Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between domestic political economy and interstate competition

Theoretical work on state formation and capacity has focused mostly on early modern Europe and on the experience of western European states during this period. While a number of European states monopolized domestic tax collection and achieved gains in state capacity during the early modern era, for others revenues stagnated or even declined, and these variations motivated alternative hypotheses for determinants of fiscal and state capacity. In this study we test the basic hypotheses in the existing literature making use of the large date set we have compiled for all of the leading states across the continent. We find strong empirical support for two prevailing threads in the literature, arguing respectively that interstate wars and changes in economic structure towards an urbanized economy had positive fiscal impact. Regarding the main point of contention in the theoretical literature, whether it was representative or authoritarian political regimes that facilitated the gains in fiscal capacity, we do not find conclusive evidence that one performed better than the other. Instead, the empirical evidence we have gathered lends supports to the hypothesis that when under pressure of war, the fiscal performance of representative regimes was better in the more urbanized-commercial economies and the fiscal performance of authoritarian regimes was better in rural-agrarian economie

Premodern debasement: a messy affair

The paper argues that in premodern Europe, the practice of debasement was far more ‘messy’ than research has generally recognised. First, high information costs often prevented the effective control of mint officials who could exploit their resulting autonomy in order to debase coins on their own account. Second, these costs made it impossible to monitor markets closely enough to enforce regulations. Attempts by governments to debase coins by increasing their nominal value therefore ‘worked’ only if they conformed to the market rates of these coins. Finally, high information costs prevented the creation of closed areas where the domestic currency enjoyed a monopoly. The resulting trade in coinage created incentives for governments to issue inferior copies of their neighbour’s coins – a practice that had the same consequences as a debasement – and forced the affected governments to follow suit by debasing their own coinage, too

The political economy of agricultural protection: Sweden 1887

We analyse the Swedish general elections that took place in spring and autumn 1887. Our aim is to discover which groups of voters supported free trade and which protectionism. We find that while capital owners and wage earners consistently favoured free trade, in the spring election only the largest farmers supported protectionism. By autumn, political preferences among smallholders and middling farmers had shifted in favour of protectionism too. As these groups were not specialised in the production of import-competing goods, we assume that the political landslide in the autumn elections can be attributed to a loss of trust in the government

Monetary Instability, Lack of Integration, and the Curse of a Commodity Money Standard. The German Lands, c.1400–1900 A. D.

Currency debasement, defined as a loss of precious metal content (intrinsic value) of the circulating penny currencies over time, was a common feature in the monetary history of Europe, c. 1400–1900. Over the centuries the loss rate was sustained; between 1400 and 1900 A. D. the (south) German penny currencies lost close to 90 per cent of their intrinsic value. As prior to the twentieth century all circulating means of exchange derived their purchasing power from the value of the precious metal contained in them these debasements reflect considerable fluctuations in these coins" exchange value. Whilst some of the possible origins of this have been addressed by previous research, comprehensive models are missing, and the social and economic consequences of this phenomenon have only seldom been studied. The present paper contributes to the debate, using long-run data on the circulating small change currencies in the German lands, c.1400–1900. After an introduction (I.) the second section puts the present case study into an international, historical and conceptual context (II.). A third section provides a brief sketch of German monetary history since the Middle Ages with special regard to penny currency debasement (III.). A fourth section analyses some of the reasons for this, highlighting further areas and directions of research which previous models have missed (IV.). A fifth section studies the social and economic costs of monetary fragmentation and coin debasement (V.). A sixth section concludes (VI.)