Over most of history, participants in trust networks such as clandestine religious sects and kinship groups have shielded them from rulers' intervention, rightly fearing dispossession or exploitation. Yet no substantial regime can survive without drawing on resources held by trust networks. In particular, democratic regimes cannot operate without substantial integration of trust networks into public politics. Rulers' application of various combinations among coercion, capital, and commitment in the course of bargaining with subordinate populations produces a variety of regimes. Contemporary democracies face a threat of de-democratization if major segments of the population withdraw their trust networks from public politics.

Trust and Rule

Many states in Latin America, Africa and Asia lack the monopoly of violence, identified by Max Weber as the foundation of the state, and thus the capacity to govern effectively. In this paper we develop a new perspective on the establishment of the monopoly of violence and the formation of the state. We build a model to explain the incentive of central states to eliminate non-state armed actors (paramilitaries) in a democracy. The model is premised on the idea that paramilitaries may choose to and can influence elections. Since paramilitaries have preferences over policies, this reduces the incentives of the politicians they favor to eliminate them. The model also shows that while in non-paramilitary areas policies are targeted at citizens, in paramilitary controlled areas they are targeted at paramilitaries. We then investigate the predictions of our model using data from Colombia between 1991 and 2006. We first present regression and case study evidence supporting our postulate that paramilitary groups can have significant effects on elections for the legislature and the executive. Next, we show that the evidence is also broadly consistent with the implication of the model that paramilitaries tend to persist to the extent that they deliver votes to candidates for the executive whose preferences are close to theirs and that this effect is larger in areas where the Presidential candidate would have otherwise not done as well. These results illustrate that, consistent with our model, there appears to be a symbiotic relationship between some executives and paramilitaries. Finally, we use roll-call votes to illustrate a possible 'quid pro quo' between the executive and paramilitaries in Colombia.

The Monopoly of Violence: Evidence from Colombia

Many states in Latin America, Africa, and Asia lack the monopoly of violence, even though this was identified by Max Weber as the foundation of the state, and thus the capacity to govern effectively. In this paper we develop a new perspective on the establishment of the monopoly of violence. We build a model to explain the incentive of central states to eliminate nonstate armed actors (paramilitaries) in a democracy. The model is premised on the idea that paramilitaries may choose to and can influence elections. Since paramilitaries have preferences over policies, this reduces the incentives of the politicians they favor to eliminate them. We then investigate these ideas using data from Colombia between 1991 and 2006. We first present regression and case study evidence supporting our postulate that paramilitary groups can have significant effects on elections for the legislature and the executive. Next, we show that the evidence is also broadly consistent with the implication of the model that paramilitaries tend to persist to the extent that they deliver votes to candidates for the executive whose preferences are close to theirs and that this effect is larger in areas where the presidential candidate would have otherwise not done as well. Finally, we use roll-call votes to illustrate a possible "quid pro quo" between the executive and paramilitaries in Colombia. Language: en

/pdf/the-monopoly-of-violence-evidence-from-colombia-55110i106k.pdf

Powerful, centralized states controlling a large share of national income only begin to appear in Europe after 1500. We build a model that explains their emergence in response to the increasing importance of money for military success. When fiscal resources are not crucial for winning wars, the threat of external conflict stifles state building. As finance becomes critical, internally cohesive states invest in state capacity while divided states rationally drop out of the competition, causing divergence. We emphasize the role of the “Military Revolution”, a sequence of technological innovations that transformed armed conflict. Using data from 374 battles, we investigate empirically both the importance of money for military success and patterns of state building in early modern Europe. The evidence is consistent with the predictions of our model.

/pdf/state-capacity-and-military-conflict-2wvp5kfv8s.pdf

State Capacity and Military Conflict

States and economic growth: Capacity and constraints☆

This is the first volume to appear in the 'Origins of the Modern State in Europe' series, which arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Sciences Foundation.The aim of the series, which comprises seven volumes, is to bring together specialists from different countries, who reinterpret from a comparative European perspective, different aspects of the formation of the state over the long period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the long-established historiographical tendency to regard states mainly form the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders. Economic Systems and State Finance offers a new approach to the development of the state finance and fiscal systems in Europe. It covers a broad chronological span, beginning with a reassessment of the feudal system and beginnings of state finance, and counting with developments within a comparative European framework as far as 1815 when Britain emerged as the only state to have achieved economic hegemony. The conclusions are presented in four thematic chapters on expenditure, revenues, public credit, and the fiscal burden. The text is underpinned by the comprehensive apparatus of 97 figures, drawn from an important research database established during the research programme. Economic Systems and State Finance is a significant work of scholarship, which will make a permanent contribution to historical debate.

Economic Systems and State Finance.

List of Maps - List of Tables - Acknowledgements - Notes on Contributors - Preface B.Bailyn - Introduction D.Armitage & M.J.Braddick - PART ONE: FRAMEWORKS - Three Concepts of Atlantic History D. Armitage - PART TWO: CONNECTIONS - Migration A.Games - Economy N.Zahedieh - Religion C.G.Pestana - PART THREE: IDENTITIES - Civility and Authority M.J.Braddick - Gender S.M.S.Pearsall - Class K.Wrightson - Race J.E.Chaplin - PART FOUR: POLITICS - State and Empire E.Mancke - Revolution and Counter-Revolution E.H.Gould - The Politics of Slavery C.L.Brown - Afterword: Atlantic History: A Circumnavigation J.H.Elliott - Abbreviations - Notes - Further Reading - Index

The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800

Introduction Part I. State Formation in Early Modern England: Introduction 1. The embodiment of the state 2. The uses of political power in early modern England Conclusion Part II. The Patriarchal State: Introduction 3. Social order: poverty, dearth and disease 4. The courts and social order Conclusion Part III. The Fiscal-Military State: Introduction 5. The state and military mobilisation 6. The financing of the state Conclusion Part IV. The Confessional State: Introduction 7. The claims of the confessional state: local realities Conclusion Part V. The Dynastic State: Introduction 8. Elite formation and state formation in England, Wales and Scotland 9. London's provinces: state formation in the English-speaking Atlantic world Conclusion.

State formation in early modern England, c. 1550-1700

National taxation and national finances in England, 1558-1714 spending and borrowing the customs Demesne revenues - prerogative income and concealed taxes parliamentary taxes the politics of taxation - the economic effects of taxation the politics of taxation - legality, legitimacy and liberty tax collection and the taxpayer taxing the people - the limits of the possible in England, 1558-1714 documents.

The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558-1714

Introduction: grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination in early modern society Michael J. Braddick and John Walter 1. Ordering the body: illegitimacy and female authority in seventeenth-century England Laura Gowing 2. Child sexual abuse in early modern England Martin Ingram 3. Sex, social relations and the law in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London Faramerz Dabhoiwala 4. Exhortation and entitlement: negotiating equality in English rural communities, 1550-1650 Steve Hindle 5. Public transcripts, popular agency and the politics of subsistence in early modern England John Walter 6. 'Bragging and daring words': honour, property, and the symbolism of the hunt in Stowe, 1590-1642 Dan Beaver 7. Administrative performance: the representation of political authority in early modern England Michael J. Braddick 8. Negotiating order in early seventeenth-century Ireland Raymond Gillespie 9. Order, orthodoxy and resistance: the ambiguous legacy of English puritanism, or, Just how moderate was Stephen Denison? Peter Lake 10. Making orthodoxy in late Restoration England: the trials of Edmund Hickeringill, 1662-1710 Justin Champion and Lee McNulty.

Michael J. Braddick

Papers

Economic Systems and State Finance.

The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800

State formation in early modern England, c. 1550-1700

The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558-1714

Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland