Research Projects

Theme 1: Dimensions of State-Making

Project 1: State-Making as an Endogenous Process (A1)

The main aim of this project is to investigate (a) to what extent the hypothesized dimensions of state-making are empirically distinct; (b) to what extent they condition each other temporally, so that the development of one can be seen as a temporal prerequisite for the development of the other; and, as a corollary, (c) whether there is a particular sequence in which states form (and decay). The project thus has a mainly descriptive purpose, laying the foundation for how to conceptualize and investigate the multidimensional concept of state-making in the other parts of the program. The key contribution of this project is to fully acknowledge the multi-dimensionality, and to test some hypotheses concerning the interrelations between five different dimensions of state-making.

Project 2: The Role of Key Political Actors in the State-Making Process (A2)

The aim of this project is to examine the role of political agents – such as political parties and individual political leaders – in processes of state-making. We concentrate on four areas: (1) bureaucratic reform (attempts to root out venality and corruption); (2) fiscal reform (attempts to increase the state’s capacity for extracting revenue); (3) social reform (attempts to provide new sorts of services); and (4) environmental reform (attempts to reduce negative environmental externalities and preserve and protect natural resources). In all these areas, existing comparative historical research mainly emphasizes structural explanations. By putting political agents front and center, we fill an important gap in the literature.

Theme 2: Drivers of State-Making

Project 1: State-Making and War-Making (B1)

This subproject will move beyond conventional IR-approaches to war-making and state-making as it reintroduces the war-state puzzle in IR (cf. Vasquez 1993; 2009). It engages with cutting edge research on the interplay between war-making and state-making from different disciplinary, theoretical and methodological perspectives . By working with three different yet interrelated concepts of war – (1) interstate war, (2) intrastate war, and (3) “global” war – this project outlines a theoretical framework that deepens our analysis of the constitutive effects of war on the state. Thus, it is able to capture war at the international, state, sub-state and individual level and elevate a number of variables significant for understanding the war-state puzzle. In so doing, this project contributes to bodies of literature in political science, peace and conflict studies, as well as international relations by asking: How is state-making related to war-making? What type of state is emerging from inter-state wars, intra-state conflicts and the contemporary Western way of war?

Project 2: New Technologies, New Elites, and the Rise of the Modern State (B2)

This project investigates the causes and consequences of the growth of the state’s infrastructural power in the long 19th century. The main puzzle that the project seeks to solve is why technological and administrative innovations that allowed states to do new things – or to do old things in new ways – often led to different political responses in different countries. The analysis is based on the assumption that the growth of the state’s infrastructural power can be understood as the result of the adoption of new “political technologies,” which diffused, during the 19th century, through the international system. The purpose of this project is to use comparative evidence to investigate how the adoption and diffusion of new political technologies influenced domestic political institutions, political competition, and policymaking. We concentrate on the state’s capacity to deliver public services (including education, health care, and policing), on the state’s capacity and willingness to control borders and movement, and the state’s capacity to encourage economic development. When studying these capacities, we pay particular attention to two underlying changes: improvements in communication technologies (such as the railroads and the telegraph) and improvements in the state’s ability to gather, store, and manage information (such as the modern census).

Theme 3: Consequences of State-Making

Project 1: From a World of Empires to a World of States (C1)

The purpose of this project is to contribute new and original insights into the transition from a world of empires to a world of states during the long 19th century. Why were empires replaced by states rather than some other kind of polity? In order to understand this, we focus on the dissemination of those conceptions of legitimate authority that favoured this particular outcome in different colonial contexts, arguing that it was the active appropriation of such conceptions rather than mere coercion or emulation that created the preconditions for admission into an emergent international society of states. A consequent additional contribution of the project is an engagement with those non-European alternatives that were, as part of this process, either abandoned or fundamentally renegotiated.

Project 2: The Politics of Recognition (C2)

The aim of this project is to investigate why some political entities came to be included as members of the international order, and why some entities were excluded from that order. The state is today the predominant subject of international politics, and states are together nearly exhaustive, and mutually exclusive, of political space. What is today considered a ’state’, however, was not preordained from the outset, but has evolved over the centuries through the interaction between individual state entities and the international order of states. The question to be investigated in this project is how this process evolved. We put the concept of recognition at the centerpiece of this investigation. To be accepted into the international order is an act of recognition, but why and on what terms were certain state entities recognized and not others? When engaging in a certain practice, we expect our counterparts to respond in kind, to mirror our behavior. So why for example did the European state type come to encompass the world, whereas political entities in non-European parts of the world were thought, by Europeans, unable, or unwilling, to engage in such reciprocity? Similarly, the first intergovernmental organisations established from the 1860s operated with more inclusive membership policies than today and allowed both colonies and so-called semi-sovereign states to participate on an equal basis with sovereign states. How did the transition from this inclusive order to the 20th century exclusive order based on the sovereign state take place?