The State-Democracy Nexus in Historical and Comparative Perspective

The literatures on state formation and comparative democratization represent some of the largest and oldest research traditions in comparative politics (Lichbach and Zuckerman 1997; Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003). Given their central position in the discipline, it is surprising that there are fewer studies than one would expect that systematically examine the relationship between state formation and regime change (Andersen, Møller, and Skaaning 2014, and the rest of articles in that issue). Moreover, there is very little consensus in the literature about how these two kinds of political development interact with one another. Conceptually, the distinction between states and regimes is not always self-evident, especially when looking at macro-historical processes (Tilly 2004). For example, should the emergence of constitutions be conceptualized as an early step towards modern statehood or towards popular sovereignty? How should we think about the sovereignty of sub-national legislatures in relation to the development of strong centralized states? Is intense popular contention a sign of state weakness or of democratic openness? Indeed, these questions are often motivated by normative disagreements about whether we should primarily think about democratic institutions as a check on the (despotic) power of the state or as an asset that expands state (infrastructural) power by increasing its legitimacy, reducing monitoring costs, and improving the flow of information between state and societal actors (Mann 1984). Largely reflecting these conceptual and normative disagreements, the literature offers different (often contradictory) views about the causal relationship between state building and democratization. The conventional wisdom is based on a sequential argument in which the prior development of a strong state is a necessary condition for the consolidation of democracy, while precocious democratization obstructs the growth in state capacity. Samuel Huntington’s famous claim that the “overload of demands” coming from the expansion of political participation can exceed the capacity of weak states to respond and cause governability crises represents a prominent example of this widespread idea of “no state, no democracy” (Huntington 1968; Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki 1975). Similarly, Michael Shefter argued that professional bureaucracies need to be in place prior to democratization or they are likely to be captured by political actors and used for patronage in ways that undermine the development of state capacity and the quality of democracy (Shefter 1993; also see Geddes 1994 and Waldner 1999 for similar arguments). However, others argue that certain democratic reforms actually contribute to greater state capacity, expanding the scope of state activities, increasing the amount of resources available to the state, and fostering the quasi-voluntary compliance of societal actors. In this regard, neo-institutionalist political economists have repeatedly shown how the development of representative institutions with control over the public purse increased the fiscal capacity of the state (Levi 1989; North and Weingast 1989; North 1990; Dincecco 2011; Besley and Persson 2009, 2011). Along similar lines, recent research suggests that the logistical requirements of mass democracy push states to develop more sophisticated ways of gathering information about their population and territory (Brambor et al. 2016). Others in turn argue that certain features of high quality democracies—such as high levels of societal accountability—increase the ability of the state to prevent rent-seeking and to coordinate complex forms of collective action (Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti 1993; Grzymala-Busse 2007; Bäck and Hadenius 2008; Evans and Heller 2015; Goenaga 2015; Lindvall 2017). Finally, in ongoing work, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that both state capacity and democratic institutions have historically developed in tandem over time, as states seek to increase their capabilities to gain control over societal actors and the latter develop more effective organizational strategies to impose institutional checks on their rulers (Acemoglu and Robinson 2017). This lack of consensus is partly driven by data limitations. Until recently, empirical research on the state-democracy nexus faced a scarcity of cross-national data, especially concerning processes of state formation prior to 1960. Indeed, in a recent review of empirical research on the state-democracy nexus, Gerardo Munck and Sebastián Mazzuca concluded that “there is no general theory of the relationship between the state and democracy… Also lacking are good tests, using appropriate measures, that empirically adjudicate between these alternative perspectives” (Mazzuca and Munck 2014, 1222-1223). However, several ongoing data-gathering efforts—such as the large Historical V-Dem database (Knutsen et al. 2017), the data on information capacity (Brambor et al. 2016), and new fiscal series being collected at the European University Institute and Lund University—now allow us to systematically examine the interaction between state-building and democratization processes in a large number of countries from the French Revolution to the present. Therefore, motivated by the availability of new data sources and a revival in the interest on political development among comparativists, this workshop will gather papers that push forward our understanding of the ways in which historical processes of state formation and democratization affect one another. Related literature: Acemoglu, Daron, and James Robinson. 2017. “The Emergence of Weak, Despotic and Inclusive States.” http://scholar-harris.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/jamesrobinson/files/inclusive_despotic_and_weak_states.pdf. Andersen, David, Jørgen Møller, and Svend-Erik Skaaning. 2014. “The State-Democracy Nexus: Conceptual Distinctions, Theoretical Perspectives, and Comparative Approaches.” Democratization 21 (7):1203–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2014.960206. Bäck, Hanna, and Axel Hadenius. 2008. “Democracy and State Capacity: Exploring a J-Shaped Relationship.” Governance 21 (1):1–24. Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson. 2009. “The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation and Politics.” American Economic Review 99 (4):1218–44. ———. 2011. Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters. The Yrjö Jahnsson Lectures. Princeton [N.J.]: Princeton University Press. Brambor, Thomas, Agustín Goenaga, Johannes Lindvall, and Jan Teorell. 2016. “The Lay of the Land: Information Capacity and the Modern State.” STANCE Working Paper Series 2 (May). http://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/the-lay-of-the-land-information-capacity-and-the-modern-state(33e21d28-b2f3-4f59-b4ad-da8ad8a5e7c4).html. Crozier, Michel, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki. 1975. The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York: New York University Press. Dincecco, Mark. 2011. Political Transformations and Public Finances: Europe, 1650-1913. Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions Series. New York: Cambridge University Press. Evans, Peter, and Patrick Heller. 2015. “Human Development, State Transformation, and the Politics of the Developmental State.” In The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State, edited by Stephan Liebfried, Evelyne Huber, Matthew Lange, Jonah D. Levy, and John D. Stephens, 691–709. Oxford : New York: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199691586.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199691586-e-37. Geddes, Barbara. 1994. Politician’s Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Goenaga Orrego, Agustin Alonso. 2015. “The Social Origins of State Capacity: Civil Society, Political Order and Public Goods in France (1789-1970) and Mexico (1810-1970).” Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia. https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/54574. Grzymala-Busse, Anna. 2007. Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press. Knutsen, Carl Henrik, Jan Teorell, Agnes Cornell, John Gerring, Haakon Gjerløw, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Tore Wig, et al. 2017. “Introducing the Historical Varieties of Democracy Dataset: Patterns and Determinants of Democratization in the Long 19th Century.” Levi, Margaret. 1989. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Lichbach, Mark Irving, and Alan S. Zuckerman. 1997. Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure. Cambridge University Press. Lindvall, Johannes. 2017. Reform Capacity. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Mahoney, James, and Dietrich Rueschemeyer. 2003. Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, Michael. 1984. “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results.” European Journal of Sociology 25 (2):185–213. Mazzuca, Sebastián L., and Gerardo L. Munck. 2014. “State or Democracy First? Alternative Perspectives on the State-Democracy Nexus.” Democratization 21 (7):1221–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2014.960209. North, Douglass. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. North, Douglass, and Barry R. Weingast. 1989. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England.” The Journal of Economic History 49 (4):803–832. Putnam, Robert D., Robert Leonardi, and Raffaella Nanetti. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Shefter, Martin. 1993. Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experience. Princeton University Press. Tilly, Charles. 2004. Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000. Cambridge University Press. Waldner, David. 1999. State Building and Late Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.