psychological strategies and physical operations through which discipline is maintained.

disci- plinary revolution was a necessary condition for the formation of consti- tutional republics in economically advanced regions and for the formation of strong, centralized, monarchical states in economically backward re- gions.

I argue that successful disciplinary revolution led to the formation of republican states in the core region and made possible the construction of strong, centralized, monarchical states in the semiperipher

First, they instilled an ethic of self-discipline within individ- ual believers. Second, they invented a variety of institutional strategies for maintaining collective discipline within the church. And third, they promoted social reforms aimed at increasing popular discipline.

The main hypothesis of this essay is that the formation of national states in early modern Europe (1517-1789) was not solely the product of an administrative revolution driven by absolutizing princes. It was equally the result of a disciplinary revolution sparked by ascetic religious movements, the most important of which was Calvinism. The presence or absence of disciplinary revolution, I will argue, was a critical (though by no means exclusive) determinant of state structure and strength.

share a one-sided conceptualization of state formation as a process of political and administrative centralization.

re, it is argued that a third factor was also critical in early mod- ern state formation: a disciplinary revolution unleashed by ascetic Protestant movements.

It should be stressed here that the four concepts introduced above -bureaucratic constitutionalism, patrimonial constitutionalism, patri-monial absolutism, and bureaucratic absolutism - represent analyticcategories constructed around only two aspects of 18th-century terri-torial states: political regime and infrastructural type.

Just as the timing argument outlined above would predict,that apparatus exhibited strong patrimonial tendencies right from thestart. However, with the appearance in the late 1200s of Parliament asthe representative of the participatory county and borough commun-ities, patrimonial practices like proprietary officeholding and tax farm-ing came under intense criticism. The resulting struggle between royalofficials and England's national representative assembly over the char-acter of the growing administrative and financial infrastructure contin-ued intermittently for over three and a half centuries

Table 2. Outcomes That Would Have Occurred If the Character ofLocal Government and Timing Had Been the Only Factors at Work

In a similar way, cash-poor rulers often found themselves at the mercyof the small number of financiers and merchants who possessed liquidassets to lend during this period. Thus while the monarchies of westernand southern Europe had all, by the late 15th century, succeeded inconstructing impressive fiscal and administrative systems well ahead oftheir neighbors to the east and north, the price that they paid for thisprecocity was a substantial loss of effective control to proprietaryofficeholders, tax farmers, and officeholder-financiers who viewed thestate not only as an instrument of princely power but also as a sourceof income and social standing.

1450 (late statebuilders) - possessed the advantage of being ableto adopt the latest techniques of administration and finance

As a result, states that expanded and differentiated their infrastruc-tures before about 1450 (early statebuilders) often did so using meth-ods and institutional arrangements that became increasingly outmodedand even dysfunctional as the centuries passed, but that proved verydifficult to replace due to the power of vested interests with a materialand ideological stake in already established institutions.

In Latin Europe and the German states, however, the character oflocal government was very different. Instead of the orderly pattern ofunitary counties and autonomous boroughs within which local freementook part in judicial inquiries, discussed matters of collective concernin periodic assemblies, and served in the militia, one finds in theseregions overlapping and ill-defined catchment areas in which the busi-ness of governance was carried out almost exclusively by officials an-swerable to the center and their assistants with little or no active rolefor the local population above the village level. As a consequence, thestates of Latin Europe and Germany lacked the unitary, participatoryorgans of rural local government found in the other areas of the con-tinent. Thus, such organs could not serve as the basis for representa-tion, as was the case with the territorially based assemblies.

Thus when the kings of England, Scotland, Swe-den, Hungary, and Poland called national representative bodies intoexistence during the 1200s, 1300s, and 1400s in order to obtain ap-proval for taxes to meet external military threats, they sought to gainthe support of the unitary organs of local government found acrosstheir realms by asking the counties (or their equivalents) and the self-governing towns to send delegates to deliberate side by side with theleading churchmen and aristocrats of the realm.

A second reason for the greater resilience of the territorially basedassemblies was that they were inextricably linked to and rooted inorgans of local government.

Put an-other way, the structure of the territorially based parliaments encour-aged cooperation at the level of the entire assembly, whereas in thestatus-based Estates such cooperation took place at the level of theindividual chamber, with detrimental consequences for the future ofthe assembly as a whole (though not necessarily for its constituentstatus groups)

Hintze's basic contention in his essay is that the territorially basedassemblies or parliaments were structurally stronger, and hence betterable to resist the blandishments of ambitious rulers, than were status-group-based assemblies or Estates.

Explaining variations in political regime at the end of the early modernperiod means accounting for the strength or weakness of particularrepresentative institutions, since it was the powers still held by suchinstitutions which determined whether a given government was headedby a ruler who was relatively constrained (constitutionalism) or uncon-strained (absolutism) in his behavior. In effect, this requires explainingwhy a given national representative assembly was strong enough to resistthe endemic attempts by monarchs to monopolize legislative and otherpowers.

Yet the very ubiquity of military competition within feudalism meansthat war cannot in itself account for the divergent features of the west-ern and eastern absolutist state; rather, this role falls to variations insocioeconomic structure (absence/presence of serfdom, relative strengthof bourgeoisie/towns), themselves largely rooted in differences in priorhistorical experience (presence/absence of a direct Roman inheritance).Despite its sweep and eloquence, Perry Anderson's analytic historyof the West from the fall of Rome to the French Revolution is also beset

The reason for this, as John Brewer's work has shown, is that theassumption that taxes on commerce were easy to collect and taxes onland difficult is erroneous. Far from requiring a minimum apparatus,the collection of commercial revenues in fact demanded a large numberof well-trained personnel with advanced computational skills and adetailed knowledge both of numerous commodities and of an array ofcomplex regulations. On the other hand, land taxes were not difficultto administer, because central governments could dispense with thetime-consuming business of wealth or income assessments and insteadsimply demand fixed amounts from each local area

Thus in their writings as well the cases of Hungary and Polandremain unexplained. Almost entirely lacking in commercial resources,both states should have become absolutist and bureaucratic, but in factthey remained constitutional and nonbureaucratic.

First, it pro-vides a more1 sophisticated explanation than that of Hintze by bringingtogether both geopolitical and, in a broad sense, economic factors(available revenue sources, in turn determined by the relative weight ofagriculture and commerce within a given economy) to account for thedistribution of large bureaucratic state apparatuses across the continentat the end of the early modern period. Second, it hints at a link betweenregime type (absolutist/non-absolutist) and the relative abundance ofdifferent revenue sources (commercial or land taxes) that Michael Mannand Brian Downing bring out more explicitly

In effect, a politycould avoid bureaucratization and perhaps also absolutism in the wakeof sustained military pressure if, as a result of a high level of economicdevelopment, it had access to abundant commercial revenues

First, the relationship he posits between geographicexposure and absolutism on the one hand and geographic isolation andconstitutionalism on the other is contradicted by a number of import-ant cases.

early modern state was subjected, the greater the threat of landwarfare; and the greater the threat of land warfare, the greater thelikelihood that the ruler of the state in question would successfullyundermine representative institutions and local self-government andcreate an absolutist state backed by a standing army and a professionalbureaucracy in order to meet that land threat

Put another way,Hintze's argument can be reduced to the following proposition: thegreater the degree of geographic exposure to which a given medieva

l o Birth of the LeviathanTable 1. Outcomes to Be Explained: States of 18th-Century W

owever, such abureaucracy can only become a full-fledged reality when the possibilityof arbitrary intervention on the part of the ruler has been eliminatedby the introduction of a set of standard operating procedures subjectto the strictures of a formalized, impersonal administrative law

One, usually asso-ciated with France or Germany, is characterized by absolutist rule anda large state bureaucracy and defense establishment. The other, mostoften linked to Britain, features constitutional or parliamentary govern-ment and administration through local justices of the peace withoutmuch in the way of a central bureaucracy or standing armed forces.Bureaucratic absolutism is thus counterposed to a parliamentary night-watchman state

Furthermore, it is now generally accepted that the territorial state tri-umphed over other possible political forms (empire, city-state, lordship)because of the superior fighting ability which it derived from access toboth urban capital and coercive authority over peasant taxpayers andarmy recruits.

In the first instance, furthersupport has been provided for Weber's contention that what set theearly modern West apart from other great civilizations was the com-bination of a distinctive kind of polity - the exceptionally penetrativesovereign, territorial state8 - and a dynamic market economy

ow is it possible,under conditions of rapid social and economic change, to constructstable and legitimate governments and honest and effective systems ofpublic administration and finance, all while maintaining an often frag-ile national unity

The transition from such prebendal organization of office to salaried officialdom is quite fluid. Very often the economic en.dowment of priest›hoods has been ’prebendal,’ as in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and even up to the modern period. But in almost all periods the same form has been found in other areas. In Chinese sacerdotal law, the prebendal character of all offices forced the mourning official to resign his office. For during the ritual mourning period for the father or other household authorities abstention from the enjoyment of possessions was prescribed. Originally this prescription was aimed at avoiding the ill-will of the deceased master of the house, for the house belonged to this master and the office was considered purely as a prebend, a source for rent

The lord seeks to safeguard himself against this loss of control by regulations. The mode of tax-farming or the transfer of taxes can thus vary widely, according to the distribution of power between the lord and the tenant.

Historical examples of rather distinctly developed and quantitatively large bureaucracies are: (a) Egypt, during the period of the new Empire which, however, contained strong patrimonial elements; (b) the later Roman Principate, and especially the Diocletian monarchy and the Byzantine polity which developed out of it and yet retained strong feudal and patrimonial elements; (c) the Roman Catholic Church, in›creasingly so since the end of the thirteenth century; (d) China, from the time of Shi Hwangti until the present, but with strong patrimonial and prebendal elements; (e)

In Germany, this is the case for all juridical and, increasingly, for all administrative officials.

These reforms have thus come about in a ’Caesarist’ fashion. Viewed technically, as an organized form of authority, the efficiency of ’Caesar ism,’ which often grows out of democracy, rests in general upon the position of the ’Caesar’ as a free trustee of the masses (of the army or of the citizenry), who is unfettered by tradition. The ’Caesar’ is thus the unrestrained master of a body of highly qualified military officers and officials whom he selects freely and personally with›out regard to tradition or to any other considerations. This ’rule of the personal genius,’ however, stands in contradiction to the formally ’demo›cratic’ principle of a universally elected officialdom.

The actual social position of the official is normally highest where, as in old civilized countries, the following conditions prevail: a strong de›mand for administration by trained experts; a strong and stable social dif›ferentiation, where the official predominantly derives from socially and economically privileged strata because of the social distribution of power; or where the costliness of the required training and status conventions are binding upon him. The possession of educational certificates-to be dis›cussed elsewhere 2-are usually linked with qualification for office.

Mod›ern loyalty is devoted to impersonal and functional purposes.

e management of the office follows general rules, which are more or less stable, more or less exhaustive, and which can be learned. Knowledge of these rules represents a special technical learning which the officials possess. It involves jurisprudence, or administrative or busi›ness management.

The principles of office hierarchy and of levels of graded authority mean a firmly ordered system of super- and subordination in which there is a supervision of the lower offices by the higher ones. Such a sys›tem offers the governed the possibility of appealing the decision of a lower office to its higher authority, in a definitely regulated manner.

reaucracy, thus understood, is fully de›veloped in political and ecclesiastical communities only in the modern state, and, in the private economy, only in the most advanced institutions of capitalism. Permanent and public office authority, with fixed jurisdic›tion, is not the historical rule but rather the exception.

n the postwar world, however, the flow of funds from abroad lessened the need for rulers to seek funding from their people; in so doing, it undermined the power of parliaments and stalled the development of democracy.

In the postwar world, "development assistance" played a similar role. Foreign aid may-or may not-have promoted the develop-ment of poor economies; but it certainly provided the largesse with which to forge a political base.

Just as monarchs in the past transformed the state into a "foun-tain of privilege," so too did chief executives in the postwar era. To a far greater extent than in the past,

price of war to secure hegemony in Europe; but they were reluctant to pay that price to secure supremacy in a nation in the peripher

These conflicts resonated not only throughout Europe, but throughout the developing world as well. Both superpowers recruited confederates among the undeveloped nations. Each ili; coveted the undeveloped nations' ports and airbases; their petroleum, cobalt, and uranium; and the votes they could cast to discomfit its rival in the United Nations-the Soviets, by sponsoring embarrassing resolutions regarding the UN man- l dates in Africa, for exarnple/; or United States by securing the backing of the UN in the Korean War. In Europe, the super-powers may have been prepared for combat. But in Lusaka or Bogota, their rivalry took the form of efforts to win "hearts and minds"-and to recruit political supporters

In this chap-ter, I argue that absent immediate millitary danger, the search for public revenues in the developing world was decoupled from the quest for economic development, a change that profoundly affected both the economic role of governments and the prospects for parliamentary democracy

To address the concerns of creditors, William of Orange therefore acknowledged the sovereignty of England's Parliament, which meant, in this context, two specific things. The first was parliamentary control over policy. The second was parliamentary control over public finances, which implied control over taxation and the financing of the public debt. In effect, those who con-trolled the wealth of the nation would now finance only those ventures for which they were willing to pay. By thus limiting his power, the monarch reduced the risks faced by lenders and so lowered the costs of borrowing.

But when goods were "mobile," in the phrasing of the time, then the monarch needed to engender a willingness to pay, for such property could be moved and hid-den and taxes thereby evaded

delayed. Economic growth led to increased demands for an official system of justice and a will-ingness to pay for it. The court fees collected by the king more than covered the costs of the legal system, and fees from the provision of justice soon grew into a major source of govern-ment revenues.

POWERFUL TIES OF SELF-INTEREST thus ran from the mak-ing of wars to the search for revenues and thence to the promo-tion of urban-based economic activity. On the one hand, mercantilism constituted a cluster of policies aimed at the pro-motion of urban manufacturing; on the other, it constituted a means for paying for the king's wars. The desire to prevail-and the necessity of prevailing-in combat shaped the economic role of government in the development of Europ

A third measure characterized the mercan-tilist policies of government: the exchange of the right to gov-ern for the payment of taxes. Monarchs permitted urban centers to purchase their "liberties"; by making payments to the treas-ury, merchants and burghers could purchase charters from the king that granted them the authority to make and enforce laws, construct public works, set and collect local taxes, and allocate public revenues

Governments thus intervened in agricultural markets in ways that lowered food prices to urban consumers and protected the welfare of urban consumers.

he short-term benefits of preying upon cities therefore came at high cost; and because urbanites could reallocate their wealth so as to elude pre-dation by monarchs, the benefits proved few. In the face of the urban economy, specialists in violence therefore had to alter their strategies for securing revenues. In the words of Montesquieu, the monarchs had "to govern with greater wisdom than they themselves had intended"

But along with that prosperity came violence, privately pro-vided by elite kin groups and households, with the support of their liveried retainers. In the course of this violence, some kin groups did better than others. Those that prevailed formed ruling lineages and provided kings. Central to the emergence of these monar-chies-and central, therefore, to the emergence of the state-was the alliance between militarized lineages and the new economic order. Driven by necessity, fighting lineages allied with the cities, using them as a source of finance with which to suppress and seduce elites in the countryside, and so trans-forming the political strucrure of Europe

The private provision of violence was costly. Only those who stood to lose much possessed an incentive to provide it. In practice, this meant that the political and economic elite became one in the rural areas, with households that were rich II' also becoming the households that dominated militarily the hinterlands of northwestern Europe.

The rise of urban centers closely intertwined with the rise of rural prosperity. By river and road, goods entered the cities from the countryside. In warehouses and on docks, wholesalers broke shipments into lots and consigned them to retailers, who reloaded them onto boat, barge, or wagon. The goods then dis-appeared back into the rural areas, where the majority of the consumers resided.

By the fifteenth century, several of these cities---e.g., Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp-numbered among Europe's largest. Because of the close links that it maintained with these towns, London too formed an integral part of this rapidly growing region

he rise of towns produced an increase in incomes and the new wealth incited increased conflict. Specialists in the use of violence needed revenues to fight their wars; and those who prevailed were those who allied their political forces with the economic fortunes of the towns. The result of this alliance was a new political and economic order---one based on capital and complex economic organizations, one in which prosperity prof-itably coexisted with peace, and one in which coercion was used not for predation but rather to enhance the productive use of society's resources.

As discussed above, there are several special conditions that allow warsto make states. First, pressure on the state to respond to the financialchallenge of war through increased domestic extraction. There is no rea-son to expect states to undertake the political and organizational challengeof penetrating their societies if resources can be found more easily. Second,enough of an administrative core must already be in place that the statecan use as a base on which to develop its strength.

At the very least, the experience of LatinAmerica should make us more curious about the particular circumstancesthat allowed states to flourish following the military revolution of the 16thand 17th centuries.

The early Paraguayan state enjoyed a rare degree of autonomy.