Sabancı
University
Faculty
of Arts & Social Sciences
presents
Different
Paths to the Modern State in Europe: Interaction of political regime with
economic structure and interstate competition
by
K. Kıvanç Karaman & Şevket Pamuk
Boğaziçi University
Monday, May 10,
13:30
-15:00
FASS
2034
Abstract: The process through which Early
Modern (1500-1800) European states monopolized tax collection and
achieved gains in fiscal capacity has been at the center of the study of state
formation. In this article, based on our recently constructed revenue
series for major European states, we review the empirical patterns for the
period and investigate alternative theories of state building. We find that, on
average, changes in economic structure, as proxied by urbanization, and
interstate competition, as proxied by war pressure, had positive effects on
states’ fiscal capacity. As for representative and authoritarian regimes, we
argue that their relative fiscal performance was determined by the makeup and
the incentives of the domestic partners of the ruler.
In more rural and agrarian economies where elites’ resource
extraction capacity and bargaining power vis-a vis the ruler was
based on local control over coercion, representative assemblies
facilitated landlords’ capacity to organize an administrative apparatus
as separate from and substitute for that of the ruler. In contrast, in
more urban and market based economies, elites leveraged information
asymmetries in bargaining, and representative assemblies primarily entailed a
contract between rulers and domestic elites over the joint governance of a
unified coercive apparatus. Consistent with this distinction, we provide
evidence that while in more urbanized polities representation aligned
ruler’s and elites’ interests with respect to war, in more rural
polities it facilitated elites’ consolidation of local administration at the
cost of ruler and the fiscal effect of war was centrifugal. Our findings lay
out a unified framework to explain how similar institutions
facilitated state building in some polities and not in
others.