Spruyet - War and State Formation

3 War and State Formation
Amending the Bellicist Theory of State Making
Hendrik Spruyt
Northwestern University
Introduction
While historians and social scientists have long noted the connection
between war making and state making in Europe, social scientists have
extended this insight by claiming that this relation holds more generally.
Charles Tilly, as no other, has demonstrated the implications of this
insight to students of society and politics, and claimed in a famous
aphorism that “war made the state and the state made war.”1 Although
Tilly referred particularly to Europe, his insight has influenced a large
body of scholarship that can be denoted as the bellicist theory of state
making. In the bellicist account higher levels of warfare create more
centralized, higher-capacity states. Such states in turn are prone to war.
“The central claim of this approach [the bellicist approach to state
building] is that wars are a great stimulus to centralizing state power
and building institutional capacity.”2
There can be little doubt that the bellicist theory of state formation
contains considerable insights. However, in order to be of greater
analytic value, particularly for understanding state building today, it
needs to be amended. First, the particular account of state formation in
Europe derives from a unique systemic environment. Because the social
science literature has largely focused on the creation of state capacity
(the internal capability of states), rather than on state creation as the
1
Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton
University Press, 1975), p. 42; See also Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European
States, AD 990–1990 (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990). Tilly is by no means alone; see,
for example, Youssef Cohen et al., “The Paradoxical Nature of State Making: The
Violent Creation of Order,” American Political Science Review, vol. 75, no. 4 (1981),
pp. 901–10; Karen Rasler and William Thompson, “War Making and State Making:
Governmental Expenditures, Tax Revenues and Global War,” American Political Science
Review, vol. 79, no. 2 (1985), pp. 491–507; and Bruce Porter, War and the Rise of the State
(New York: The Free Press, 1994).
2
Cameron Thies, “War, Rivalry and State Building in Latin America,” American Journal of
Political Science, vol. 49, no. 3 (2005), pp. 451–65, here at p. 451.
73
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74 Hendrik Spruyt
emergence of sovereign, territorial authority, it has neglected the

unique systemic environment that existed in Europe since the failure
of the imperial project. Indeed, the connection between warfare and the
creation of high-capacity states depended on the prior emergence of
distinct territorial entities in competition with one another. The failure
of empire and theocracy opened up the space for territorial rulers that
engaged in frequent wars with one another. This in turn led over several
centuries to high-capacity authority structures. Without the emergence
of nascent sovereign, territorial states, warfare would have been less
intense and less frequent, with the result that governments would have
developed with less capacity. That is, neither the presence of states nor
the frequent occurrence of warfare can be taken as exogenous condi-
tions. Both require explanations of their own. As David Kang shows in
his recent work, the East Asian system operated in a hierarchical tribu-
tary mode, thus diminishing the anarchical nature of the system and
diminishing the occurrence of violent conflict.3 This was not the case in
the European setting.
Second, the bellicist theory of state formation requires greater specifi-
cation of the micro-level processes that allow would-be state builders to
overcome rivals. This requires analysis of the specific incentive structures
facing the key social and political actors. Which advantages (material or
ideological) might a specific actor enjoy, that give her an advantage
against rivals who stand to lose if central authority emerges? What
incentives do rival lords have (feudal or contemporary warlords), to side
with or oppose such an aspiring state builder? In other words, bellicist
accounts need to provide the causal mechanisms through which any
would-be state builder can aggregate power to create a central govern-
ment. Clarification of such micro-level causal mechanisms reveals that
war making will only lead to state making under specific circumstances,
such as when there is some nascent national identity that can aggregate
individual preferences or when one of the rival lords holds distinct
advantages over the others. Short of such conditions warfare might well
lead to stalemate and failed states. Contrary to the view that warfare
provides a necessary and indeed sufficient explanation for the creation of
a state that possesses the monopoly of force and is endowed with signifi-
cant capacity, I will argue that warfare is neither a necessary condition,
nor does warfare provide a sufficient condition for state formation.
This essay sketches the “state of play” regarding the bellicist theory of
state making. Does the claim that “war made the state and the state made
3
David Kang, East Asia before the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010),
pp. 8–9.
War and State Formation 75
war” accurately describe the European experience of state formation?

And perhaps more importantly, does it provide a generalizable propos-
ition regarding the relation of state formation and warfare, which might
thus apply to non-European state formation today?
I start by discussing the connections between warfare and state forma-
tion based on the empirical evidence in Europe. I subsequently turn to a
discussion of contemporary research in the social sciences that has
extrapolated from the European insight to state formation to non-
European areas and contemporary state building. Underlying the belli-
cist theory of state formation is a strong-form selection perspective,
which neglects to account for why such a competitive environment
existed in the first place, and which neglects to take account of agency.
Actors, at the micro-level, can respond to external pressure in a myriad of
ways, at times leading to centralized high-capacity states, at other times
achieving the very opposite.
The Military Revolution and State Development

in Europe
The Empirical Record

The historical record provides considerable credence to the argument
that warfare and state formation in Europe went hand in hand. As the
Carolingian empire started to disintegrate, much of Europe was simul-
taneously beset by marauders such as the Vikings, Maygars and Moors.4
The coterminous disintegration of central administration and the need
for localized defense gave an advantage to regional strongmen. In some
instances, fortified towns, the burhs (some of the later boroughs), pro-
vided defense, but in much of Europe nobles of any rank became the de
facto and de iure rulers. These aristocrats started to build strongholds,
often not much more than a raised hill, a keep and a wooden palisade – as
the Norman motte and bailey castle of which the Normans erected
hundreds after they conquered England. Soon, however, stone castles
appeared that provided increased protection. This defensive capability
was paired with a new mode of warfare based on heavy cavalry, made
possible by the development of the stirrup and pommel saddle.5 Both
mounted warfare and strongholds required considerable expense. The
4
The locus classicus on European feudalism remains Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, 2 vols.
(University Press Chicago, 1961).
5
Lynn White, Medieval Religion and Technology (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1978).
76 Hendrik Spruyt
construction of larger stone castles could require as many as 3,000

workers or more. Consequently, those who possessed this decentralized
military strength simultaneously developed as wealthy landowners.
Around the fortifications, economy became localized, with barter trade
and exchange in services. Feudalism thus combined fragmented rule,
reciprocal in-kind social and economic ties, and decentralized means of
violence.
From the fourteenth century on, a series of changes in military
technology and logistics further ripped the social and political fabric
of feudalism apart.6 Even in the early parts of the century, the English
longbow, the cross-bow and grouped infantry started to inflict heavy
casualties on the dominant force of the battlefield: the mounted knight.
By the end of the fourteenth century, an even greater challenge arose
with the advent of gunpowder. For more than a century and a half its
use was largely restricted to artillery, as handheld firearms did not
become a factor till the middle of the sixteenth century. However,
artillery alone already constituted a military revolution. The old medi-
eval fortifications proved no match for artillery, and only those fortifi-
cations, which adopted the expensive Italian style – the trace Italienne –
were able to withstand organized sieges.7 On the offensive side, sieges
required engineers and larger standing forces that could stand in the
field beyond the forty days common in feudal service. The required
changes in castle design, size of armed forces, the standing nature of
such forces and need for technical proficiency propelled aspiring rulers
to seek ever more revenue. “Pas d’argent, pas de Suisse.” Or, as the
advisor to Louis XII noted, three things were required for war, “money,
more money, and still more money.”8
The empirical data are quite clear. If feudal armies rarely numbered
more than a few thousand, the largest European armies by the end of the
sixteenth century counted tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of
men.9 This required efficient administration and an ability to raise rev-
enue in order to be successful in war. Much of the state’s budget was
devoted to this sole purpose. Even England, less bellicose in this period
6
Richard Bean, “War and the Birth of the Nation State,” Journal of Economic History,
vol. 33, no. 1 (1973), pp. 203–21; William McNeill, The Pursuit of Power (University of
Chicago Press, 1982); Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1988).
7
Parker, The Military Revolution.
8
John R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450–1620 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 232.
9
Geoffrey Parker, “Warfare” in: Peter Burke (ed.), New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 13
(Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 205. The Spanish Empire might have had as
many as 200,000 men under arms, dwarfing all others.
than some of its continental counterparts, at times allocated two thirds of

its budget to war in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.10 In this
sense, one might argue that “war made the state.” Warfare in Europe
became ubiquitous and frequent, with states as Russia being at war every
year for a two-century period, closely followed by Spain and France.
States sought to capitalize on their power by dominating or even
absorbing lesser powers. In this sense, “the state made war.”
The Foundational Work of Charles Tilly

While historians have noted the co-terminous development of modes of
warfare and state building in thick descriptions that often focus on
individual cases, social scientists have examined whether this co-
terminous development indicates a generalizable proposition. Does war-
fare lead to higher state capacity? Does state building lead to more war?
Charles Tilly’s work must be regarded as iconic in this regard. To be
clear the question is not whether Tilly’s work stands the test of time, but
rather whether and when the general proposition holds that warfare and
state formation are positively correlated.
Starting with his “Formation of National States in Western Europe,”
Tilly drew attention to the role of warfare in creating the machinery of
modern statehood. The volume contains essays on the role of the mili-
tary; the administrative machinery required for taxation and thus funding
for the military apparatus; policing of society; and so on. Ten years later,
maintaining his focus on the actors possessing the means of violence,
Tilly concluded that governments constituted extortion rackets. “War
makes states, I shall claim. Banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing,
and war making all belong on the same continuum.”11
Two features of that essay are worth emphasizing. First, as indicated
by the quote, no political actor had a particular advantage over another.
We must thus accept that kings or dukes had no particular standing that
differentiated them from other rivals. All that mattered in the struggle
for survival was the ability to wield force better than others. But note
that in his earlier work he had actually suggested that some actors had
an inside track.
10
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1788 (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), p. 40.
11
Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in: Peter B. Evans,
Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In
(Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 169–91, here at p. 170.
78 Hendrik Spruyt
One feature of the earlier political structure greatly favored the enterprise [of state
building] . . .The Europeans of 1500 had a tradition of kingship which stretched
back to Roman times . . . They [kings] commanded a measure of submission on
quite traditional grounds.12
This earlier insight disappears from Tilly’s later work. Therein, all
actors compete on equal footing. Leaders of organized crime syndicates
or divine kings are no different from one another. The mechanism of
state formation resides solely in the selection process of the weaker actor.
As I will discuss at greater length, the lack of an agent-driven account
diminishes from Tilly’s otherwise powerful insights.
Second, throughout his work, Tilly cautions others from drawing
conclusions from the European experience. Nevertheless, while he notes
that the “Third World of the twentieth century does not greatly resemble
Europe of the sixteenth of seventeenth century,” he virtually invites
application of his insights to non-European areas by noting the prepon-
derant power yielded by military organization in the developing world.13
It behooves us then to examine how much of the European experience
can be captured by a simple aphorism that suggests a simple dialectical
relation between war and state making.
The Impact of the Bellicist Argument on Contemporary Social

Science Scholarship
The argument that warfare was conducive to state formation has had
significant effects on subsequent and contemporary scholarship. Some
scholars have started to examine historical processes of state formation
outside of Europe. For example, Victoria Hui has taken the argument as
a template against which to evaluate developments in China during the
Warring States period.14 Accepting the bellicist theory that places pri-
macy in the role of warfare in state building she argues that warfare
during the Warring States period culminated in empire rather than a
state system due to a logic of domination and ruthless political elites.
The bellicist theory has also been used to clarify why developing
countries today lack strong states. Jeffrey Herbst suggests that one of
the reasons for the weakness of African states derives from the absence
of international conflict in that region. “It is important to ask if
12
Tilly, The Formation of National States, p. 25.
13
Tilly, “War Making and State Making”, pp. 169, 186.
14
Victoria Hui, “Toward a Dynamic Theory of International Politics: Insights from
Comparing Ancient China and Early Modern Europe,” International Organization,
vol. 58, no. 1 (2004), pp. 175–205.
developing countries can accomplish in times of peace what war-

enabled European countries can do. I conclude that they probably
cannot because fundamental changes in economic structures and soci-
etal beliefs are difficult, if not impossible to bring about when coun-
tries are not being disrupted or under severe external threat”.15
Joel Migdal similarly argues that the weakness of states in the develop-
ing world is partially due to the lack of external threats.16 While not
squarely addressing the Tilly thesis, Robert Jackson notes that African
states have obtained their sovereignty de iure, but lack de facto control
over their territories.17
Quantitative studies have also explored whether the bellicist theory
holds in other regions, and whether this can account for the historical
and contemporary weakness of some states. Some of this literature has
taken on a broader understanding of conflict to also include interstate
rivalry and suggests that the bellicist theory holds up relatively well.18
In addition to providing explanations for sustained weakness in
developing countries today, the war makes states argument has a bearing
on how one evaluates the long-term effects of internal conflict in weak or
failed states. According to one perspective, if one assumes that contem-
porary weak states are going through an analogous process of state
development as the European ones, then the present level of violence
in some of the developing countries is the necessary precursor to a more
effective and high-capacity government. Over time a centralized govern-
ment will emerge as one elite brings its rivals to submission. From this
perspective, violence in war-torn African countries is no different from
that in late medieval France when the monarchy brought the lesser
aristocracy to heel. In the long run, “failed states” are destined to become
more effective, higher-capacity states.19
In conclusion, the bellicist theory of state building contends that
while warfare imposes incontestable burdens in terms of human
suffering and economic expenditure, the long-term effect is beneficial,
as warfare signals the birth pangs of the high-capacity state. War thus
15
Jeffrey Herbst, “War and the State in Africa,” International Security, vol. 14, no. 4 (1990),
pp. 117–39, here at p. 118. Also see Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa (Princeton
16
Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 273.
17
Robert Jackson, “Quasi States, Dual Regimes, and Neo-Classical Theory: International
Jurisprudence and the Third World,” International Organization, vol. 41, no. 4 (1987),
pp. 519–49.
18
Thies, “War, Rivalry and State Building.”
19
Cohen et al., “The Paradoxical Nature of State Making.”
80 Hendrik Spruyt
constitutes a necessary and indeed a sufficient condition for state

building.20 I will argue in the following that neither is true.21
Specifying the Connections between War and

State Making
As the above-mentioned scholarship indicates there is considerable
insight to be gained from studying the connections between war making
and state development. However, how exactly are they connected? Does
warfare automatically translate into stronger, high-capacity states? Con-
versely, it seems equally plausible to suggest that war bleeds states dry,
culminating in regime collapse, as Louis XIV and his successors dis-
covered. As Tilly himself explicitly recognized, “most of the European
efforts to build states failed.”22
Similarly, war might fragment rather than unify multi-ethnic and
multi-national polities. Grand strategies and high military expenditure
might also depress overall economic growth and lead to the relative
decline of such states compared to states that spend less on the armed
forces.23 Warfare, in these perspectives, produces virtually the opposite
effects ascribed to it by the bellicist theory.
In order to see how war makes or breaks states I argue that we need to
more precisely specify the mechanisms through which war and state
making interact, sometimes aiding state building and in other instances
achieving the very opposite. In order to do this the condition of frequent
inter-polity conflict must itself be explained. Warfare does not present an
exogenous condition but is in turn shaped by other factors. The Roman
peace, the Pax Romana of the empire, arguably led to less conflict in the
area controlled by the empire than existed in the period prior to that.
European history, and that of other regions, shows episodes of peace
as well as of conflict. As David Kang suggests, formal empire or informal
hierarchy (as historically in East Asia) will temper conflict and
competition.24
20
Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, p. 273.
21
Other research has examined the validity of the theory for state formation in Latin
America, and found bellicist theory largely inapplicable to that region. See Miguel
Angel Centeno, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America (University
Park: Penn State University Press, 2002); and Marcus Kurtz, “The Social Foundations
of Institutional Order: Reconsidering War and the ‘Resource Curse’ in the Third World
State Building,” Politics and Society, vol. 37, no. 4 (2009): 479–520.
22
Tilly, The Formation of National States, p. 38.
23
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Decline of Great Powers (New York: Random House: 1987).
24
Kang, East Asia before the West.
Furthermore, we need a fuller specification regarding the micro-

level dynamics that affect the relations between system, the level of
warfare, and the effects on state building. Under which conditions
does warfare lead to fragmentation of units rather than consolidation?
Problematizing Warfare and State Building

Aside from the confusion surrounding the conceptualization of the state that
diverse scholars employ, there is considerable variation in how one oper-
ationalizes variables as “warfare” and “state building.” Inevitably this leads
to a multiplicity of understandings of what bellicist theory exactly entails.
Logically the effects of warfare will vary depending on what one
understands as the key feature of warfare that imposes certain outcomes.
One line or argument from military history focuses on the growth in army
size and the increased frequency of warfare.25 Conversely, economic
historians emphasize the increased costs of warfare, which required
financial mobilization and efficiencies of scale.26
Consequently, depending on which military breakthroughs one sees
as critical, accounts will vary in the timing of the military revolution
and the subsequent development towards high-capacity states. Were
the infantry victories at Stirling Bridge and Courtrai the beginning, in
which case the growth of state capacity must be dated to the early
1300s? Or was it the emergence of the standing army, making the mid
fifteenth century the benchmark? Conversely, if fortification and
siege warfare were critical catalysts this would suggest the sixteenth
century. Tilly thus goes to some lengths to criticize Joseph Strayer’s
argument that state creation starts around 1300, and to challenge
Richard Bean’s views that state making between 1400 and 1600 was
critical.27 He himself places the critical period after 1500 and indeed
particularly after 1600.28 Yet others would contend that truly national
states only emerged in the nineteenth century with the mass army and
universal draft.29
Recent quantitative work recasts the thesis even more broadly and
operationalizes the causal variable as interstate rivalry, which might or
25
Parker, The Military Revolution.
26
Bean, “War and the Birth of the Nation State.”
27
Tilly, The Formation of National States, pp. 25–6; Tilly, “War Making and State Making,”
p. 177.
28
Tilly, “War Making and State Making,” p. 170.
29
Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914
(Stanford University Press, 1979); Barry Posen, “Nationalism, the Mass Army, and
Military Power,” International Security, vol. 18, no. 2 (1993), pp. 80–124.
82 Hendrik Spruyt
might not involve the actual outbreak of hostilities.30 Thus, scholars

disagree not only on the timing when high-capacity states emerged
but also on the key forces that underlay the shift in government
capacity.
Likewise, scholars also differ on how to measure state formation. In
the Weberian understanding the creation of a legitimate monopoly of
violence is the key factor. Hence, one might code high-capacity states
as those that have a centralized control over the means of violence,
while states that lack such a monopoly have weak capacity and con-
stitute failed states. Others have instead looked at the differential
abilities of states to raise fiscal resources from their populations.
The particular type of taxes (income taxes vs tariffs as source of
income), tax incidence, the availability to raise capital on inter-
national markets (at differential interest rates) might all be used to
suggest which states have higher capacity than others.31 Yet another
approach emphasizes the ability to mobilize personnel and instill a
sense of national identification. Closer identification with the aims of
the state reveals high capacity.32 Finally, one might focus on the
specific nature of administration, the rationalization of procedures
and personnel selection.33
These differences are nontrivial. The various ways in which warfare
and state formation have been operationalized have led to inconclusive
evidence regarding the validity of the theory. This is the case even with
scholars focusing on the same region. Thus, Miguel Centeno con-
cludes that the bellicist theory holds little relevance for Latin America,
whereas Cameron Thies suggests the opposite.34 Simply put, the
literature on warfare’s connection to state making shows considerable
variation in what the underlying causal dynamics are purported to be,
as well as variation in the timing of state emergence.
30
Thies, “War, Rivalry and State Building.”
31
See, for example, Bean, “War and the Birth of the Nation State”; Margaret Levi, Of Rule
and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); and Carolyn Webber and
Aaron Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1986).
32
Brian Taylor and Roxana Botea, “Tilly Tally: War Making and State Making in the
Contemporary Third World,” International Studies Review, vol. 10, no. 1 (2008),
pp. 27–56.
33
Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Guenther Roth and
Claus Wittich (eds.), vols. I and II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978);
Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
34
Centeno, Blood and Debt; Thies, “War, Rivalry and State Building.”
State Capacity or Territorial Sovereign Authority?

Another source of confusion arises from different conceptualizations
of the state. In one understanding, a state simply means any form of
organized polity that has a formalized hierarchy, some form of govern-
ment administration and judicial capacity. In this sense one can appro-
priately refer to, for example, Greek city states as “archaic states.”35
More commonly, however, in Weberian terms the state is that organ-
ization, which possesses a legitimate monopoly on the use of force. In
addition, Weber draws attention to particular features of the modern
state: the rationalization of administration and governance, its ability to
raise revenue, and the routinization of procedures.36
At face value it seems uncontroversial to argue that war making and
state making are interrelated. Any polity must have the means to defend
itself. Archaic states and modern states are no different in this respect. It
would thus be logical to suggest that states (in the generic sense) had to
wage war to survive, and that the particular mode of warfare would likely
influence the nature of state organization.
The bellicist theory, however, makes a narrower claim. It suggests that
the nature and frequency of European warfare led to the specific features
of the modern state that Weber mentions. It provides a materialist
explanation for fundamental changes not only in the conduct of war,
but in state-societal relations, collective mentalities, and economic
affairs.
But this equates state creation simply with increased state capacity.
Conversely, others such as John Ruggie and Hendrik Spruyt have largely
focused on the emergence of the principle of sovereign, territorially
demarcated authority structures.37
From a historical perspective both phenomena were coincident in
Europe. The coincident development of spatially defined authority and
high state capacity in that area of the world, however, does not imply that
the two always coincide. And indeed each feature of modern statehood
entails a different formative process.
Territorial sovereignty implies that authority is based on the control of
a given area and that all citizens that reside in that territory are subject to
35
W. G. Runciman, “Origins of States: The Case of Archaic Greece,” Comparative Studies
in Society and History, vol. 24 (1982), pp. 351–77.
36
Weber, Economy and Society.
37
Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change
(Princeton University Press, 1994); John Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond:
Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization,
vol. 47, no. 1 (1993), pp. 139–74.
84 Hendrik Spruyt
the rule of the sovereign government. The sovereign claims no authority

beyond spatial parameters and, conversely, recognizes no external
authority within that defined space.
This is a conceptual development as much as a question of material state
capacity. No doubt the kings who claimed such sovereignty tried to bolster
their claim by building up their material capabilities and thus enhance state
capacity. However, the two are analytically distinct as the conferral of
juridical sovereignty on many developing countries today clearly demon-
strates. Polities that lack de facto material capabilities can well have juridical
sovereignty.38 Similarly, imperial systems might possess significant capacity
and a monopoly of violence but not recognize others as juridical equals,
which is a key element of the current system of sovereign, territorial states.
Empirically we might thus have sovereign territorial states with weak
capacity, while conversely one could have high-capacity states that did
not adhere to the principle of territorial sovereignty. The European
empires of the nineteenth century had modern state features in the core
while only adhering to the principle of sovereignty when dealing with, by
their definition, “advanced countries.”39
Again the consequences of these different conceptualizations are not
trivial. The confounding of these two conceptualizations leads to a mis-
specification of the underlying causal mechanisms and raises a serious
endogeneity problem – as the very formulation of the “war makes states –
states make war” thesis virtually suggests. No doubt warfare and state
building were intertwined in a dialectical process, but simply suggesting
that the two are intertwined leaves unspecified what sparked this process,
and why this process was so unique to Europe. Disentangling the notion
of state formation as a territorially circumscribed authority from the
notion of state capacity can resolve these issues because it draws atten-
tion to the systemic context in which this process operated.
For much of history universal empires have dominated the scene, without
the development of a state system as gradually occurred in Europe from the
late Middle Ages on. Such Universalist empires tended to be capstone
governments, which ranged wide in territorial scope but had little impact
on their societies.40 Universal empires in essence established political hier-
archy in economic and military interactions. Empires were world systems.41
38
Jackson, “Quasi States, Dual Regimes.”
39
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).
40
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
41
Roberto Unger, Plasticity into Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987);
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vols. 1–2 (Orlando: Academic Press,
1978).
But in so doing these empires also diminished the frequency of war in

the zones they controlled. It was the very fragmentation of Europe that
precipitated the conflicts between different political authorities. This
suggests a different causal account, one that requires distinguishing the
state as a juridical entity from its governing capacity. In the Late Middle
Ages, the contest between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire led
both to claim ultimate final jurisdiction and supreme sovereignty over the
other. But in this contest they opened up the space for kings to claim the
same justification for their rule. With the failure of both papacy and
emperor to make good on their claims, kings could claim ultimate
sovereignty within their own domains. “Regnus est imperator in regno
suo” (The king is emperor in his own realm). Although they lacked the
governing capacity of later periods, they managed to forestall imperial
hierarchy as well as papal theocracy in Europe.42
At the same time kings acquired cultural power versus their rival lords.
Kings were not mere leaders of organized bandits but laid claim to ancient
dynastic and even divine rights to rule. They possessed ideological
weapons that others could not easily deploy or acquire. Subsequently,
these states competed with each other economically and militarily. This
in turn led to the emergence of high-capacity governments.
Schematically one might represent the logic as follows.
Failure of empire and theocracy Territorial entities: Kingdoms and principalities
Frequent warfare Selection, mimicry, learning
High-capacity states
Rather than treating warfare as an exogenous variable, it was the

emergence of a state system, which led to frequent warfare. The fre-
quency and innovation in European war depended on the absence of a
Universalist empire. Interstate competition led to multiple states
engaging in innovation, mimicry and learning.
42
John Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times (University of Toronto Press, 1980).
86 Hendrik Spruyt
Strong Form Selection and Optimal State Organization

The bellicist theory of state formation erroneously applies an evolution-
ary functionalist logic. Indeed, it misapplies a strong-form selection
argument.43 It suggests that, given environmental changes, polities had
to meet certain prerequisites or fail altogether. Notably they had to
develop significant administrative capacity, an ability to raise revenue,
and the skill to deploy large armies. Those political entities that did not
develop such capabilities fell by the wayside. This argument thus pro-
vides us with a retrospective. By looking at the contemporary “winners”
we can allegedly deduce the reasons for their success. Agent choices thus
do not really matter. Those political entities that did not create the right
set of institutions to wage war were simply weeded out and a dominant
form – the modern, high-capacity state – emerged out of the cauldron of
ever-present warfare.
The evolutionary selection account that underlies bellicist theory pre-
sents several problems.44 Methodologically, without explicit comparison
between successful states and forms of organization that did not survive,
we can suggest that failures lacked the attributes of those that survived,
but we do not know for sure. It is the “post-hoc ergo propter-hoc” fallacy. It
is equally plausible to argue that shifts in artistic mentality, belief systems
or economic changes caused the emergence of the state.45
Furthermore, there are various ways to respond to competitive pres-
sures. Actors can choose to meet an external threat by developing one’s
own state capacity (internal balancing). Threats might also be con-
fronted by finding allies or stronger patrons (external balancing), or
by binding together in larger organizations, as the United Nations today
(collective security systems). Actors might also ride the coattails of a
stronger power, rather than oppose that power (bandwagoning); or
states can opt to free ride on the efforts of others (buckpassing). As an
example of the latter, one only needs to reflect on the fact that NATO
43
More popular in the social sciences than the biological sciences, strong-form selection
presupposes that only one optimal solution exists to external pressures. For a critique of
strong-form selection, see Hendrik Spruyt, “Diversity or Uniformity in the Modern
World? Answers from Evolutionary Theory, Learning, and Social Adaptation,” in:
William Thompson (ed.), Evolutionary Interpretations of World Politics (New York:
Routledge, 2001).
44
Spruyt, The Sovereign State.
45
See, for example, Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch (New York:
Blackwell, 1991); Douglas North and Robert Thomas, The Rise of the Western World
(Cambridge University Press, 1973); and Douglas North, “A Framework for Analyzing
the State in Economic History,” Explorations in Economic History, vol. 16 (1979),
pp. 249–59.
members could spend far less on their armed forces than the United
States in meeting the Warsaw Pact threat.
Internal balancing would lead to state development, the raising of
revenue and the mobilization of larger forces, and would thus conform
with the bellicist argument. But this is not the case for the other
responses. The other means of meeting external threats would provide
defense on the “cheap.” In these alternative forms of balancing,
buckpassing and bandwagoning behavior, polities would circumvent
the need for developing their indigenous capacity.
Consequently, given the multiple ways of responding to external pres-
sure, the link between warfare and high state capacity becomes tenuous.
As Brian Downing shows, historically some states could forego building
up substantial armies because of geographic advantages.46 Switzerland,
the Dutch republic, and England all had certain geographical advantages
that diminished their need for large standing militaries. Moreover, some
polities managed to forego internal mobilization because they could
garner external support through allies, colonies, and subsidies.
Miguel Centeno’s work on war and state building in Latin America
suggests that this logic played out in that region in the nineteenth cen-
tury.47 The availability of external capital caused Latin America to have
weak states (with the exception of Chile and Costa Rica). When warfare
occurred, states did not need to mobilize their own fiscal resources but
could rely on international capital.
The strong-form selection argument also raises several empirical ques-
tions that cast doubt on how strong the selection process actually was.
First, many smaller entities survived in the European theater, even to this
day, such as San Marino, Andorra, and Liechtenstein. Likewise, inde-
pendent cities and small principalities and bishoprics, such as the
German states prior to unification, survived well into the nineteenth
century.
Second, while it is sometimes argued that the hundreds of European
states were reduced to no more than a several dozen by the late nine-
teenth century, the contours of many European states were largely in
place by the seventeenth century. The vast reduction of states came
primarily from the decreasing variation in Germany and the unifications
of Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century. In other words, selection
dynamics were probably less severe than sometimes intimated. More-
over, it is not apparent that this reduction came primarily by military
46
Brian Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and
Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 1992).
47
Centeno, Blood and Debt.
88 Hendrik Spruyt
means rather than dynastic linkages or other dynamics. (e.g., the attempt
to unify through the Zollverein was largely driven by economic
considerations.)
Third, Tilly argues in Coercion, Capital and European States that
selection effects were so strong as to propel all Western states in
the direction of a mixture of coercion and accommodation in state
building. Britain provides an exemplar of this form of state building.
Distinguishing between states that raised revenue by coercive means
(Prussia) and those that raised revenue by capital-intensive, accom-
modationist means (the United Provinces), Tilly concluded that
either form was inferior to those states that combined both methods
(Britain).
Here again the selection effects are overstated. The consequences of
the post-hoc ergo propter-hoc fallacy become clear. Because Britain
ended up as a dominant power, its characteristics must be taken as
prerequisites for success. The account becomes plausible because it
extrapolates back into history from the end result.
But was coercion truly less effective and efficient than the more
accommodationist strategies? Despite deploying coercive strategies,
Prussia and later Germany were highly successful in military compe-
tition, as was the USSR.48 Only the late twentieth century might have
given democracies the edge, although this is by no means certain.
Making matters even more complicated, many European states
seemed to have developed high-capacity states after they abandoned
military competition. Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden evolved as
high-capacity states, yet they had not engaged in great power compe-
tition since the late seventeenth century. Switzerland largely managed
to stay out of great power competition altogether.
To conclude, the bellicist argument overstates selection effects.
Selection did not weed out all the small or odd types, which is what
one would expect in the Darwinian account of bellicist theory.
Agents had various means to respond to external pressures, of which
internal balancing and the building of state capacity was only one.
Indeed, some states pulled out of the military competitive “game”
altogether, and suffered no deleterious consequences. In sum, even if
one concedes that warfare can lead to state development, it does not
appear to be a necessary condition, nor a sufficient condition for
state making.
48
Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964).
Amending the Bellicist Theory of War: Accounting for

Systemic Context and Agency
There is no doubt that state making and warfare are interconnected. In
that sense examining how they are interrelated can provide a useful
starting point of inquiry. However, the bellicist theory of state building
needs to more accurately specify the micro-level decisions and agent
choices that form the basis of state development as well as the systemic
context in which actors make specific choices. It requires a deeper
account of the interaction of micro-level decisions and macro-level
environment.
Clarification of Domestic Coalitions

Given the implied evolutionary selection bias in bellicist theory the
choices of micro-level actors are largely irrelevant. For example, whether
domestic groups consent to increasing state capacity (as in the capital-
mode) or whether they are forced to contribute (as in the coercive mode
of revenue generation) is not important. In the end, the result remains
the same, competitive dynamics will force states to centralize and develop
effective administrative machineries or they will be selected out. Those
states that mixed coercive and capital-intensive modes survived; the
others did not.
But this is only true if strong form selection holds. If a state has
multiple means of meeting security requirements, as I have argued
above, then the internal politics of the polity are critical. The motives
of domestic actors to go along with a stronger state apparatus and
militarization will determine whether or not state building actually
occurs. External pressure will be mediated by domestic actors.
Centralization of authority logically entails that rival actors will see
their power diminish. Consequently, they will resist such developments.
To argue that state building occurred because the central state, the king,
proved a superior provider of protection simply begs the question. That
is, it assumes the centralizing actor had the means to bring rivals to heel.
But if so, there is nothing to explain. The aspiring king already was the
dominant power. In other words, we need additional variables to explain
the willingness of rival actors to comply with centralization when power is
distributed among various rivals.
Even in cases that Tilly codes as coercive systems the specific political
bargain that was struck was critical for subsequent development. The
coalition that created the Second Serfdom in Prussia in the mid seven-
teenth century assured the nobility that townspeople and the peasantry
90 Hendrik Spruyt
would bear the brunt of the tax burden. By contrast, the Elector granted
the Junkers tax exemption, autonomy over their landed estates, and
privileged positions in the administration.49 Their stake in the political
system and military administration guaranteed royal credible commit-
ment, while their control over the military meant the armed forces could
be used for internal repression. Without such a deal the landed gentry
might well fear the consequences of militarization, and they might have
stymied the Great Elector’s ambitions. External threats alone did not
propel Prussia on the course to a high-capacity state. It required a
political compromise between key elites.50
Similarly, as Marcus Kurtz argues, external threats did not suffice to
induce state making in parts of Latin America.51 In Chile external
security dilemmas indeed led to state making. In Peru, however, despite
being in the same structural position and despite possessing similar
resources as its southern neighbor, state making did not occur. Its landed
elites feared that a militarized population might rise against the agrarian
elites. More broadly, Kurtz convincingly shows that the social relations
that govern economic relations and the pattern of intra-elite compromise
mediate how the external environment affects institution building.
In other words, how war affects state making depends on how preex-
isting social and institutional arrangements mediate the outside pres-
sure.52 Prior institutional types influence the level of bureaucratic and
democratic tendencies. Preexisting social bargains determine whether or
not a strong state will develop. Indeed, where institutional arrangements
precluded the emergence of a centralized, more homogeneous state, as in
eighteenth-century Poland, the advent of war led to its demise and
partition rather than create a stronger state.
Recent scholarship by Sinisa Malesevic on the Balkan wars of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries lends further support for this view.53
The Balkans are a particularly useful case for comparative study given
that many other applications of the bellicist argument have focused on
contrasts with the non-European world. However, these regions evinced
49
Hans Rosenberg, “The Rise of Junkers in Brandenburg-Prussia, 1410–1653,” American
Historical Review, vol. 49, no. 1 (part I) and no. 2 (part II) (1943–44), pp. 1–22; 228–42.
50
The agreement between the monarch and the nobility cast a long shadow on German
history. As late as 1913 more than half of the higher officer corps above the rank of
colonel still consisted of aristocrats. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871–1918
(Leamington: Berg Publishers, 1985), p. 159.
51
Kurtz, “The Social Foundations of Institutional Order.”
52
See also Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan.
53
Sinisa Malesevic, “Did Wars Make Nation-States in the Balkans: Nationalisms, Wars
and States in the 19th and early 20th Century South East Europe,” Journal of Historical
Sociology, vol. 25 (2012), pp. 299–330.
quite different types of warfare and varied greatly on many other possible
causal factors. The Balkans provide the means of comparing the West
European development with a proximately similar set of background
variables.
At face value the relatively limited frequency of war for most of South
East European history would seem to validate Tilly’s argument that
infrequent warfare will lead to weak states. However, when the frequency
of warfare increased in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries this did
not lead to greater centralization or state capacity. Instead, due to the
lack of a strong nationalist sentiment – itself the result of low levels of
literacy and public education – state formation was stymied. As
Malesevic suggests, state building and nation formation were symbiotic-
ally linked. Without a modicum of preexisting political organization and
national identity, states instead resembled patrimonial rather than legal-
rational administrations.54
Specification of the Mechanism of Aggregation

If we were to follow Tilly’s account then we should regard states simply
as organized protection rackets.55 The strongest actor will be the best
provider of protection. He or she can thus force individuals to support
him or her, or individuals will voluntarily seek this lord’s protection.
Thus, we can attribute the centralization of France to the fact that the
monarchy proved the strongest protection racket and managed to dis-
place lesser lords. At the same time, the monarchy proved to be the best
provider of protection against, what we with hindsight would call, exter-
nal actors. Centralization thus worked in a two-pronged process: internal
consolidation of monarchical power against rivals who also possessed
means of violence, and the buildup of state power against external
threats.
But such an account leaves us with several quandaries. Why did not
this process of aggregation proceed further? The reduction of feudal
authorities halted at the point of having produced several dozen largely
dynastic states. Given competitive pressures that advantaged size, higher
revenue bases and larger armies, there is no reason why this process
should have halted. Or, to put it differently, why did we end up with a
relatively static equilibrium of several dozen states in Europe rather than
even larger units?
54
Malesevic, “Did Wars Make Nation-States,” p. 314.
55
Tilly, “War Making and State Making”.
92 Hendrik Spruyt
One might counter that perhaps there were declining efficiencies of

scale. While theoretically this would constitute a logical answer, there is
no evidence to support the argument, and indeed, as noted earlier, most
other regions were consolidated into hierarchical empires. In Europe,
instead, imperial tendencies by Philip II of Spain, Napoleon and others
were checked by the deliberate balancing coalitions of other states. In
some instances, such as the Congress of Vienna, states came to explicit
agreements about the maintenance of the status quo. And, as Paul
Schroeder has suggested, there are instances of such arrangements much
earlier than the nineteenth century.56 States were thus maintained by the
deliberate choices of other states. Some polities were dismantled; others,
as Belgium, were created by great power fiat. Yet others, as the
Netherlands and Portugal, were maintained by Great Power guarantees.
To suggest another aphorism: “States made other states.”
Counterfactually, this logic of countervailing pressures against central-
ization at the interstate, European-wide level could very well have oper-
ated at the pre-national level. Feudal lords could have allied against any
centralizing actor. In a similar fashion, contemporary Somali warlords
prevent any would-be centralizing warlord by creating an offsetting bal-
ance. The fact that such an offsetting coalition of lords against the center
did not arise against royal dynasts thus requires an analysis of the micro-
level calculations of these lords. What was in it for them? What gave royal
dynasts the advantage?
The bellicist argument appears to have considerable validity because it
implicitly relies on two assumptions. It assumes that what counts as
internal and what counts as external is obvious to the actors involved.
Consequently, a threat identified as “external” will lead to greater soli-
darity among the group demarcated as “internal.” It also assumes that
competition over time will yield one winner, with no competitor having a
particular advantage at the outset. Selection over time provides the
result. Both these assumptions should be challenged.
The protection racket model takes as a given that individuals are
indifferent about who provides protection. And yet it concludes that
kings were the most efficient providers of protection since, empirically,
monarchies were the surviving form. The two statements are contradic-
tory. The first suggests that any actor with sufficient means of force
could create a state. The second clearly acknowledges that those who
had the ability to claim greater loyalty and legitimacy could more readily
demand extraction or service from lesser lords and the population, and
56
Paul Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1994).
they had the means at their disposal (cultural and material) to differen-
tiate their realms from “the outside.”
The failure of the imperial project and the failure of a theocratic
alternative provided the space for kings to claim sovereign privileges
against their lesser lords and against imperial and papal authority.57
Pizzorno insightfully suggests that royal claims for ultimate devotion
and sacrifice supplanted those of the church.58 Kings were not similar
to other lesser lords in the ability to wield political, military, and
cultural power.
Most importantly, monarchs could offer incentives to those excluded
outside the extant feudal order. Whether these were townspeople or
peasants are less relevant than the realization that the very logic of
feudalism precluded a lordly alliance with any of the latter two. Kings,
in other words, could offer the emerging new groups new material and
ideational benefits, an alternative legal structure, and increased standing
and privilege.59
In order to understand how centralization might take place we thus
need to understand how state consolidation manages to assuage oppon-
ents to such consolidation. Simultaneously, it requires analysis of why
some actors might gain an advantage over others in creating a winning
coalition against their rivals. How does any centralizing ruler gain the
support of “winners,” while diminishing the opposition of “losers” in the
process of state building?
Conclusion
I have argued in this essay that the specific relations between war and
state making are complex and not necessarily positively correlated.
Sometimes frequent warfare will lead to stronger states, and other times
the relation will be negative: war might weaken or even dissolve states.
Any examination of the relation requires an analysis of the interaction of
system and micro-level agent choices. There are a variety of ways in how
systemic changes might affect such choices.
First, particular modes of warfare might have differential effects on
state organization.60 Nuclear deterrence thus allowed the United States
to maintain a much lower standing army than the Soviet Union in the
57
See, for example, Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times.
58
Alessandro Pizzorno, “Politics Unbound,” in: Charles Maier (ed.), Changing Boundaries
of the Political (Cambridge University Press, 1987).
59
Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974); Spruyt, The
Sovereign State.
60
I thank conference participant Peter Haldén for this insight.
94 Hendrik Spruyt
1950s. The United States avoided becoming a garrison state.61 Similarly

one might ask whether other dynamics as asymmetric warfare and the
widespread dissemination of light arms as the AK-47 (thus providing
cheap means of exercising violence) have altered the particular modal-
ities of how warfare translates into state making. Indeed, the widespread
availability of such weapons in weak states today might make centraliza-
tion very difficult.
Second, with a more benign security environment, other modes of
state making will likely become more important. There is broad agree-
ment that overall the past half century has been relatively peaceful,
certainly among the major powers. Whether due to nuclear weapons,
increased opportunities for surveillance, or deliberate management of the
superpower balance, the era for some observers constituted the period of
the Long Peace.62 This relative absence of interstate war has to consider-
able extent been due to the emergence of a robust norm against territorial
acquisition by force.63 Since the end of World War II extant states have
not disappeared due to the actions of other states.64
Rather than selection and a reduction in the number of states, as
occurred in Europe, the number of states has multiplied fourfold since
1945.65 It is clear that where new states emerged it was not due to their
war-making prowess as many of these states lack sizeable populations or
highly developed economies.
Conversely, another trend has emerged in Europe side by side with
state fragmentation: the surrender of sovereign prerogatives to the Euro-
pean Union. This amalgamation cannot be attributed to security con-
cerns, as realists might contend. No doubt the original founding of the
European Economic Community had a considerable security aspect to it,
but today the desire for economic growth and efficiencies of scale have
become more important. In this sense the international economic
61
Aaron Friedberg, “Why Didn’t the U.S. Become a Garrison State?” International
Security, vol. 16, no. 2 (1992), pp. 109–42.
62
John Gaddis, “The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International
System,” in: Sean Lynn-Jones and Steven Miller (eds.), The Cold War and After
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993).
63
Mark Zacher, “The Territorial Integrity Norm: International Boundaries and the Use of
Force,” International Organization, vol. 55, no. 2 (2001), pp. 215–50.
64
Tanisha Fazal, State Death (Princeton University Press, 2007).
65
The first wave of new states resulted from decolonization. For the second wave, which
followed from the partitioning of states in Eastern Europe and the USSR, see Philip
Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From (Princeton University Press, 2007); Valerie
Bunce, Subversive Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and
Steven Solnick, “The Breakdown of Hierarchies in the Soviet Union and China:
A Neoinstitutional Perspective,” World Politics, vol. 48, no. 2 (1996), pp. 209–38.
context and political elite responses to that environment have become the
key catalysts of creating a new political entity.66
Pursuing the connection between the altered international environ-
ment and agent-level responses also suggests alternative trajectories to
state building. The infrequency of external war has led some observers to
conclude that the developing countries are condemned to have weak
state capacity.67 However, other external factors besides military conflict
might induce state building. Gerschenkron’s late industrialization thesis
suggests state development is linked to the particular timing of modern-
ization rather than warfare.68 Top-down economic development might
thus provide an alternative trajectory to state building, short of war.69
Finally, we might ask how external war affects multiethnic polities. In
the bellicist argument, external threat leads to greater state capacity and
feelings of national identity. Decades ago, group aggression theory sug-
gested that external threats are conducive to internal cohesion. Similarly,
George Simmel argued that internal cohesion requires the recognition of
“the other” as foe.70 History is replete with instances in which external
threats were deliberately used by political elites to foster incipient nation-
alist sentiments. The Dutch and English defined their distinctness in
opposition to Spain, the French had the Germans and the Spanish, and
the Poles saw the Russians as their age-old foe.71 Simultaneously, with
greater internal cohesion and an increased sense of nationalism, states
became more aggressive.
However, it seems equally plausible to suggest that distinct groups
within a composite polity might avail themselves of the opportunity to
gain greater concessions from the central government or dominant
ethnic group. Conflict can also lead to disunity as even Simmel himself
noted.72 While this becomes particularly salient for multi-ethnic empires
66
On security imperatives in the early EEC, see Edelgard Mahant, Birthmarks of Europe:
The Origins of the European Community Reconsidered (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). For the
calculations by political and business elites, see Wayne Sandholtz and John Zysman,
“1992: Recasting the European Bargain,” World Politics, vol. 42, no. 1 (1989),
pp. 95–128.
67
Herbst, States and Power in Africa; Michael Desch, “War and Strong States, Peace and
Weak States?” International Organization, vol. 50, no. 2 (1996), pp. 237–68.
68
Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1962).
69
For a discussion on how state-led economic growth has operated in East Asia, see Alice
Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (New York: Oxford
70
Georg Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations (London: Macmillan,
1964).
71
Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
72
Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations, p. 92.
96 Hendrik Spruyt
or federations, one should keep in mind that virtually all nation-states

contain distinct ethnic groups, distinct language communities or other
social networks through which collective action can be mobilized.73
Anthony Smith thus submits that conflict does not lead to cohesion in
multi-ethnic polities.74 Instead, it tends to magnify ethnic imbalances.
Centrifugal tendencies will be particularly strong in multi-ethnic polities
that have an asymmetric distribution of power in favor of a dominant
core group.
Some recent work supports Smith’s claim. Despite decades of conflict
Afghanistan has not witnessed the creation of a more centralized state
with greater capacity. To the contrary, it seems to have further
entrenched long-standing ethnic conflict and differences. By contrast,
ethnically homogenous entities, as Vietnam, did witness the growth of
state capacity in its conflicts with the French, United States, Cambodia,
and China.75 In short, external warfare might only lead to state develop-
ment in polities that are already reasonably centralized and which face
few societal cleavages.
More work needs to be done, as the historical evidence here is incon-
clusive. Many composite polities proved remarkably resilient even when
the core center seemed on the verge of collapse. Although tens of thou-
sands of Ukrainians fought with the German army in World War II, most
of the Soviet army showed few nationalist outbreaks. Even the Austrian-
Hungarian military performed reasonably well for most of the First
World War despite nationalist and secessionist demands going into the
war. By late 1917, “not a single enemy soldier stood on Habsburg
territory. On the contrary, Austro-Hungarian armies were everywhere
deep inside enemy territory.”76 Why distinct nationalities remained
faithful to the politically contested center at the time of its greatest
weakness requires further study.
To conclude, the preceding discussion is not an attempt to dispel the
considerable insights of the bellicist theory that warfare is critical for state
building. But examining the strengths and weaknesses of the theory is
important given the conflicts today in weak or failed states. Moreover,
given the altered international environment, and given that agents always
have a diversity of choices at their disposal in any environment, we must
73
As Gellner notes in Nations and Nationalism, the number of nations is potentially much
larger than the number of states.
74
Anthony Smith, “War and Ethnicity,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 4, no. 4 (1981),
pp. 375–97.
75
Taylor and Botea, “Tilly Tally.”
76
Istvan Deak, Beyond Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 192.
ask ourselves how state building today might operate. Hence teasing out
how, why, and when war and state building correlate is critical.
Many regions dominated by warlords in Africa and many failed states
are not on the road to creating high-capacity polities. They do not raise
extractive capacity, develop rationalized administration, or provide
public goods. Instead they gain revenue by illicit activities, their rule
remains patrimonial and nepotist, and they pursue private gains rather
than public goods provision. Warlords are not state builders.77
If one accepts that the incorporation of rival warlords in the state, or
their elimination, constitutes a sine qua non for further state development,
then greater attention needs to be paid to the mechanism of aggregation
of distinct armed units. This requires further study of the mechanisms for
establishing some settlement that brings previous warlords to amalgam-
ate and transfer their armed forces into a national military. Drawing
analogies with medieval Europe, Kim Marten suggests one possible
logic.78 Actors with preferences for centralized force might form a polit-
ical coalition in opposition to those who prefer to keep force decentral-
ized. Whether her account of Somalia is empirically feasible is less
important than the suggestion that some actors have advantages in
acquiring popular support for their efforts at centralization than their
rivals. Not all leaders of protection rackets are necessarily equally
endowed.
77
A key study of warlord behavior is provided by William Reno, Warlord Politics and African
States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
78
Kimberly Marten, “Warlordism in Comparative Perspective,” International Security,
vol. 31, no. 3 (2006/2007), pp. 41–73.

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3 War and State Formation

Amending the Bellicist Theory of State Making

emergence of sovereign, territorial authority, it has neglected the

war” accurately describe the European experience of state formation?

The Military Revolution and State Development

The Empirical Record

construction of larger stone castles could require as many as 3,000

than some of its continental counterparts, at times allocated two thirds of

The Foundational Work of Charles Tilly

The Impact of the Bellicist Argument on Contemporary Social

developing countries can accomplish in times of peace what war-

constitutes a necessary and indeed a sufﬁcient condition for state

Specifying the Connections between War and

Furthermore, we need a fuller speciﬁcation regarding the micro-

Problematizing Warfare and State Building

might not involve the actual outbreak of hostilities.30 Thus, scholars

State Capacity or Territorial Sovereign Authority?

the rule of the sovereign government. The sovereign claims no authority

But in so doing these empires also diminished the frequency of war in

Failure of empire and theocracy Territorial entities: Kingdoms and principalities

Frequent warfare Selection, mimicry, learning

Rather than treating warfare as an exogenous variable, it was the

Strong Form Selection and Optimal State Organization

Amending the Bellicist Theory of War: Accounting for

Clarification of Domestic Coalitions

Specification of the Mechanism of Aggregation

One might counter that perhaps there were declining efﬁciencies of

1950s. The United States avoided becoming a garrison state.61 Similarly

or federations, one should keep in mind that virtually all nation-states

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