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Making and Preserving States in the 21st Century: What Can We Learn from Tilly?
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Eastern states comprising 3,153 state years -- 37% of the state years I have identified. Systematically excluded from the data are small, young, dead, 19
th
century, and non-European states (Adams 2003).
Given these problems with data on international system membership, I have developed my own
data set, the State Survival and Death (SSAD) Data, which includes all of the states that survived and died by all means -- conquest, union, revolution, disintegration, and collapse -- in Europe and the Middle East from 1816 to 1994.
4
I am currently updating this data to 2005.
What Are Reasonable Hypotheses about Trends in State Survival and Death?
Like Tilly, I expect international conditions as well as military and economic factors to strongly
affect the life chances of states. Unlike Tilly, I am willing to go out on a limb and specify these expectations in testable hypotheses with clear causal claims, instead of couching them in terms of historical contingencies and conjunctures. Although this will no doubt make me the target of even more back-handed criticism than Tilly has received for his sweeping, yet contingent, historical studies,
5
it is the
only way to gain any leverage on the question of what it will take for states to survive and prosper in the coming decades, a question well worth answering, in my view, given the negative implications of state death for individual, social, and international security (Adams 2000, ch.1).
My hypotheses concern both the causes and consequences of state survival and death. Moreover,
because I want to answer the fundamental national security question of what it takes for states to survive, I consider all possible means of death -- conquest, union, revolution, disintegration, and collapse. In particular, I ask, when are states most and least vulnerable to death? Are they vulnerable to death by different means in different eras? Do states that die have different military, economic, or political capabilities or attributes than those that survive? Which contemporary states are most vulnerable to death, what can they do to survive, and how can other states help them? Finally, what effects does international assistance have on international conflict and cooperation, and on the rise and fall of great powers?
To answer these questions, I elaborate hypotheses about the domestic, international, and
technological causes of state vulnerability to death, as well as about the individual and international consequences of state death. These hypotheses are based on the existing literature on state death,
6
prominent theories of international politics (especially Waltz’s structural-realist theory),
7
and arguments
about the offense-defense-deterrence balance of military technology, Fordist and post-Fordist industrial production technologies, and the relationship between military and economic technologies.
8
4
For descriptions of the data, see Adams (2000, 2003, and 2003/04). See also the codebook for Adams (2003/04),
available at
http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publication.cfm?program=CORE&ctype=article&item_id=710
5
Lynn, for example, writes that Tilly, “like some motorcycle dare-devil, …pleases his fans not so much by clearing
all the obstacles as by simply demonstrating the nerve to make the leap” (1991, 86).
6
This literature focuses on the effects of bad leadership, weak socio-economic and political structures, culture, and
unworkable size. Among the scholars whose work I consider are Aristotle, Machiavelli, Karl Marx, Arnold Toynbee, Theda Skocpol, Joel S. Migdal, I. William Zartman, Peter Evans, Francis Fukuyama, Graham Fuller, and Leopold Kohr.
7
The international relations theories and arguments upon which I focus are structural-realist theory as developed by
Kenneth N. Waltz; liberal and constructivist arguments about international norms advanced by Robert H. Jackson, J. Samuel Barkin and Bruce Cronin, and Alexander Wendt; and Tanisha Fazal’s argument about the vulnerability of buffer states.
8
In developing arguments about the effects of the technological environment on state vulnerability to death, I draw
on structural-realist theory; macro-political and historical arguments about the effects of technology on international politics (especially those of Barry Buzan); arguments about the offense-defense balance articulated by George
9
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Eastern states comprising 3,153 state years -- 37% of the state years I have identified. Systematically
excluded from the data are small, young, dead, 19
th
century, and non-European states (Adams 2003).
Given these problems with data on international system membership, I have developed my own
data set, the State Survival and Death (SSAD) Data, which includes all of the states that survived and died
by all means -- conquest, union, revolution, disintegration, and collapse -- in Europe and the Middle East
from 1816 to 1994.
I am currently updating this data to 2005.
What Are Reasonable Hypotheses about Trends in State Survival and Death?
Like Tilly, I expect international conditions as well as military and economic factors to strongly
affect the life chances of states. Unlike Tilly, I am willing to go out on a limb and specify these
expectations in testable hypotheses with clear causal claims, instead of couching them in terms of
historical contingencies and conjunctures. Although this will no doubt make me the target of even more
back-handed criticism than Tilly has received for his sweeping, yet contingent, historical studies,
it is the
only way to gain any leverage on the question of what it will take for states to survive and prosper in the
coming decades, a question well worth answering, in my view, given the negative implications of state
death for individual, social, and international security (Adams 2000, ch.1).
My hypotheses concern both the causes and consequences of state survival and death. Moreover,
because I want to answer the fundamental national security question of what it takes for states to survive,
I consider all possible means of death -- conquest, union, revolution, disintegration, and collapse. In
particular, I ask, when are states most and least vulnerable to death? Are they vulnerable to death by
different means in different eras? Do states that die have different military, economic, or political
capabilities or attributes than those that survive? Which contemporary states are most vulnerable to
death, what can they do to survive, and how can other states help them? Finally, what effects does
international assistance have on international conflict and cooperation, and on the rise and fall of great
powers?
To answer these questions, I elaborate hypotheses about the domestic, international, and
technological causes of state vulnerability to death, as well as about the individual and international
consequences of state death. These hypotheses are based on the existing literature on state death,
prominent theories of international politics (especially Waltz’s structural-realist theory),
and arguments
about the offense-defense-deterrence balance of military technology, Fordist and post-Fordist industrial
production technologies, and the relationship between military and economic technologies.
4
For descriptions of the data, see Adams (2000, 2003, and 2003/04). See also the codebook for Adams (2003/04),
5
Lynn, for example, writes that Tilly, “like some motorcycle dare-devil, …pleases his fans not so much by clearing
all the obstacles as by simply demonstrating the nerve to make the leap” (1991, 86).
6
This literature focuses on the effects of bad leadership, weak socio-economic and political structures, culture, and
unworkable size. Among the scholars whose work I consider are Aristotle, Machiavelli, Karl Marx, Arnold
Toynbee, Theda Skocpol, Joel S. Migdal, I. William Zartman, Peter Evans, Francis Fukuyama, Graham Fuller, and
Leopold Kohr.
7
The international relations theories and arguments upon which I focus are structural-realist theory as developed by
Kenneth N. Waltz; liberal and constructivist arguments about international norms advanced by Robert H. Jackson, J.
Samuel Barkin and Bruce Cronin, and Alexander Wendt; and Tanisha Fazal’s argument about the vulnerability of
buffer states.
8
In developing arguments about the effects of the technological environment on state vulnerability to death, I draw
on structural-realist theory; macro-political and historical arguments about the effects of technology on international
politics (especially those of Barry Buzan); arguments about the offense-defense balance articulated by George
9
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