If economic elites are notorious for circumventing tax obligations, how can institutionally weak governments get the wealthy to shoulder a greater tax burden? This book studies the factors behind the adoption of elite taxes for public safety purposes. Contrary to prominent explanations in the literature on the fiscal strengthening of the state – including the role of resource dependence and inequality – the book advances a theory of elite taxation that focuses on public safety crises as windows of opportunity and highlights the importance of business-government linkages to overcome mistrust toward government from corruption and lack of accountability. Based on evidence from across Latin America and rich case studies from experiences in Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico, the book provides scholars and policymakers with a blueprint for contemporary state-building efforts in the developing world.

State Building in Latin America diverges from existing scholarship in developing explanations both for why state-building efforts in the region emerged and for their success or failure. First, Latin American state leaders chose to attempt concerted state-building only where they saw it as the means to political order and economic development. Fragmented regionalism led to the adoption of more laissez-faire ideas and the rejection of state-building. With dominant urban centers, developmentalist ideas and state-building efforts took hold, but not all state-building projects succeeded. The second plank of the book's argument centers on strategies of bureaucratic appointment to explain this variation. Filling administrative ranks with local elites caused even concerted state-building efforts to flounder, while appointing outsiders to serve as administrators underpinned success. Relying on extensive archival evidence, the book traces how these factors shaped the differential development of education, taxation, and conscription in Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

Weak or failed states - where no government is in control - are the source of many of the world's most serious problems, from poverty, AIDS and drugs to terrorism. What can be done to help? The problem of weak states and the need for state-building has existed for many years, but it has been urgent since September 11 and Afghanistan and Iraq. The formation of proper public institutions, such as an honest police force, uncorrupted courts, functioning schools and medical services and a strong civil service, is fraught with difficulties. We know how to help with resources, people and technology across borders, but state building requires methods that are not easily transported. The ability to create healthy states from nothing has suddenly risen to the top of the world agenda. State building has become a crucial matter of global security. In this hugely important book, Francis Fukuyama explains the concept of state-building and discusses the problems and causes of state weakness and its national and international effects.

This work explores state building and the processes by which supporting state bureaucratic organizations aided the state building effort in Republican China between 1927 and 1940. It suggests that in hostile environments profoundly non-congenial to state building efforts, it is the state organizations that stand the best chance of becoming well institutionalized. This book details the administrative histories and institution-building strategies of three organizations in Republican China dealing with the national civil service, taxation, and foreign affairs.

How do modern states emerge from the turmoil of undergoverned spaces? This is the question Reo Matsuzaki ponders in Statebuilding by Imposition. Comparing Taiwan and the Philippines under the colonial rule of Japan and the United States, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he shows similar situations produce different outcomes and yet lead us to one conclusion. Contemporary statebuilding efforts by the US and the UN start from the premise that strong states can and should be constructed through the establishment of representative government institutions, a liberalized economy, and laws that protect private property and advance personal liberties. But when statebuilding runs into widespread popular resistance, as it did in both Taiwan the Philippines, statebuilding success depends on reconfiguring the very fabric of society, embracing local elites rather than the broad population, and giving elites the power to discipline the people. In Taiwan under Japanese rule, local elites behaved as obedient and effective intermediaries and contributed to government authority; in the Philippines under US rule, they became the very cause of the state's weakness by aggrandizing wealth, corrupting the bureaucracy, and obstructing policy enforcement. As Statebuilding by Imposition details, Taiwanese and Filipino history teaches us that the imposition of democracy is no guarantee of success when forming a new state and that illiberal actions may actually be more effective. Matsuzaki's controversial political history forces us to question whether statebuilding, given what it would take for this to result in the construction of a strong state, is the best way to address undergoverned spaces in the world today.

The 'Origins of the Modern State in Europe' series arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Science 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 from the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders. The modern European state, defined by a continuous territory with a distinct borderline and complete external sovereignty, by the monopoly of every kind of legitimate use of force, and by a homogeneous mass of subjects each of whom has the same rights ad duties, is the outcome of a thousand years of shifting political power and developing notions of the state. This major study sets out to examine the processes of state formation and the creation of power elites. A team of leading European historians explores the dominant institutions and ideologies of the past, and their role in the creation of the contemporary nation state.

There is a widespread concern that, in some parts of the world, governments are unable to exercise effective authority. When governments fail, more sinister forces thrive: warlords, arms smugglers, narcotics enterprises, kidnap gangs, terrorist networks, armed militias. Why do governments fail? This book explores an old idea that has returned to prominence: that authority, effectiveness, accountability and responsiveness is closely related to the ways in which governments are financed. It matters that governments tax their citizens rather than live from oil revenues and foreign aid, and it matters how they tax them. Taxation stimulates demands for representation, and an effective revenue authority is the central pillar of state capacity. Using case studies from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, this book presents and evaluates these arguments, updates theories derived from European history in the light of conditions in contemporary poorer countries, and draws conclusions for policy-makers.

The formation of states in early modern Europe has long been an important topic for historical analysis. Traditionally, the political and military struggles of kings and rulers were the favoured object of study for academic historians. This book highlights new historical research from Europe’s northern frontier, bringing ‘the people’ back into the discussion of state politics, presenting alternative views of political and social relations in the Nordic countries before industrialisation. The early modern period was a time that witnessed initiatives from people from many groups formally excluded from political influence, operating outside the structures of central government, and this book returns to the subject of contentious politics and state building from below.

This book examines the history of nation-building during the era of decolonization and the Cold War, and on the more recent post-Cold War and post-9/11 pursuit of nation-building in what have become known as ‘collapsed’ or ‘failed’ states. In the post-Cold War and post-9/11 era nation-building, or what is increasingly termed state-building, has taken on renewed salience, making it more important than ever to set the idea and practice of nation-building in historical perspective. Focusing on both historical and contemporary examples, the contributors explore a number of important themes that relate to ‘successful’ and ‘unsuccessful’ nation-building efforts from South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s to East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq in the twenty-first century. From Nation-Building to State-Building was previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly and will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics and peace studies.

This study brings together internationally renowned academics to provide a detailed insight into the theory and practice of state-building. State-building is one of the dominant themes in contemporary international relations. This text addresses both the theoretical logic behind state-building and key practical manifestations of this phenomenon. Unlike ‘how-to’ manuals that seek to identify best practice, this book interrogates the normative assumptions inherent in this practice and the manner in which state-building impacts on contemporary international relations. The logic of state-building is explored and analyzed providing insight into the historical context that catalyzed this process, the relationship between international law and the practice of international administration, and the political ramifications and implications of external governance. Case studies on Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor provide practical examples of key contradictions within the state-building process, highlighting the lack of accountability, democracy and vision manifest in these operations. Offering a coherent critical analysis of an increasingly important international issue, State-Building will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, comparative politics and political theory.