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 Great Powers and Global Struggle, 1490-1990

In The Great Powers and Global Struggle, Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson focus on two themes: the rise and fall as well as the relative decline of major world powers over the past five hundred years, and the way in which these processes have set the stage for the outbreak of global war. Their interdisciplinary approach encompasses political science, economics, sociology, geography, and history. The most significant wars occur when regional leaders—historically in Western Europe—challenge global leaders. By studying the wars of Napoleon, Louis XIV, Phillip II and the Italian/Indian Ocean wars of the sixteenth century through World Wars I and II to the present, the authors challenge the long-held idea that prosperity leads to over-consumption and underinvestment and thus decline—a theory, traceable to ancient times, that remains the principal explanation for global decline today. Arguments about global structural change and its implications abound, but rarely is the abstract translated into concrete historical terms with emphases on specific actors and empirical documentation. Rasler and Thompson reinterpret the past five hundred years of major-power warfare and provide extensive tests of the eighteen generalizations critical to their argument. They conclude that those who argue that global war and repositioning are no longer a concern among the major powers lack critical understanding of the behavior that contributes to such conflict. Karen A. Rasler is associate professor of political science at Indiana University. William R. Thompson is professor of political science at Indiana University. Rasler and Thompson\u27s analysis is unique among long cycle theorists because of their concentration on the role of rising regional leaders in the cycle of concentration-deconcentration-reconcentration in the distribution of power in the international system. —Choicehttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_european_history/1009/thumbnail.jp

Replication data for: Contested Territory, Strategic Rivalries and Conflict Escalation

After bringing together independent information on contested territory, rivalries, and conflict escalation (militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) and war), we examine the timing of the temporal ordering of these three processes. Contrary to conventional expectations, we find the contested territory-militarized dispute-rivalry ordering to be rare. Rivalries and contested territory often begin at the same time. Next, after setting up a unified model, we find the triadic combination of contested territory, contiguity, and strategic rivalry to be a strong explanatory combination for MIDs and war over time (1919–1992). We also control for other explanatory factors such as mixed regime type and major power status. These findings provide strong support for arguments such as Vasquez's steps-to-war theory that specify these sources of conflict escalation