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

The impact of conflict on the exchange rate of developing economies

This paper explores the impact different types of conflict have on the nominal exchange rate (NER), using a panel of developing economies. Accounting for NER determinants, the evidence suggests that in addition to the depreciation caused by macroeconomic factors, intra-state (civil) wars have a strong and significant depreciative impact on the exchange rate. In contrast, international wars do not appear to have any excess effect. A potential explanation of this phenomenon is that, unlike international wars where winners and losers are more difficult to distinguish a priori, in civil wars the country is much more likely to face economic deterioration, therefore promoting an over-discounting effect. The findings provide insights for both investors and policymakers given that exchange rate devaluation can likely provide a negative feedback mechanism to the local economy, especially if they hold foreign currency debt. The depreciation could also potentially have strong effects on the long-run growth potential, considering that most developing economies rely on imports of capital goods for research and development purposes

The Black Box behind Power Shifts and War-- A Rational Choice Perspective

[[abstract]]Among war scholars, power shifts between states have been a persuasive explanation of the occurrence of war, with Power Transition Theory (PTT), in particular, demonstrating powerful and systemic research. Their deduction of the conditions of war matches the empirical phenomena. However, extant studies fail to explain why in some cases power shifts and dissatisfaction lead to war while in some cases they do not. This paper argues that the story of power shifts and war is not completely told. There are other options that states can choose from in a period of power parity. For instance, the rational choice approach can discover and compare the utilities of the options. To be specific, scholars who are concerned for power shifts have taken states as individual actors in the international system for granted, but the goal, preference orders, and utilities of actors should be illuminated. Hence, this paper adopts an interaction framework of actors to demonstrate how states may act and react in a period of power shifts. Two cases, namely, Britain and Germany before WWII and the U.S. and Japan in 1980s, demonstrate how well the interaction framework fits the reality. Overall, the framework discloses the interaction of the players and strengthens the explanation of PTT. More importantly, the story behind power shifts and war is fully told.[[notice]]補正完

Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between warfare, economic structure and political regime

Theoretical work on taxation and state-building borrows heavily from early modern European experience. While a number of European states increased centralized tax revenues during this period, for others revenues stagnated or even declined and these variations have motivated alternative arguments for the determinants of fiscal and state capacity. This study reviews the arguments concerning the three determinants that have received most attention, namely warfare, economic structure, and political regime, and tests them by making use of a new and comprehensive tax revenue dataset. Our main finding is that these three determinants worked in interaction with each other. Specifically, when under pressure of war, it was representative regimes in more urbanized-commercial economies and authoritarian regimes in more rural-agrarian economies that tended to better aggregate domestic interests towards state-building