The state

Weber’s classic definition (“Politics as a Vocation” 1918)

"[The state] is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."

Tilly’s definition of the state (Tilly 1985)

"[States are] relatively centralized, differentiated organizations, the officials of which, more or less, successfully claim control over the chief concentrated means of violence within a population inhabiting a large contiguous territory."

Tilly calling the state an extortion racket (Tilly 1985)

The state "demands tribute (taxes and obedience) from citizens within its jurisdiction in return for protection from, among other things, itself."

Tilly’s ‘war makes states’ thesis? (Tilly 1985)

"War made the state, and the state made war."

Vu on the war-makes-states thesis? (Vu 2010) —→ Initial gloss on Tilly

"an infrastructure of administration and taxation that often outlasted the particular wars in which they fought."

Vu’s headline scope-condition claim about Tilly? (Vu 2010)

(Bureaucratic centralisation itself is "only one of many viable strategies for state building.")

"Wars may make centralized states but only under certain narrow conditions, which Europe met in the eighteenth century but which did not exist elsewhere."

Vu on Japanese imperialism before Korean independence. (Vu 2010)

(Japanese-trained bureaucracy and police force was retained post-independence.)

credited with removing "the corrupt and ineffective traditional monarchy" and building "a modern centralized state with vast capacity and deep penetration into society."

Vu on African colonial inheritance (Vu 2010)

Colonial institutions were "oriented toward exploitation, not development." Colonial rule "corrupted African politics and prevented the construction of a rational centralized bureaucracy."

Gorski on ideology in state formation? (Via Vu 2010)

Ideas, beliefs, rituals "legitimize state power—a function that wars of conquest do not perform." States are "not only administrative, policing, and military organizations. They are also pedagogical, corrective, and ideological organizations."

Herbst on taxation during war? (Herbst 1990)

(“External threats have such a powerful effect on nationalism because people realize in a profound manner that they are under threat because of who they are as a nation”)

"Citizens are much more likely to acquiesce to increased taxation when the nation is at war, because a threat to their survival will overwhelm other concerns they might have about increased taxation."

Herbst on why African states have not developed like Europe? (Herbst 1990)

Most African conflicts have been internal, "not… wars of conquest that threatened the existence of other states."

Herbst symbiotic relationship? (Herbst 1990)

"The symbiotic relationship that war fostered in Europe between tax collection and nationalism is absent in Africa, precisely because there is no external threat to encourage people to acquiesce in the state's demands, and no challenge that causes them to respond as a nation.”

What is Scott’s legibility thesis? (Scott 1998)

The state attempts "to make a society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion."

Kantola on regulated emotion and ideal behavior? (Kantola 2006)

"A supposedly 'natural' behaviour is constructed as ideal, and the ideal behaviour comes to signify a management of emotions… the new subject position is intensely regulated and disciplined by the state."

Acemoglu and Robinson on state failure? (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012)

(“Secure private property, an unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services that provides a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract.”)

Nations fail "because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, invest, and innovate."

Acemoglu and Robinson on need for centralization? (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012) —→ Regarding Somalia

A lack of "any kind of political centralization, or state centralization" makes it "unable to enforce even the minimal amount of law and order to support economic activity, trade, or even the basic security of its citizens."

Imperial boomering? (Cesaire 1955)

European bourgeoisie tolerated colonial methods until they were applied to Europeans (Nazism)

Turner on empire? Turner 2018

"Empire is remade through the minutia of everyday conduct in the will to domesticate the unruly 'radicalised' family just as much as it is remade in the macro-plans of invasion and development."

What is Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's claim about US state failure? Taylor (2020)

(State failure need not be territorial (Somalia-style). It can be demographic—a state functional for some populations and absent, neglectful, or violent for others.)

“It's clear that state violence is not solely the preserve of the police." The state is "either complicit or incapable of effecting substantive change”

Vu’s alternative routes to state-building beyond war?

Elite-bargaining routes (Spruyt on France, Netherlands); colonial inheritance (Japanese in Korea; European in Africa, with opposite effects); religious/ideological mobilisation (Gorski on Calvinism); culture-of-knowledge formation (Carroll).

What is Foucault's three-stage account of power? (Discipline and Punishment, 1975)

Sovereign power, disciplinary power and biopower

Endogeneity of European war theory?

The fiscal-military state was funded by the Atlantic trade, the East India Company, sugar revenues, and resource flows from the colonies. This "troubles the endogeneity" of Tilly's European-war account.

What is Slobodian's "globalists" thesis as it applies to state strength? (Slobodian Globalits 2018)

The Austrian-school neoliberal project (Mises, Hayek) aimed not to weaken the state but to "constitutionalise capitalism beyond democracy" - locking in market arrangements at supra-national level (WTO, IMF, World Bank, EU) where democratic majorities cannot easily reach them