State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

State Formation
Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, Philipp Lottholz

LAST REVIEWED: 02 MARCH 2020

LAST MODIFIED: 25 MARCH 2020
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199756223-0123

Introduction

The term state formation is most commonly used to describe the long-term processes that led to the genesis of modern political
domination in the form of the territorial sovereign state. In a few works, the terms state-building, nation-building, or institution-building
are used synonymously with state formation. In the social sciences mainstream literature, modern state formation is understood to have
originated in Europe and expanded to other world regions through European colonialism and the later integration of postcolonial states
into the international state system. This literature has reconstructed modern state formation in Europe and the parallel formation of the
international system of states as a complex directional but non-steered historical process, which comprises different central elements.
These include, most importantly, the monopolization and institutionalization of the legitimate means of violence and various functions
carried out on this basis, such as taxation, social ordering and policing, and maintenance and use of military capacities; the successive
democratization of these monopolies; the bureaucratization, rationalization, and depersonalization of rule; the idea of territorial
boundaries of state rule coupled with the idea of state sovereignty; symbolic practices meant to ensure the legitimacy of state
domination; the embedding of these processes into the expansion of capitalism as a dominant form of economic reproduction; and the
emergence of classes and nations. The predominant consensus in this literature is that, in other world regions, modern state institutions
were mostly first introduced by European colonial rule, but coalesced with local forms of political organization in a number of ways. The
trajectories of colonial and postcolonial state formation have therefore differed from the European experience and brought about
different types of modern states, such as the developmental state, the neopatrimonial state, or the socialist-bureaucratic state. As part
of these developments, informal states, which show a de facto character of statehood but lack formal international recognition,
represent another form of modern state formation. Critics of the Eurocentric view on modern state formation have argued that the state
has a much longer trajectory than the focus on modernity would suggest and that it can be understood only through a long-term
historical perspective (Braudel’s longue durée). Others have pointed to the often-neglected oriental influences on occidental state
formation. These critical perspectives, which come from diverse fields in history and the humanities and within critical and decolonial
approaches in social and political inquiry, are entangled with wider debates on concepts such as modernity, capitalism, empires, and
civilizations. Since the mid-1990s, state formation has also been discussed as a concept describing the effects of the politics of state-
building, a central aim and instrument of many contemporary international military and civilian interventions, on the recipient states.
Here, state formation is used to differentiate the multiple intended and unintended effects of international military and civilian
interventions on the de-/institutionalization dynamics of states from their stated goals.

Premodern State Formation and Cross-Cultural Views

To understand where the modern state is coming from, and what differentiates it from other or earlier state forms, it is useful to look into

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…3/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 1 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

processes of premodern state formation as well as into works that compare the western European process of modern state formation
with other regions or highlight the influences the oriental world had on the occident. Claessen and Skalnik 1978 and Feinman and
Marcus 1998 are overviews of archaeological and anthropological research on the “early” or “archaic” state in different world regions, its
emergence, functioning, and decline. The contributions in Jones and Kautz 2010 employ ethnohistorical and archaeological methods to
analyze sociopolitical, ideological, and environmental factors of early modern state formation. The authors of Blanton and Fargher 2008
look at the same topic, but from an unconventional perspective, by using rational-choice theory to study collective action as an element
in early state formation, thereby questioning some of the core assumptions of more classical studies. Anderson 2013 locates the
modern absolutist state in Europe within a broader historical perspective stretching from Antiquity to feudalism to the modern state.
Lieberman 2003 and Hui 2005 are illuminating cross-regional comparisons of state formation processes in East and West.

Anderson, Perry. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: Verso, 2013.

This book and its companion volume, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 2013), explore the transition from ancient to
medieval-feudal modes of production and society formation in both western and eastern Europe as a precursor to the later formation of
the absolutist state, thus helping to put the formation of the modern European state into a broader historical and international
perspective. First published 1974.

Blanton, Richard, and Lane Fargher. Collective Action in the Formation of Pre-modern States. New York: Springer, 2008.
Role of human action (rational-choice theory) at center of study of the formation of premodern states. Theory test of collective action
using cross-cultural sample of premodern societies. Findings question the dominant view that powerful despotic rulers dominated
premodern states and suggest that collective forms of rule account for the successful establishment of premodern states.

Claessen, Henri J. M., and Peter Skalnik, eds. The Early State. New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 1978.
Comprehensive edited volume discussing theoretically and empirically the emergence of early, premodern states in different world
regions and synthesizing theoretical and empirical findings in a concluding part of the book. Good introduction to classic scholarship
about the early state.

Feinman, Gary M., and Joyce Marcus. Archaic States. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1998.
Collection of essays providing archaeological insights into the operation and diversity of ancient states as well as their rise and fall.
Includes case studies from the Andes, Egypt, India and Pakistan, and Mesoamerica.

Hui, Victoria Tin-bor. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2005.
Argues against idea of uniqueness of the modern western state system by juxtaposing it with periods in ancient China that knew
systems of sovereign states. Discusses why China and Europe shared similar processes like war making, centralized bureaucratization,
expansion of trade, and emergence of citizen rights, but with diverging outcomes.

Jones, Grant D., and Robert R. Kautz. eds. The Transition to Statehood in the New World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 2 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

University Press, 2010.

Introduction into anthropological understandings of the early origins and forms of the state and related questions of ethnohistorical and
archaeological methods. The chapters analyze early state formation in terms of its sociopolitical factors (particularly the role of
chiefdoms and class), environmental factors (i.e., ecological and habitat), and ideological factors (i.e., religion and psychology). First
published 1981.

Lieberman, Victor. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830. Vol. 1, Integration on the Mainland. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Important two-volume global history of state formation. Traces state formation trajectories in Burma, Siam, Vietnam, France, the
Russian Empire, and Japan in attempt to overcome the East-West binary of historical understandings. Main finding: despite profound
differences in demography, culture, administration, and economic structures, regions share “synchronized political rhythms,” pointing to
Eurasian interdependence. Vol. 2, Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2009).

World History, Global Historical, Sociological, and Decolonial Perspectives

World history, global historical sociological and decolonial perspectives offer insight into and reflection on the contested and
complicated status of theories of modern state formation. They problematize the idea that state formation in Europe was a historically
and geographically unique process and offer a critical counter-perspective to modern state formation’s positive normative construction
through frames like progress, liberation, and Enlightenment. Arnason, et al. 2005 introduces the challenge that world history and
particularly the emergence of axial civilizations around the first millennium BCE pose to accounts of European modernity and,
particularly, its exceptional and superior status. The challenge of multiple or “plural modernities” is further examined in Costa, et al.
2006, while Delanty 2006 and Hobson 2004 offer a historical deconstruction of the very categories that have informed modern theories
of the state and its formation. Delanty and Isin 2003 and Go and Lawson 2017 demonstrate how such critical historical and conceptual
insights have inspired the emergence of a post-Eurocentric and “post-orientalist” global historical sociology. Finally, both Bhambra 2014
and Gutiérrez Rodríguez, et al. 2016 show how these debates have ultimately led to a decolonial critique that not only historically
analyses the contemporary capitalist (state) system, but also seeks forms of resistance, autonomy, and dignity within (or without) it.

Arnason, Johann P., Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, and Björn Wittrock, eds. Axial Civilizations and World History. Leiden, The
Netherlands: Brill, 2005.
This volume widens the perspective onto debates on world history and the phenomenon of axial civilizations, which emerged in the first
millennium BCE in Persia, China, India and the Mediterranean with little to no contact among each other and produced new forms of
religion and philosophical thought. Parts 1 and 5 introduce this debate and its implications for ideas of modernity and world history,
while the three middle parts examine the various dynamics and “breakthroughs” of that period.

Bhambra, Gurminder K. Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Bhambra’s monograph presents a key element in the formation of a global sociology and its engagement with postcolonial and
decolonial horizons. She reviews and goes beyond the challenge posed to the classical canon by multiple modernities and world
history, as she points to the “indigenous” and “subversive” voices that would have to be heard for sociology to accommodate the

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 3 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

“Southern” viewpoints, but also pushes the agenda further to “decolonial reconstructions” and an appreciation of the “always-already
global” nature of societies across both space and historical epochs.

Costa, Sérgio J., Maurício Domingues, Wolfgang Knöbl, and Josué P. da Silva, eds. The Plurality of Modernity: Decentring
Sociology. Munich: Rainer Hampp Verlag, 2006.
An early key work reconsidering sociological theories of social order in light of Eisenstadt’s argument that there exist “multiple
modernities” rather than just the one European version of it. The chapters introduce this approach, discuss its implications for
comparative sociological research and political sociology, and examine its relevance in a number of fields, including social policy,
development, and also in relation to specific contemporary concepts like “community policing” or “street cultures.”

Delanty, Gerard, ed. Europe and Asia beyond East and West. London: Routledge, 2006.
The volume offers a well-founded reconsideration of theories of European modernity, “the rise of the West,” and constructions of East
and West by exploring historical encounters between the two, cases of in-between-ness and otherness within these categories.

Delanty, Gerard, and Engin F. Isin, eds. Handbook of Historical Sociology. London: SAGE, 2003.
This comprehensive volume maps out historical sociology within the thought of Marx and Weber and vis-à-vis the French traditions of
Durkheim and Braudel (chapter 4) and the “civilization-analytic frameworks” of Elias, Nelson and Eisenstadt (chapter 5). The editors
situate the volume at a juncture toward a “post-disciplinary historical sociology” that is less explanatory, theory-testing, and Eurocentric
in its outlook, and more oriented toward interpretivist methods and postcolonial, “post-orientalist” perspectives (introduction).
Foregrounds critical considerations of state formation (chapter 17) and important elements thereof, such as the emergence of
parliaments (chapter 18), social movements (chapter 19), cities (chapter 20), and the dynamics between “East” and “West” (chapter
15).

Go, Julian, and George Lawson, eds. Global Historical Sociology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
The latest volume laying out the innovation of global historical sociology and, particularly in the chapters by Norton and Barkawi, the
fact that, rather than seeing the state as a structural entity or condition that spread from Europe throughout the world, one should see
the state as constituted by the “circulation of goods, people, services, and ideas” and the interconnections and relations between states.

Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Encarnacion, Manuela Boatcă, and Sergio J. Costa, eds. Decolonizing European Sociology:
Transdisciplinary Approaches. London: Routledge, 2016.
First published 2010. Carrying forward debates on plural modernities, postcolonial perspectives, and connected sociologies, this is the
first volume proposing a “decolonization” of sociology and exploring possibilities of doing so through the themes of modernity, border
epistemology, migration, and southern theory, with deep implications for how the state and global state formation are conceptualized.

Hobson, John M. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Important contribution questioning the Eurocentrism of western accounts of world history and exposing the autonomous, internally

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 4 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

generated process of modern transformation in and dominance of the West as a politically invented myth. Rather, the author shows
how western Enlightenment borrowed ideas from the non-Western world, especially East Asia.

Modern State Formation in Europe

This section explores the processes of modern state formation in Europe. The first subsection introduces Classic Reads, which many
other studies on Western and non-Western state formation refer to. The following three subsections are dedicated to specific aspects of
(the image of) the modern state: the Monopolies of Violence and Taxation; Sovereignty and Territoriality; and Legitimacy, Bureaucracy,
Regimes (regime types in particular). This separation of the different aspects is, of course, an artificial one and mainly serves the
purpose of systematization; in reality, these aspects have to be thought of together as a broader process of modern state and society
formation in Europe, comprising and establishing both practices and ideas of the state.

Classic Reads

A number of classic key texts on state formation are cited, used, and sometimes expanded on in many of the ensuing works on state
formation and can therefore be seen as must-read volumes for anyone interested in the topic. This concerns, first of all, Weber 1978,
the author of which not only coined one of the most influential definitions of modern statehood, but more generally describes the
processes of rationalization and bureaucratization that mark capitalist modernity and thus also the formation of the modern state.
Giddens 1985 offers a traditional representation of the emergence of the modern nation-state and the international state system that
dominates many theories of international relations. Mann 2012 represents a broad view on the formation of the modern state as the
result of contingent interrelations of four major sources of power in human societies. Elias 2000 and Tilly 1992 are core readings on the
connection between the monopolization of violence and taxation in modern European states. Bourdieu 1999 directs our attention to the
symbolic side of the state. Foucault—here represented by Burchell, et al. 2009—makes us aware of the broader themes of knowledge,
regulation, and discipline into which state authority is embedded. Gramsci 1971 offers a neo-Marxist class-centered take on the state
and its formation.

Bourdieu, Pierre. “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field.” In State/Culture: State-Formation
after the Cultural Turn. Edited by George Steinmetz, 53–75. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Discusses the symbolic power on which modern state rule is based, or “state capital,” consisting of violence, economic capital (tax and
regulation), informational capital (curricula, knowledge etc.), and symbolic capital (juridical discourse etc.), and endowing the state with
the authority to exercise final judgment within its territory.

Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality; With Two Lectures by
and an Interview with Michel Foucault. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Collection of essays on, and lectures/interview by, Foucault regarding his highly influential concept of governmentality, which
understands the modern state as embedded in the emergence of wider techniques of government and corresponding forms of
knowledge, regulation, and discipline (of the self, the body, etc.) that characterize modernity.

Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Rev ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 5 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

Theory about process of modern state formation as civilization with a sociogenetic and a psychogenetic dimension. The state’s
sociogenesis is marked by the monopolization of violence and taxes and social differentiation through which these monopolies are
democratized. Its psychogenesis is the parallel process of individuals’ incorporation of violence control as self-constraints. First
published 1939.

Giddens, Anthony. The Nation-State and Violence. A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism 2. Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press, 1985.
Genesis of the European state from the nonmodern to the modern nation state, characterized by sovereignty, high-intensity impersonal
administrative power, information storage, internal pacification, and the development of class, citizenship, nationalism, capitalism, and
industrialism. Additional focus on industrialization of war in the 20th century and relations between nation-states and the state system.

Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith.
London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971.
Neo-Marxist understanding of the state with (segments of) classes at the center: state power emerges from their capacities, will, and
resources and is not a “neutral” form of political organization, but essentially political. Their political nature explains why states are in
the end always violent, unstable, and marked by inequality.

Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power. Vol. 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760. 2d ed. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Historical and sociological journey through the history of social power relations from the beginning of stratified societies to the 20th
century. As analytical framework the author refers to four sources of social power (ideological, economic, military, political), which
historically relate in contingent ways. First volume of a four-volume work.

Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992.
Theory on connections between war making and state making. Explores modern states’ trajectory from territorial states, city-states, and
city-leagues to their convergence on the territorial sovereign nation-state model. Specific combination of capital and coercion within
each entity and the interplay of war-making states at the international level offered as explanation.

Weber, Max. Economy and Society. 2 vols. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1978.
Central reference on power, dominance, and sources of legitimacy of rule. Famous definition of state as “human community that
successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Weber’s major concern, however, is
tracing processes of rationalization, depersonalization, and bureaucratization as characteristics of modernity. First published 1921–
1922.

Monopolies of Violence and Taxation

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 6 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

The works in this section delve deeper into the processes of monopolization of the legitimate use of the means of violence and of fiscal
monopolization as crucial elements of modern state formation in Europe. Central to this discussion are Elias 2000 and Tilly 1992 (both
cited under Classic Reads). The contributions in Tilly 1975 look in depth at different aspects of the processes of monopolization of
violence and taxation, while the historical-economy essays in Bonney 1999 deepen the study of the development of fiscality in different
European countries. Levi 1988 traces the connection between rulers understood as maximizers of personal objectives and state
revenues from Antiquity to the modern state. Thompson 1994 looks at the role played by states’ use of private violent actors in the
modern state formation process, showing that the establishment of armies is a rather late development. Thompson and Rasler 1999
provides a theory test of two different strands of thought about the connection between war making and state making, while Wimmer
2012 looks at this connection from a rationalist-quantitative perspective. Spruyt 2002 uses theories of historical state formation to make
sense of the transformation of the modern state in times of globalization. Gerstenberger 1990 (in German), finally, suggests a theory of
modern European state formation that traces especially how the state successively detached from the person of the ruler (hence the
title “subject-less violence/power”).

Bonney, Richard, ed. The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200–1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Explores the emergence and development of fiscality in the European state formation process. Analyses of technical developments,
innovation, expansion of sources of funding, and governments’ capacity to borrow money. Western European developments are
juxtaposed with developments in Poland and Russia. Rather specialized read on the fiscal-economic side of modern European state
formation.

Gerstenberger, Heide. Die subjektlose Gewalt: Theorie der Entstehung bürgerlicher Staatsgewalt. Münster, Germany:
Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1990.
Traces the emergence of the modern state in England and France from the time of the absolutist Ancien Régime of the Bourbons to the
bourgeois state and compares these two trajectories to formulate a theory of modern state formation in Europe. Major work on modern
state formation in German.

Levi, Margaret. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
State formation as a history of state revenue. Using a “theory of predatory rule,” i.e., rulers’ drive to maximize personal objectives
through maximizing state revenues in constant negotiations with other agents and constituencies, the author explores revenue
production in Republican Rome, France, England, and Australia.

Spruyt, Hendrik. “The Origins, Development, and Possible Decline of the Modern State.” Annual Review of Political Science 5
(2002): 127–149.
Discusses security, economic, and institutionalist accounts of modern state formation to shed light on the contemporary development of
the state under globalization. Argues that the juridical notion of sovereignty based on territoriality needs to be distinguished from the
notion of autonomy to understand recent developments: the former remains intact, the latter declines.

Thompson, Janice E. Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern
Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 7 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

Shows how during much of modernity the means of violence were democratized, marketized, and internationalized through states’ use
of privateers, mercenaries, and mercantile companies to wage war. Monopolization through elimination of private forces is only a later
development. Complements Tilly 1992 on war making and state making (cited under Classic Reads).

Thompson, William R., and Karen Rasler. “War, the Military Revolution(s) Controversy, and Army Expansion: A Test of Two
Explanations of Historical Influences on European State Making.” Comparative Political Studies 32.1 (1999): 3–31.
Discusses/tests two central theories of modern state formation: first, that change in weapons and tactics led to the expansion of armies
and thereby of states; and, second, that rulers’ war making as such (not innovation in its instruments) expanded state organizations.
The authors find more evidence for the second theory.

Tilly, Charles, ed. The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
Covers several aspects of modern state formation in different countries, including the role of the military, the police, financial policy,
taxation, food supply, and administration as well as two essays with general reflections and conclusions about Western state formation
by the editor. Useful overview of different aspects of European state formation.

Wimmer, Andreas. Waves of War: Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Rationalist-quantitative study exploring relationship among war, state centralization, military mobilization, and nationalism as driving
forces in the emergence and establishment of nation-states. Based on extensive statistical data, but has been criticized for glossing
over interactions, contingencies, and unintended outcomes in its quest for rationalist causal patterns on a grand scale.

Sovereignty and Territoriality

Alongside the monopoly of violence, territoriality and sovereignty are two central aspects of standard definitions of modern states and
core principles seen to structure the international system of states. While often taken as fixed principles, both have been shown to be
contested and in constant transformation, not least through more recent processes of globalization. Anderson 1997; Brenner, et al.
2003; Ruggie 1993; and Sassen 2006 look at the connections between territory and rule from different perspectives, through different
times, and in different world regions. While Anderson 1997 focuses on the role of territory and frontiers in state formation processes,
Ruggie 1993 offers a good discussion of alternatives to the territorial organization of political rule and why they did not prevail. Brenner,
et al. 2003 shows how territory and boundaries are contested and transformed in a globalizing world. Sassen 2006 introduces the
concept of “assemblages” to look at the global relationships among territory, authority, and rights in different historical phases. Taken
together, these works help to understand and at the same time to question the centrality of the principle of territoriality in modern state
formation. They also hint at the fact that rule can be organized in nonterritorial ways, and that many of the globalizing political
processes we face today undermine the idea and reality of borders. Bartelson 1995, Biersteker and Weber 1996, Krasner 1999, and
Teschke 2003 are influential works on the principle of sovereignty. Teschke 2003 puts into question the idea held dearly in the discipline
of international relations that the Peace of Westphalia marked a watershed moment in western European history, giving birth to the
system of sovereign territorial nation-states. Bartelson 1995 traces the shifts in historical meanings of sovereignty through a genealogy
approach. The essays in Biersteker and Weber 1996 put the socially constructed nature of sovereignty center stage. Krasner 1999
suggests the introduction of different dimensions of sovereignty, some of which are more often violated in international politics than
others. Despite their vast differences in approaches, all these works seek to question simple conceptualizations of sovereignty in the

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 8 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

modern state formation process.

Anderson, Malcolm. Frontiers: Territory and State-Formation in the Modern World. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1997.
Discusses connections between state formation and frontier development and related questions of citizenship, identity, migration,
purposes of the state, and legitimacy. Chapters analyze frontiers and their connection with the political life of and within states in
theoretical and empirical, historical and contemporary, European and non-European perspectives.

Bartelson, Jens. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Traces the meanings of the concept of sovereignty, and its relationship to truth, from the Renaissance to the present. Focusing on the
relationship between term, concept, and reality of sovereignty, it argues that sovereignty and political knowledge “implicate each other
logically and produce each other historically” (see p. 5). Suitable for advanced students.

Biersteker, Thomas J., and Cynthia Weber, eds. State Sovereignty as Social Construct. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
Shows that sovereignty is not a timeless principle, but a social construct that is contested and constantly reproduced. Authors theorize
and trace how elements of sovereignty—recognition, territory, population, and authority—are combined in specific historical contexts
and with different effects. Shows that state formation is an ongoing and contested process.

Brenner, Neil, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones, and Gordon Macleod, eds. State/Space: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Discusses the idea of the state as territorial and limits that this idea has in practice. Authors explore theoretical foundations of the
state/space nexus, the remaking of state territorialities under globalization, and the reshaping of political spaces at the regional,
national, and local levels. Encompassing overview of the state’s (contested) territoriality.

Krasner, Stephen D. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Differentiates between two notions of sovereignty, which have been honored to different degrees: the less problematic international
legal sovereignty (recognition of territories as states) and the more often violated Westphalian sovereignty (principle of noninterference
in other states’ affairs). National power and interests, according to the argument, ultimately trump international norms.

Ruggie, John G. “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations.” International Organization
47.1 (1993): 139–167.
Based on the observation that systems of political rule need not be territorial, and that territorial rule need not result in a distinctive,
excluding unity of the territory but may actually be overlapping, the article traces how the idea of exclusive territoriality as characteristic
for the modern state developed.

Sassen, Saskia. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 9 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

Press, 2006.
Studies the development of three elements negotiated in any society—territory, authority, and rights—in three different historical
phases, namely medieval, national, and global assemblages. The author has been influential in establishing the concept of
“assemblages” as a descriptive category in the broader debate on nation-states and globalization.

Teschke, Benno. The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations. London: Verso,
2003.
Critique of the dominant assumption that interstate rivalry between sovereign nation-states dominated and shaped international
relations after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Choosing a historiographical approach, the book shows by contrast the dominant
importance of class conflict and economic development for shaping the modern state system.

Legitimacy, Bureaucracy, Regimes

While discussions on sovereignty, territoriality, and the monopoly of violence dominate works on modern European state formation, a
number of scholars have shown the importance of the symbolic and bureaucratic sides of power in the birth and functioning of modern
state (see also Bourdieu 1999 and Burchell, et al. 2009 [both cited under Classic Reads). Most classically, Beetham 2013 explores the
legitimation of power, deepening and differentiating Weber 1978 as to the legitimacy of rule (see Classic Reads). Bourdieu 2004 shows
the important role of self-interest among those representing the state, especially the legal professions, for its ensuing consolidation.
Mitchell 2006 too points to the practices through which the state is able to make itself appear as an autonomous field of action, despite
its deep entanglements with other fields such as law and economy. Badie and Birnbaum 1983 conceptualizes the modern European
state not as a historical outcome, but as an invented idea that later spread worldwide. Rokkan 1999 focuses on the connection between
state- and nation-building, and also Barkey and Parikh 1991 takes a look at connections between state and identity formation, social
movements, and economic development. Ertman 1997 discusses yet another aspect of the formation of the modern state: the
connection between state formation and regime types formed along the axes of patrimonialism–bureaucracy and absolutism–
constitutionalism. Rokkan 1999 complements this view with a discussion of the development of democratic politics in western Europe.
Walker 1993 discusses how thinking about world politics today is dominated by the idea of the modern state.

Badie, Bertrand, and Pierre Birnbaum. The Sociology of the State. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983.
Rejecting the evolutionary views of state formation formulated by Weber, Marx, and Durkheim, the authors question the widespread
assumption that the modern state is an inevitable outcome of history and argue that it is a European “invention,” which was then
disseminated to non-European societies through imposition or imitation. Translation from French.

Barkey, Karen, and Sunita Parikh. “Comparative Perspectives on the State.” Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1991): 523–549.
Discussion of research on state formation, the state’s role in economic development, and its relation to social movements and identity
formation. Concludes that state-society relations form a critical explanatory variable in studies of state action. Good first overview of
different strands of thought on state formation and their interrelations.

Beetham, David. The Legitimation of Power. 2d ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 10 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

Seminal work on legitimacy and the modern state, exploring the legitimation of power as theoretical problem, dimensions and problems
of legitimacy in the modern state, and legitimacy in the 21st century beyond the state. Together with Weber 1978 (cited under Classic
Reads) a must-read book for students interested in the legitimacy of rule.

Bourdieu, Pierre. “From the King’s House to the Reason of State: A Model of the Genesis of the Bureaucratic Field.”
Constellations 11.1 (2004): 16–36.
Discusses the role that the emergence of a strong bureaucracy played in the establishment of symbolic state power. State bureaucrats,
especially the legal profession, developed self-interest in the institutionalization of the state, accumulated bureaucratic knowledge, and
worked on the codification of an order, which constituted the state as separate field.

Ertman, Thomas. Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Referring to Classic Reads on state formation, particularly the works of Weber, Mann and Tilly, the book explains the emergence of four
different types of early modern states in Europe, differentiated along the axes patrimonialism–bureaucracy and absolutism–
constitutionalism: patrimonial absolutism in Latin Europe, bureaucratic constitutionalism in Britain, bureaucratic absolutism in Germany,
and patrimonial constitutionalism in Hungary and Poland.

Mitchell, Timothy. “Society, Economy, and the State Effect.” In The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Edited by Aradhana
Sharma and Akhil Gupta, 169–187. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.
Perspective on the state as field of action, which is seen as autonomous from other fields (economy, society, law). Although linked with
the other fields, the state bans these interdependencies from its image and appears as more than the sum of its components and a
structure outside of society.

Rokkan, Stein. State Formation, Nation-Building and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Edited by Peter
Flora, with Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Collection of Stein Rokkan’s writings on the political development in Europe from a historical-comparative perspective. Contains an
introduction to Rokkan’s oeuvre by Peter Flora, followed by two sections on the historical formation of states and nations in Europe and
on the development of democratic politics in western Europe.

Walker, R. B. J. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Influential analysis of the relationship between international relations theories and political theory of civil society. Points out how thinking
about world politics is dominated by the concept of the modern state, reflecting the modern state’s own ideology, and discusses why
rethinking international relations in other terms is so difficult.

Modern State Formation in the World

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 11 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

The subsequent sections explore modern state formation beyond the western European context. The first subsection introduces studies
on the Worldwide Pervasion of the Modern State model from the disciplines of history, international sociology, and international politics.
The second subsection presents political, sociological, and economic studies with a focus on state-society relations in state formation
processes worldwide, including studies of different types of the modern (non-Western) state. In the last subsection, works from the
disciplines of social anthropology and cultural studies are discussed, which draw attention to the role of everyday practices and
imaginations in the state’s formation and transformation. This systematization along the axis international–national–local is only an
analytical one, however; in most studies discussed all three arenas are present, albeit figuring to different degrees.

The Worldwide Pervasion of the Modern State

A central interest with regard to the formation of the modern state throughout the world concerns the question of how the Western
model spread and came to dominate modern imaginations of political order. Badie 2000 and Reinhard 1999 focus on this question from
a historical perspective. The contributions in Reinhard 1999 (in German) ask whether and to what extent the export of the European
state model has been successful, while Badie 2000 is interested in the modes and logics of the state’s importation, through both
colonial imposition and voluntary adoption. Abou-El-Haj 2005 complements the historical perspective with an account of the late
Ottoman Empire, analyzed as a modern state in-formation itself, and its legacies for nation-states that emerged from it. Jung 2001 and
Meyer, et al. 1997 tackle the question of the worldwide dissemination of the modern state from the perspective of international
sociology. Meyer, et al. 1997 discusses different modes of institutional dissemination, including the concept of isomorphism. Jung 2001
argues that state formation needs to be conceptualized against the background of an ongoing modernization process that characterizes
world society in its entirety. An international politics perspective on worldwide state formation, finally, is provided by Ayoob 1995,
Jackson 1990, and Lawson 2006. Ayoob 1995 and Jackson 1990 focus on the relations between Third World states and the
international system of states, albeit from different perspectives. Lawson 2006 discusses the relations between state formation and the
formation of a regional system of states in the case of the Arab world after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Abou-El-Haj, Rifa’at Ali. Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. 2d ed. New
York: Syracuse University Press, 2005.
Analyzes the late Ottoman Empire as modern state comparable to others in Europe and Asia at the time. Good additional read to
understand the state character of the Ottoman Empire and its legacy for ensuing state formation processes in the regions of the Middle
East and southeastern Europe.

Ayoob, Mohammed. The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict and the International System.
Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995.
Explains persistent violent conflict and insecurity in the Third World by locating postcolonial states at an early stage of state making as
compared to the European formation experience. Discusses the role of the Third World in the international system and dynamics of
interstate conflict during and after the Cold War.

Badie, Bertrand. The Imported State: The Westernization of the Political Order. Translated by Claudia Royal. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2000.
Seminal study on worldwide spread of the modern territorial state. Discusses different logics of state importation, from colonial
domination to the adoption of the state model by settlers or non-Western leaders, resulting in transformations of the state model and
conflictive discrepancies between political actions and representation. Translation from French.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 12 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

Jackson, Robert H. Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1990.
Studies decolonized states in the international system, conceptualized as “quasi-states,” which lack the traditional characteristics of
state sovereignty and chiefly exist due to the bestowal of sovereign rights by the international community of states. Also discusses the
(mainly negative) consequences of these processes for the societies of the decolonized states.

Jung, Dietrich. “The Political Sociology of World Society.” European Journal of International Relations 7.4 (2001): 443–474.
Puts the worldwide formation of modern states into a broader world society perspective. Drawing on sociological classics (Marx, Elias,
Weber, and Habermas; see Classic Reads), the article argues that world society is marked by an ongoing process of modernization and
discusses this with regard to processes of nation-state formation, global community formation, and the transnationalization of law.

Lawson, Fred H. Constructing International Relations in the Arab World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Analyzes the emergence and development of the regional system of sovereign nation-states in the 20th-century Arab world after the
Ottoman Empire’s demise. The author puts a special focus on the role of nationalist leaderships, labor movements, and other forms of
popular mobilization. Uses sociological theories of state formation for analysis.

Meyer, John W., John Boli, George M. Thomas, and Francisco O. Ramirez. “World Society and the Nation-State.” American
Journal of Sociology 103.1 (1997): 144–181.
Conceptualizes national societies and states as integral part of an all-encompassing world society. The authors of the influential
Stanford School of International Sociology are interested in explaining the worldwide construction and institutional similarity of nation-
states from the perspective of cultural and associational processes in world society.

Reinhard, Wolfgang, ed. Verstaatlichung der Welt? Europäische Staatsmodelle und außereuropäische Machtprozesse.
Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999.
Asks whether Europe has been successful in exporting the Western nation-state model worldwide. Contributions discuss processes
and limits of modern state formation in societies in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and South and
Southeast Asia. Major contribution in German on worldwide expansion of the Western state model.

State-Society Relations and Types of States

The works in this section focus predominantly on the national arenas of worldwide modern state formation, some of them developing
ideal-types or typologies of modern states. The essays in Centeno and López-Alves 2001 discuss the in-/adequacies of Western social
theory for the study of the modern non-Western state, using the Latin American experience as a “mirror.” Migdal 2001 develops a
sociological theory of state-in-society, which puts the co-constitutive processes of state formation and society formation center stage.
Migdal, et al. 1994 is an application of this state-in-society approach to empirical studies of a number of non-Western countries.
Schlichte 2005a (in German) argues similarly; it also puts forward a typology of non-Western states, including the big developmental

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 13 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

state and the neopatrimonial state, which mark two poles of a continuum of postcolonial states, and the bureaucratic-socialist state.
Beblawi and Luciani 1987 and Woo-Cummings 1999 are politico-economic essay collections on two types of modern states: the rentier
state and the developmental state (see also Bach and Gazibo 2012, cited under Sub-Saharan Africa on the neopatrimonial state). The
essays in Beissinger and Young 2002 and Schlichte 2005b, finally, discuss examples of state formation and state crisis dynamics in
different parts of the world. Beissinger and Young 2002 offers a comparative perspective between postcolonial and post-communist
states.

Beblawi, Hazem, and Giacomo Luciani, eds. The Rentier State. London: Croom Helm, 1987.
Classic essay collection on the evolution and economic foundations of the rentier state, a state that relies heavily on income derived
from external sources such as oil rents, workers’ remittances, or foreign aid. The concept was subsequently used in numerous other
studies of Western (Norwegian) and non-Western state formation.

Beissinger, Mark R., and Crawford Young, eds. Beyond State Crisis? Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in
Comparative Perspective. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002.
Comparison of state institutions, their (partly violent) breakdown, and their transformation in two regions: sub-Saharan Africa and the
former Soviet Union. Includes both case studies and comparative essays on similarities and differences between post-communism and
postcolonialism.

Centeno, Miguel Angel, and Fernando López-Alves, eds. The Other Mirror: Grand Theory through the Lens of Latin America.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Thought-provoking reassessment of social theories of state, property, race, and economics from a Latin American perspective.
Especially interesting in the context of state formation are the contributions by López-Alves (“The Transatlantic Bridge: Mirrors, Charles
Tilly, and State-Formation in the River Plate”) and Knight (“The Modern Mexican State: Theory and Practice”).

Migdal, Joel S. State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Constitute Each Other. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2001.
Develops a process-oriented conception of the state as an ongoing struggle between different groups in society over whose and which
rules will dominate. Focuses on coalitions between state and nonstate actors, how rules are created, how they structure everyday life
and meaning making, and how benefits and disadvantages are distributed.

Migdal, Joel S., Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue, eds. State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the
Third World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Based on the state-society approach to state theory (see Migdal 2001) the essays in this volume discuss the relationship among states,
societies, and politics in the Third World, especially through case studies of Brazil, China, India, postcolonial Africa, and Egypt.

Schlichte, Klaus. Der Staat in der Weltgesellschaft: Politische Herrschaft in Asien, Afrika und Lateinamerika. Frankfurt:
Campus, 2005a.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 14 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

Discusses sociological classics of modern state formation, before turning to theoretical and empirical observations about violence,
material reproduction, and symbolic orders in non-Western states. Most comprehensive book on the global expansion and
transformation of the Western state model in German language.

Schlichte, Klaus, ed. The Dynamics of States: The Formation and Crises of State Domination. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005b.
Essay collection aiming at overcoming the limits of ideal-typical understandings and analyses of the modern state by focusing on the
dynamics emerging between an idealized and internationalized image of and actual practices relating to the state. Case studies on
state dynamics in China, India, Liberia, Mexico, North Africa, Pakistan, Uganda.

Woo-Cummings, Meredith, ed. The Developmental State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Conceptual and case study articles on the “developmental state” as a specific type of modern state characterized by governments that
intervene in industrial affairs in their wish to promote economic advancement. Contributions explore relationships among political,
bureaucratic, and economic developments in Japan, East Asia, France, Brazil, Mexico, and India.

The State in Everyday Practices and Imaginations

Works from the disciplines of social anthropology and cultural studies have drawn attention to the local level of state formation and
transformation, the struggles, negotiations, and circumventions that happen in the everyday world of interactions, practices,
representations, and imaginations of state and nonstate actors. Sharma and Gupta 2006 is a reader compiling influential essays
contributing to a social anthropological exploration of the state and a very good entry point to this field. The contributions in Hansen and
Stepputat 2001 and Krohn-Hansen and Nustad 2005 highlight many of the themes discussed in the reader and provide in-depth
ethnographic analyses of state practices and imaginations in different countries. Das and Poole 2004 is similar, but explicitly focuses on
the margins of the state, i.e., on areas where the state is not or only sparsely present. Taussig 1997 is a partly ethnographic, partly
fictitious work exploring the fetishization of the modern state in Latin America. Steinmetz 1999 discusses the role of culture as a
constituent element of state formation processes. Culture is also the topic of Adams 2010, which explores the strategic cultural
production of national identity in the Uzbek state after independence. Another form of strategic, planned government action is
discussed, finally, in Scott 1998, a widely cited study of the failure of grand-scale state-led development schemes.

Adams, Laura. The Spectacular State: Culture and National Identity in Uzbekistan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Studies controlled mass spectacles organized by the Uzbek government in the post-Soviet era to produce national culture as part of the
state- and nation-building process and shows how these practices, meant to consolidate Uzbekistan as an independent state,
counterintuitively re-appropriate ideas and methods of Soviet cultural propaganda.

Das, Veena, and Deborah Poole, eds. Anthropology in the Margins of the State. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research
Press, 2004.
Ethnographic contributions explore transformations of the form and reach of the modern non-Western state under the conditions of
globalization in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. “Margins” means areas that are remote not geographically but in terms of the
agency and reach of the state.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 15 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

Hansen, Thomas Blom, and Finn Stepputat, eds. States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
Focus on dynamics of globalized registers of state governance and authority in Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Pakistan, Peru, and South
Africa. Essays explore state practices (territoriality and sovereignty, knowledge of the population, national economy) and symbolic
authority (institutionalization of law, state symbols and rituals, landscapes and cultural practices).

Krohn-Hansen, Christian, and Knut G. Nustad. State Formation: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto, 2005.
Rejecting the idea of the state as fixed object, contributions explore perceptions of the state and their reproduction and transformation
among state actors such as bureaucrats, politicians, and local communities. Case chapters on Mexico, South Africa, the Dominican
Republic, Peru, Guatemala, Norway, and the European Union.

Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1998.
Book about failed cases of large-scale authoritarian planning by states in order to promote modernization. Shows why such plans
based on formal, epistemic knowledge are bound to fail. Addresses among other topics states’ attempts to impose administrative order
on nature and society as a major feature of the modern state formation process.

Sharma, Aradhana, and Akhil Gupta. The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.
Compilation of texts on state formation and empirical-ethnographic analyses of specific practices, representations, processes,
institutions, and spaces of the state. Invitation to rethink the study of the state through a cultural lens and to locate it within the context
of a transnational, neoliberalizing world. Great introduction to critical literature on state formation.

Steinmetz, George. State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Examines processes of state formation through culturalist perspectives, which understand culture as a constitutive element of state
formation. The introduction offers a good overview of the culture-state problematic, strands of which are then developed in contributions
on culture in early modern state formation and its role in non-European states and in the modern Western state.

Taussig, Michael T. The Magic of the State. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Unusual “ethnographic work of ficto-criticism.” Explores how the idea of the state in a fictitious postcolonial Latin American country is
fetishized through magical powers and spectacles, including monuments, official textbooks, and spirit possessions. Interesting to read
together with Mbembe 2001 (cited under Sub-Saharan Africa), whose central argument is similar.

State Formation in Different World Regions

The works discussed in the subsequent sections are meant to give the reader an entry point into the vast literatures on the state and

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 16 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

state formation in different parts of the world. The regions discussed are Latin America; South, East, and Southeast Asia; Sub-Saharan
Africa; the Middle East and North Africa; and (South-)Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.

Latin America

Latin America was one of the first colonialized regions to experience independence in the early 19th century and thus also is a region
with a long experience of postcolonial state formation. The textbook Skidmore, et al. 2013 gives the broadest historical and political
overview of modern Latin America and is a very good starting point for students to explore the region. The essays in Dunkerley 2002
and Centeno and Ferraro 2013 offer a wealth of studies on different aspects of state formation in Latin American countries as well as
with regard to the former colonizer Spain, covering a broad range of countries and topics. López-Alves 2000 discusses the relationship
between state formation and the emergence of different political regimes in selected South American countries. Holden 2004 and
Centeno 2002 both concentrate on the relationship between violence and state formation in Latin America. Centeno 2002 uses Western
theories of war making and state making to explore the different institutional outcome of the war-state nexus in South America, while
Holden 2004 looks at the links between public violence and state formation in Central American countries. Colburn and Cruz S. 2007
complements the exploration of state formation in Central America with an economic perspective. The essays in Joseph and Nugent
1994, finally, study the state formation processes in the specific case of Mexico.

Centeno, Miguel Angel. Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America. University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2002.
Drawing on war-related theories of modern Western state formation (see especially Tilly 1992, cited under Classic Reads), this book
discusses why war making in Latin America did not lead to the same institutional outcomes regarding taxation, citizenship, and national
identity as in Europe, but rather destroyed institutions and deepened internal divisions.

Centeno, Miguel A., and Agustin E. Ferraro, eds. State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Republics of the
Possible. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Comprehensive volume on challenges of the conflictive state- and institution-building processes in Spain and Latin America from
independence to the 1930s. Wide range of institutions under study. Focus on organizational and political dilemmas, which have their
roots in this time but remain a problem of state consolidation to date.

Colburn, Forrest D., and Arturo Cruz S. Varieties of Liberalism in Central America: Nation-States as Works in Progress.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.
Uses the aspects of geography and political choice to explain the pluralistic trajectories of progress and stagnation in the processes of
state and nation formation in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua since the 1980s. Good economic
complement to Holden 2004.

Dunkerley, James, ed. Studies in the Formation of the Nation State in Latin America. London: Institute of Latin American
Studies, University of London, 2002.
Uses different disciplinary perspectives from culture and literature studies to historical and sociological approaches to look at different
cases and aspects of modern state formation in Latin America. Essays on Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Spain; topics

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 17 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

comprise violence, military conscription, finance, development, and liberalism, among others. Good first overview.

Holden, Robert H. Armies without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central America, 1821–1960. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004.
Analyzes the relationship between public violence in its national, regional, and international dimensions, patrimonial political cultures,
and state formation dynamics in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Special focus on the role of armed
actors: bands, semi-autonomous national armies, armed insurgencies, death squads, US military, and police collaboration.

Joseph, Gilbert M., and Daniel Nugent, eds. Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in
Modern Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994.
At the heart of this edited book are the historical articulations between state formation and local society’s popular cultures in
revolutionary and post-revolutionary Mexico, especially the relationship among power, culture, and resistance in Mexican state
formation. It brings together views from social history, anthropology, historical sociology, and cultural studies.

López-Alves, Fernando. State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810–1900. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2000.
Comparing Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina, Paraguay, and Venezuela, this book seeks to explain the different patterns of postcolonial
state and regime formation processes in South America, which led to political systems ranging from authoritarian military oligarchies to
popular democracies. Differences in civil-military relations are argued to be able to explain diversity.

Skidmore, Thomas E., Peter H. Smith, and James N. Green. Modern Latin America. 8th ed. New York: Oxford University Press,
2013.
Major textbook about modern Latin America, from colonial foundations to historical case descriptions of national developments in
selected countries and regions to themes of economic development, political transformation, culture, and world politics. Great gateway
for students into the history of the region, including the formation and development of nation-states.

South, East, and Southeast Asia

The works in this section were chosen to give a broad overview of the often quite different state formation trajectories in the Asian
subregions and to guide the reader toward starting points for more in-depth study of single subregions or cases. Given the size of the
region under exploration here, this can only be a very first step into a more comprehensive engagement with state formation in Asia. To
study the trajectories of state formation in Southeast Asia, Day 2002 provides a very good starting point. Slater 2010 and van Klinken
and Barker 2009 also examine Southeast Asian state formation. Slater 2010 explores the links between state capacity and the regime
type of authoritarianism in the subregion. Van Klinken and Barker 2009 addresses state formation and transformation in the specific
case of Indonesia from an ethnographic bottom-up perspective, focusing on local negotiations and symbolic practices surrounding the
state. Chong 2012 covers states in both Southeast Asia (Indonesia and Thailand) and East Asia (China) in a study of the role of foreign
powers’ intervention in the respective state formation processes. Bose 2004 and the contributions to Dornboos and Kaviraj 1997
explore state formation in South Asia. Bose 2004 compares India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, while Dornboos and Kaviraj 1997 compares
India with processes and challenges of state formation in Europe. Nasr 2001 looks at the role that Islam has played in state formation

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 18 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

processes in Pakistan and Malaysia. Rubin 1995 provides a study of the pre-Taliban rentier state formation in Afghanistan, which helps
explain the challenges of Afghan state formation to date.

Bose, Sumantra. “Decolonization and State Building in South Asia.” Journal of International Affairs 58.1 (2004): 95–113.
Studies the first decade of political development in three South Asian states that emerged from British colonial rule: Pakistan, India, and
Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). Argues that although these countries shared a similar colonial past, they developed different political patterns
post-independence, formed in the first decade of postcolonial state formation.

Chong, Ja Ian. External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, and Thailand, 1893–1952. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Explores interactions among major (colonial) power competition, foreign intervention, domestic politics, and state formation in China,
Indonesia, and Thailand. Argues that foreign rivalries may lead to dynamics of centralization, territoriality, and autonomy of the state,
when this is seen by the intervening foreign powers as hindering their adversaries.

Day, Tony. Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002.
Most comprehensive account of state formation processes in Southeast Asia, exploring historical trajectories, including aspects of
kinship networks, cosmologies, gender identities, bureaucracies, rituals, violence, and aesthetics. The author also discusses classic
state formation theories and historical and ethnographic writing on the region by scholars such as Clifford Geertz and Benedict
Anderson.

Dornboos, Martin, and Sudipta Kaviraj, eds. Dynamics of State Formation: India and Europe Compared. New Delhi: SAGE,
1997.
Essay collection on differences and similarities of state formation processes, dynamics, and challenges in India and Europe, with
specific focus on questions of citizenship, marginalization, and social movements.

Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Explores the role of Islam in the formation of the state in Malaysia and Pakistan. Argues that, next to Islamist forces in society, the state
itself played a crucial role in embedding Islam in state politics in these Muslim countries, in order to expand state power and control
over society.

Rubin, Barnett R. The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
Describes the formation and political economy of the pre-Taliban Afghan state. Afghanistan is characterized as a weak rentier state,
whose internal domination and politics were dependent on external financing, enabling state rule while at the same time hindering the
establishment of a strong central state vis-à-vis local rulers.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 19 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

Slater, Dan. Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2010.
Studies variation in state capacity and authoritarianism in Southeast Asia through a Hobbesian-inspired theoretical framework,
comparing Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Vietnam, and Thailand. The main argument is that strong
states and durable authoritarianism can be explained by “protection pacts” of broad elite coalitions against challenges of contentious
politics.

van Klinken, Gerry, and Joshua Barker, eds. State of Authority: The State in Society in Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2009.
Local perspective on post-militaristic order state-society relations in Indonesia after the shift to democracy in 1998. Fieldwork-based
case studies look at different everyday locales and actors and their local negotiations and symbolic practices referring to the state,
thereby accounting for the complexity of politics, state formation, and transformation in the archipelago.

Sub-Saharan Africa

From the vast literature on (the challenges of) the African state, the following works have been chosen to give a broad overview of
different scholarly discussions. Bayart 1996 traces the long-term state formation trajectories in Africa, connecting postcolonial
processes with precolonial and colonial phases. Cooper 2002 offers a very readable history of postcolonial African state and society
formation. Fourchard 2011 draws attention to the role of cities in shaping state-society relations in the African context. Berman and
Lonsdale 1992 looks at the colonial state in Africa and its difficult legacies for postcolonial state formation. Mamdani 1996 is a must-
read volume to understand the institutionally rooted, tension-filled relationship between states and citizens and its adverse effects on
democratization in post-independence Africa. Bach and Gazibo 2012 offers a comprehensive introduction into the state type of the
neopatrimonial state. Lund 2007 is a good complementary read; contributions explore the dislocation of public authority to other
institutions, which operate “in the twilight” between state and society and public and private realms. Mbembe 2001, finally, is a
postcolonial take on the state in Africa, which famously introduces the notion of the “banality of power” to describe the fetishization of
the modern state in the post-colony.

Bach, Daniel C., and Mamodou Gazibo, eds. Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012.
Introduction to concepts and empirics of neopatrimonial rule, in which boundaries between public policies and private interests of the
ruler are blurred and state resources used for rulers’ clientelistic relationships with (groups of) society. Case studies on Kenya, Nigeria,
Liberia, Niger; also analyses neopatrimonialism in the Philippines, Brazil, Uzbekistan, Italy, and in France’s Africa policy.

Bayart, Jean-François. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. London: Longman, 1996.
Influential book on distinctly African trajectories of state formation, politics, and power as part of long-term historical developments. Title
refers to the argument that African politics is organized around culturally specific registers, pointing to the feeding and survival of
populations and symbols of power around metaphors of eating and representations of sorcery.

Berman, Bruce, and John Lonsdale. Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa. Vol. 1, State and Class. London: Currey,

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 20 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

1992.
Discusses the development and political economy of the colonial state in Africa. Definition of state formation as opposed to state-
building, the latter meaning powerful attempts at establishing an apparatus of control, while the former refers to the unconscious and
contradictory historical process of “vulgarization” of power through conflicts, negotiations, and compromises.

Cooper, Frederick. Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Historical study connecting the colonial and postcolonial history of Africa with a focus on the processes of decolonization and
independence. Discusses both the historical trajectories that led to African states’ current world position as well as the effects of political
independence on state-society relations.

Fourchard, Laurent. “Between World History and State Formation: New Perspectives on Africa’s Cities.” Journal of African
History 52.2 (2011): 223–248.
Demonstrates the value of world history and the history of the state in studying contemporary urban dynamics on the African continent,
devoting particular attention to cities as the locales where state-society relations are shaped through social, economic, and labor market
policies.

Lund, Christian, ed. Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.
Bottom-up studies of attempts by African public institutions to establish legitimate authority in view of state weakness or failure. Focus is
on state-society encounters in mundane everyday practices relating to the state. “Twilight institutions” refers to dislocation of public
authority to other institutions operating between state and society and public and private realms.

Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1996.
Account of colonialism’s legacy of racial identity in citizens and ethnic identity in subjects. Discusses forms of colonial rule—direct,
indirect, apartheid—and shows through studies from Uganda and South Africa how institutional features enforce tensions between town
and country and between ethnicities, presenting a key challenge for states’ democratization.

Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Major postcolonial contribution on state, power, and subjectivity in Africa. Notion of “banality of power”: power is legitimated through
excessive pomp, ritual, and entertainment and the disarming of these official spectacles by people’s everyday jokes and humor (cf. also
Taussig 1997, cited under the State in Everyday Practices and Imaginations).

Middle East and North Africa

The following works offer a broad overview of themes related to state formation in the so-called MENA region: the Middle East and
North Africa. Khoury and Kostiner 1991 presents a historical perspective on and theoretical interpretations of the role of tribes in the

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-978019975…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 21 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

formation and maintenance of state structures in the Middle East. Owen 2004 is arguably the best book to get a broad overview of state
formation, political challenges, and post-9/11 dynamics; thus, it is a great starting point for explorations of the region. Bromley 1993 is
another good, though less comprehensive, introduction. Ayubi 2008 offers an impressive study of the political economy of state
formation in the Arab states. Hinnebusch 2010 formulates a historical sociology framework to explain variation in regime types in the
region. The Arab Spring is the point of departure for the essays in Christie and Masad 2013, which focus on the dynamics of state
formation in the MENA region under the conditions of globalization. A specific focus of the contributions is on the role of religion,
identity, and ethnicity. The last two contributions presented here discuss country cases: Jung and Piccoli 2001 looks at the specific
challenges of state formation in Turkey, while Migdal 2001 uses the author’s state-in-society approach (see State-Society Relations and
Types of States) to explore state and society formation in Israel.

Ayubi, Nazih N. Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008.
Politico-economic study of the formation and role of the state in the Arab world, accounting for the peculiarities and uniqueness of the
region. The author studies topics such as social classes, corporatism, economic liberalization, bureaucracies, and civil-military relations
in eight countries. Important contribution to the understanding of Arab state dynamics. First published 1995.

Bromley, Simon. Rethinking Middle East Politics: State Formation and Development. London: Polity Press, 1993.
Introduction to politics and state formation processes in the Middle East, in both historical and comparative perspective, including social
development. Good first overview of state formation trajectories and challenges in the region.

Christie, Kenneth, and Mohammad Masad. State Formation and Identity in the Middle East and North Africa. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Takes the Arab Spring as an occasion to reassess the formation of states in the region and their dynamics under conditions of
globalization. Contributions explore the historical, political, economic, and social factors in state formation processes; specific focus on
religion, identity, and ethnicity. Cases include Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries.

Hinnebusch, Raymond. “Toward a Historical Sociology of State Formation in the Middle East.” In Special Issue: The Future of
Middle Eastern Political Rule through Lenses of the Past. Edited by Morten Valbjørn and André Bank. Middle East Critique
19.3 (2010): 201–216.
Outlines a framework for a historical-sociological theory of state formation in the Middle East and demonstrates how this framework
comprising four ideal-types of regimes can be used to explain regime variation in the region.

Jung, Dietrich, and Wolfgango Piccoli. Turkey at the Crossroads: Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East. London: Zed,
2001.
Comprehensive study of modernization in Turkey from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century onward, which puts dynamics of state
formation in a wider context of internal conflicts between Kemalism, Islamism, and Kurdish nationalism, and of Turkey as a player in the
wider region of the Middle East.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 22 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

Khoury, Philip S., and Joseph Kostiner, eds. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East. London: I. B. Tauris, 1991.
Large interdisciplinary volume on the role of tribes in the formation and maintenance of state structures in the Middle East. While the
first section focuses on theoretical perspectives of state formation in this context, the second part presents case studies of particular
tribes on the Arab Peninsula and in North Africa.

Migdal, Joel S. Through the Lens of Israel: Explorations in State and Society. Albany: State University of New York Press,
2001.
Collection of essays on Israeli state and society formation processes and their co-constitution in the 20th century, using and nuancing
the author’s state-in-society approach (see Migdal 2001, cited under State-Society Relations and Types of States).

Owen, Roger. State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. 3d ed. London: Routledge, 2004.
Most comprehensive source on the Middle Eastern states since the end of the Ottoman Empire to date, covering states and state-
building, themes in contemporary Middle Eastern politics, and the impact of 11 September on the Middle East. Great gateway volume
for students into the politics and modern history of the region.

(South-)Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

This section discusses state formation processes in the regions of eastern Europe, southeastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union,
including the Caucasus and Central Asia. What unites these diverse regions and the countries therein is their socialist past. The
typology developed in Grzymala-Busse and Jones Luong 2002 is a good starting point into understanding and systematizing the
different trajectories of post-communist state formation and transformation. Ganev 2005 uses concepts by Tilly to study the processes
of institutional transformation in, and to explain the relative weakness of, early post-communist states. Taylor 2011 focuses on the
development of state institutions and on state-society relations in post-communist Russia. Grzymala-Busse 2007 deepens the study of
the development of post-communist eastern Europe by focusing on the relationship between parties and resource extraction for private
gains and its effect on institutionalization dynamics of the state. Institution-building processes in southeastern Europe from the late
Ottoman Empire to the modern nation-states are at the center of contributions in van Meurs and Mungiu-Pippidi 2011. Roy 2007 and
the contributions in Heathershaw and Herzig 2013 offer a good overview of the formation and transformation of states and societies in
post-Soviet Central Asia. This can be complemented with the ethnographic studies in Reeves, et al. 2014, which examines Central
Asian states through their everyday performance by state and nonstate actors.

Ganev, Venelin I. “Post-communism as an Episode of State Building: A Reversed Tillyan Perspective.” Communist and Post-
Communist Studies 38.4 (2005): 425–445.
Drawing on Tilly’s writings on modern European state formation (see Tilly 1992 [cited under Classic Reads] and Tilly 1975 [cited under
Monopolies of Violence and Taxation]), the author studies institutional transformations in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
post-1989 to explain the relative “state weakness” that these states experienced after the collapse of the old regimes.

Grzymala-Busse, Anna. Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-communist Democracies. New

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 23 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Looking at Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, the author studies
variation in post-communist state reconstruction regarding governing parties’ opportunistic extraction of state resources for private
gains. Shows the effects of elites’ opportunistic behavior on the institutionalization of state institutions, administration, and privatization
processes.

Grzymala-Busse, Anna, and Pauline Jones Luong. “Reconceptualizing the State: Lessons from Post-communism.” Politics
and Society 30.4 (2002): 529–554.
The authors analyze post-communist state formation as processes of elite competition over policymaking authority shaped by
institutional resources, the pace of transformation, and the international context. The article discusses four emerging ideal types of post-
communist state formation: democratic, autocratic, fractious, and personalistic.

Heathershaw, John, and Edmund Herzig, eds. The Transformation of Tajikistan: The Sources of Statehood. London:
Routledge, 2013.
Collection of essays surveying historical processes of state formation and state-building in Tajikistan and their present-day
manifestations, including traditional rituals or the political regime’s recourse to the Aryan civilization and the ancient Samanid Empire.

Reeves, Madeleine, Johan Rasanayagam, and Judith Beyer. Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.
Drawing on current theories of state power and state formation, the ethnographic contributions to this edited volume explore
understandings of state authority, democracy, and justice in the region and show how politics and the state are performed in everyday
life.

Roy, Olivier. The New Central Asia: Geopolitics and the Birth of Nations. 2d ed. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007.
Comprehensive introduction to the formative role of Soviet modernization in the formation of state institutions and state-society relations
in Central Asia, accounting for the role of various actors and social groups in these processes. Great first overview for students of state
formation in the region.

Taylor, Brian D. State Building in Putin’s Russia: Policing and Coercion after Communism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2011.
Examines President Putin’s strategy for rebuilding and strengthening the Russian state. The author argues that disregard for the quality
of relations between the state and its citizens negatively has impacted on state capacity. This is illustrated with a specific focus on the
ministries that control state coercion and on law enforcement personnel.

van Meurs, Wim, and Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, eds. Ottomans into Europeans: State and Institution-Building in South Eastern
Europe. London: Hurst, 2011.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 24 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

History of institutions and their variations in the Balkans from the late Ottoman Empire to post-Ottoman nation-states. Analyzes
bureaucracies, judiciaries, elections, media, and local and central government. Centers on questions of whether early post-Ottoman
institution-building failed in the Balkans and whether there are structural determinants explaining continuous institutional fragility in the
region.

Informal, De Facto, and Unrecognized States

Not all contemporary state formation processes take place in internationally recognized nation-states; in all world regions national
movements strive for greater autonomy or for secession and the establishment of their own state. Some of these movements have
established de facto states on parts of the national territory. The works discussed in this section study dynamics of state formation
under the conditions of nonrecognition and look at the interdependencies between unrecognized states and the international system of
states. Bahcheli, et al. 2004 gives a good empirical overview of the phenomenon with contributions on cases of unrecognized states in
different world regions. This case-focused approach can be complemented with Caspersen and Stansfield 2011, which includes
contributions that look into themes of interaction between unrecognized states and the international system. Coggins 2014 studies a
large data set, complemented by a number of in-depth case studies, to explain the failure or success of secessionist movements,
concluding that the decisive factor is great powers’ choices. Renders 2012 offers an in-depth study of state formation processes in the
Somaliland province within Somalia, which has been acclaimed as one of the most hopeful recent examples of substate peacekeeping.
Blakkisrud and Kolstø 2012 compares de facto state formation in three statelets in the South Caucasus and suggests explanations for
the variation in these processes. Isachenko 2012 studies the informal states of Northern Cyprus and Transdniestria (Transnistria) with a
specific focus on the symbolic and economic dimensions of informal state formation and on the interdependencies between internal and
international processes and interactions. Rafaat 2018 presents a similar study for the quasi-state in the Kurdish areas in Northern Iraq
and beyond, drawing attention to economic and political factors. Bakonyi and Stuvøy 2005 draws attention to the state-like processes of
establishing order in insurgency groups that are engaged in prolonged wars as a specific case of informal state formation.

Bahcheli, Tozun, Barry Bartmann, and Henry Srebrnik, eds. De Facto States: The Quest for Sovereignty. Abingdon, UK:
Routledge, 2004.
Collection of case studies on unrecognized or emerging de facto states, including Abkhazia, Bougainville, Chechnya, Kosovo,
Montenegro, Northern Cyprus, Palestine, Republika Srpska, Somaliland, and Transdniestria. Gives a good though slightly outdated first
overview of the phenomenon of unrecognized states.

Bakonyi, Jutta, and Kirsti Stuvøy. “Violence and Social Order beyond the State: Somalia and Angola.” Review of African
Political Economy 104.5 (2005): 359–382.
Explores nonstate social orders of violence that emergence in prolonged wars. The authors develop a conceptual continuum between
two ideal-types of institutionalization of authority—the warlord system and the quasi-state system of violence—which can be used to
systematize empirical cases. Especially quasi-state systems develop state-like structures.

Blakkisrud, Helge, and Pål Kolstø. “Dynamics of de Facto Statehood: The South Caucasian de Facto States between
Secession and Sovereignty.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 12.2 (2012): 281–298.
Comparative analysis of the long-lived unrecognized South Caucasian statelets of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh
with regards to their state- and nation-building efforts. While the authors point to variety among these cases, the decisive point in

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 25 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

variation is not the question of whether independent statehood is the goal.

Caspersen, Nina, and Gareth Stansfield, eds. Unrecognized States in the International System. London: Routledge, 2011.
Comprehensive edited volume addressing questions of the emergence, operations, and development of unrecognized states. Rather
than presenting case studies, contributions explore themes such as the interaction between unrecognized states and the international
system, the effects of nonrecognition on state formation, and strategies for dealing with unrecognized states.

Coggins, Bridget. Power Politics and State Formation in the Twentieth Century: The Dynamics of Recognition. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Explores the conditions under which secessionist movements are internationally recognized as new states. Large-N study of 20th-
century secessionist movements, complemented by in-depth case studies of Yugoslav secessions after 1989 and Soviet succession
wars. Argues that the decisive role in recognizing new states lies with the (parochial) choices of great powers.

Isachenko, Daria. The Making of Informal States: Statebuilding in Northern Cyprus and Transdniestria. Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Traces the strategies and processes of informal state formation in the self-declared unrecognized states of Northern Cyprus and
Transdniestria. Focusing on the symbolic and economic dimensions of the informal states, the author shows how these de facto states
participate actively in international politics, despite, or due to, their lack of recognition.

Rafaat, Aram. Kurdistan in Iraq: The Evolution of a Quasi-State. New York: Routledge, 2018.
In-depth study of both present-day and historical quasi-state projects in the Kurdish region in and beyond Northern Iraq, which analyzes
factors like the political economy, various forms of patronage, and internal politics.

Renders, Marleen. Consider Somaliland: State-Building with Traditional Leaders and Institutions. Leiden, The Netherlands:
Brill, 2012.
Good in-depth study of the current state and historical emergence of an order that looks and feels like a state, while not being
internationally recognized. Especially valuable given its detailed analysis of the political economy of cross-border trade and process-
tracing of the institutionalization and negotiation of de facto state structures by various actors and social groups.

International State-Building and State Formation

Since the mid-1990s, processes of state formation in non-Western regions have received new attention in the wake of the international
politics of liberal state-building as a civilian component that has accompanied many of the international military interventions into non-
Western states. The works discussed in this section deal not in the politics of state-building as such, but in the effects that international
interventions have on the dynamics of state formation and transformation in the recipient states. The contributions in Bliesemann de
Guevara 2012 give a good overview of different cases and aspects of the effects of international state-building on national state

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 26 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

formation. Chandler and Sisk 2013 is another key volume in the debate, with some contributions speaking more or less explicitly to
issues of state formation. Richmond 2014 discusses state-building failure against the background of classic state formation literature
and empirical insights from different intervention cases. Heathershaw 2009 studies how external peacebuilding in Tajikistan fostered
peace, but inadvertently contributed to an authoritarian development of the state. Herring and Rangwala 2006 is an in-depth study of
the adverse effects of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq on state and society. Lottholz and Lemay-Hébert 2016 combines
constructivist theory of international politics with critical peace-building theory to look into the semantics and concepts guiding state-
building intervention, including Weberian understandings of the state. Egnell and Haldén 2013 offers a similarly conceptually and
historically grounded intervention, which emphasizs the contingency and hybridity of modern state institutions and makes them hard to
re-create across contexts. Jeffrey 2013, finally, provides an alternative critical take on state-building in Bosnia-Herzegovina, here
understood as a constant performance of sovereign statehood through a series of improvisations by internal and external actors.

Bliesemann de Guevara, Berit, ed. Statebuilding and State-Formation: The Political Sociology of Intervention. London:
Routledge, 2012.
Studies the intended and unintended dynamics of state de-/institutionalization under the conditions of contemporary international state-
building interventions. Introduction discusses state-building in the light of state formation theories, especially Weber, Elias, Bourdieu
(see Bourdieu 1999 [cited under Classic Reads]). Case chapters on Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor,
Georgia, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, and the international community.

Chandler, David, and Timothy D. Sisk. eds. Routledge Handbook of International Statebuilding. London: Routledge, 2013.
Comprehensive volume analyzing dynamics of state-building through international intervention and state formation. Of particular
relevance are contributions by Bliesemann de Guevara and Kühn (chapter 3) with a comparative analysis of state-building situated on a
continuum from tax-based state financing to rentier state income; by Richmond (chapter 11), who derives a nonviolent and noncoercive
concept of “peace formation” from debates on state formation and juxtaposes it to the problematic realities of failed international state-
building; and by Sabaratnam (chapter 9) and Koddenbrock (chapter 10), who present historical and present-day accounts of state
weakness, failure, and continued relevance of the state in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, respectively.

Egnell, John, and Peter Haldén. New Agendas in Statebuilding: Hybridity, Contingency and History. London: Routledge, 2013.
A rare intervention into state-building and state formation debates that revisits historical perspectives and their relevance to
contemporary debates. Although a valuable contribution, it also throws up questions as to what extent historically informed perspectives
lend themselves to strategic considerations in present-day interventions.

Heathershaw, John. Post-conflict Tajikistan: The Politics of Peacebuilding and the Emergence of Legitimate Order. London:
Routledge, 2009.
Critical ethnographic study of international peacebuilding intervention in Tajikistan, suggesting that Tajik peace is characterized by
authoritarian governance, inadvertently facilitated by external intervention. Chapters on political parties and elections, the security
sector, and community development explore unintended effects of the intervention on dynamics of state and society formation and
transformation.

Herring, Eric, and Glen Rangwala. Iraq in Fragments: The Occupation and Its Legacy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 27 of 28
State Formation - Political Science - Oxford Bibliographies 10/14/20, 11:02 PM

2006.
Study of the consequences of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq on the politics and institutions of the country. The authors use
theories of state-building and formation and insights from international political economy to analyze the social formations, institutional
transformations, and violence that characterize post-invasion Iraq and set the course for the state’s future.

Jeffrey, Alex. The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton Bosnia. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2013.
Focus on how state sovereignty in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina is performed by international interveners and local actors. The author
suggests that “Bosnian sovereignty is best understood as a series of improvisations that have attempted to produce and reproduce a
stable and unified state.”

Lottholz, Philipp, and Nicolas Lemay-Hébert. “Re-reading Weber, Re-conceptualizing State-Building: From Neo-Weberian to
Post-Weberian Approaches to State, Legitimacy and State-Building.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29.4 (2016):
1467–1485.
The authors analyze how different interpretations of Max Weber’s work on the state and legitimacy (see Classic Reads) have
materialized in contemporary research on, and practice of, international state-building.

Richmond, Oliver P. Failed Statebuilding: Intervention, the State and the Dynamics of Peace Formation. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2014.
Explores why state-building has been difficult to achieve through international interventions. The author’s main argument is that
interveners have failed to meaningfully engage with local people’s wishes and needs. Interventions are discussed against the
background of core state formation literature (see Classic Reads).

back to top

Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved.

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-97801997…/obo-9780199756223-0123.xml?rskey=M0hsqi&result=2&q=state&print Page 28 of 28