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By Anne Degrave (Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Université Toulouse) Over the course of state-building, rulers face a well-known choice between centralizing governance or delegating power to local elites. A large literature explores factors influencing this choice and long-run implications on political and economic development. However, whether the general population fares better under these … Continue reading When does local representation matter? The case of Ancien Regime France

The question on the origins of government and the state is one of the most enduring questions in the social sciences and humanities. On this blog alone, we have had several posts on the origins of various aspects of the state and its capacity, see here, here, here and here. Two clusters of theories of … Continue reading The origins of government and the state

By Samuel Bazzi, Andreas Ferrara, Martin Fiszbein, Thomas Pearson, and Patrick A. Testa The combination of racial, religious, and economic conservatism—a defining feature of today’s Republican Party—is neither novel nor anomalous in American politics. These three dimensions of American conservatism began to coalesce in the 1960s, marking the birth of a New Right movement that transformed the … Continue reading Tracing the Legacy of Southern White Migration

By David Alexander Bateman and Eric Schickler There is little doubt that slavery continues to shape American life, through its legacies on the country’s institutions, economic and social practices, ideologies, and distribution of resources. Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen’s Deep Roots has brought a great deal of clarity to one area in which … Continue reading Deeper Roots

By Gary W. Cox (Stanford University) and Sebastian M. Saiegh (University of California San Diego) On 7 December 2022, Peru's left-wing President Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve Congress and establish a "government of exception." However, by the end of the day, he was ousted from power and subsequently arrested. During these events, the Peruvian stock … Continue reading Suffrage Reform and Financial Volatility: Reconsidering the Great Reform Act

By Bogdan G. Popescu Security concerns often demand the establishment of institutions in border areas that are different from the rest of the civilian territory. Scholars suggest that individuals residing in the frontier zone frequently experience distinct injustices as a result of state attempts to both defend the periphery and subjugate its inhabitants in the … Continue reading Beyond Lines of Demarcation: Borders as Buffers

By John Gerring (UT Austin), Brendan Apfeld (CVS Health), Tore Wig (University of Oslo), and Andreas Forø Tollefsen (University of Oslo and PRIO) At present, the future of democracy seems more uncertain than perhaps any time since the interwar period. Threats are apparent everywhere. Even so, the vast majority of countries remain fairly stable. Most … Continue reading The Deep Roots of Modern Democracy

By Eric Grynaviski and Sverrir Steinsson How did the state become the dominant polity in the international system? The predominant theory of state formation, advanced by Charles Tilly, holds that states formed because of warfare and competition. Conversely, a new strand of research (e.g. Anna Grzymala-Busse, David Kang and Chin-Hao Huang) has argued that state … Continue reading A bellicist theory of diffusion: State formation in Northern Europe