This week we’re looking at how war makes states. To what extent and in what ways is the development of the state a product of fighting and winning international wars?
The late great sociologist and political scientist Charles Tilly said that ‘war made the state and the state made war’. Fighting and winning wars was, he argued, a crucial part of the story of how modern states built their bureaucratic capacity and their ability to do all the things that we want states to do.
But this so-called ‘bellicist’ account of the origins of state capacity – seeing the modern state as rooted in war – does not go unchallenged. In particular, some critics see it as unduly Euro-centric and that it just doesn't work outside of Europe.
We are joined by Dr Luis Schenoni, who has just been promoted to Associate Professor in International Relations here at the UCL Department of Political Science and who is also Director of our Security Studies Programme. In his new book, due out in July this year, Luis challenges that alternative perspective. He argues that, even in Latin America, the bellicist theory – if properly understood – does a remarkably good job in explaining outcomes.
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[00:00:00] Alan Renwick: Hello. This is UCL Uncovering Politics. And this week we're looking at how war makes states: to what extent and in what ways is the development of the state a product of fighting and winning wars?
Hello. My name is Alan Renwick. And welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics –the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London.
To quote the late, great sociologist and political scientist Charles Tilly, ‘war made the state and the state made war’. Fighting and winning wars was, he argued, a crucial part of the story of how modern states built their bureaucratic capacity and their ability to do all the things that, in today's world, we want states to do.
But this so-called ‘bellicist’ account of the origins of state capacity – seeing the modern state as rooted in war – does not go unchallenged.
In particular, some critics see it as unduly Eurocentric. They argue that beyond Europe, it just doesn't work. That in Latin America, for example, the 19th century did not see the large scale interstate conflicts that the theory sees as necessary for state formation.
Well, a new book due out in July this year challenges that alternative perspective. It argues that even in Latin America, the bellicist theory, if properly understood, does a remarkably good job in explaining outcomes.
The author of that book is Dr Luis Schenoni, who has just been promoted to Associate Professor in International Relations – well, congratulations, Luis, on that – here in the UCL Department of Political Science, and who is also Director of our Security Studies Programme.
And I'm delighted that Luis joins me now in the studio. So welcome, Luis, back to UCL Uncovering Politics. It's great to have you on the show again.
And let's start with some theory here, because you're exploring different theories of the role of war in state formation. And the core account that you start with is what we call the bellicist theory of state formation.
What exactly does that theory say?
[00:02:05] Luis Schenoni: Well, thank you for having me, Alan.
So this bellicist theory of state formation, as you mentioned in the introduction, is this idea that war made a state and the state made war, as you mentioned as well, coined by this sociologist Charles Tilly and mostly applied to the history of Europe, and northern Europe in particular.
It's essentially the idea that in the process of fighting wars against other states, the states built the capacity that they have today in many dimensions – initially, for example, by extending the size of the courts, really the first bureaucracies, as the King, let's put it, needed to mobilise an army to fight a neighbouring state. They needed to tax the population, to extract this revenue as sociologists put it. And to fight these wars, build larger armies.
Eventually, probably they faced rebellion of certain parts of the population that were against this taxation or were against recruitment and therefore they had to repress. And by doing so they developed the first repressive apparatus of the state or what sociologists often refer to as coercive capacities of the state.
And by that process, the states as we know it – what Tilly called the ‘national states’ – were born in Europe in the last, let's say, millennia. This is a very consolidated account of how the state developed in Europe, as I said before.
And we can think of more modern functions of the state as also coming from more recent wars, in particular the total wars of the 20th century. But for example, in the history of Britain, going a little bit earlier in history, famously the first income tax ever implemented in the world was William Pitt's income tax during the Napoleonic Wars, right? You can also trace, you know, the modern functions of the British welfare state to World War II and the Beverage Report in which he recommended among other things, for example, the founding of the NHS.
So there are lots of functions that the state accumulated more recently, even including education, health care, pensions, etc. that originated in this process of the war – fighting wars – historically.
So it's basically the main theory I would argue that we have to explain how modern states have developed and also how early states, sorry, came to be.
[00:04:25] Alan Renwick: That's really interesting.
So you mentioned there that Charles Tilly, this very famous sociologist, is often seen as the originator of this theory. But you also mentioned the UK and the development of the state through the 20th century in the UK and many other countries as well.
And I guess it's actually quite a familiar idea to non political scientists. It's an idea that's kind of quite widely assumed to be true out there, that the state developed in many states, in many countries through the 20th century, as a result of engagement in the First and Second World Wars.
[00:04:59] Luis Schenoni: Absolutely. And it's also not Charles Tilly’s for me.
So one of the point that I make in my book is that there is a classical bellicist theory that we can associate with historians like Otto Hintze, with early sociologists like Max Weber and others in, you know, the late 19th century, that had already kind of consolidated this kind of thought, as you said, not just in the social sciences, but also incorporating part of the humanities.
And it's an idea that is well regarded, I would say, across many disciplines.
[00:05:29] Alan Renwick: And yet it's also an idea that is sometimes criticised. And there's also a sort of anti bellicist view of the origins of state.
What's the basis of that criticism?
[00:05:41] Luis Schenoni: Well, there are alternative theories or ideas on how the states in history would – could – have formed, right?
So there's this idea, for example, that this could have to be where... Sorry, there's the idea that this could have to do with the prominence of a certain class, and that this class in the more like Marxist tradition then served itself off the state for the purposes of domination. Or there is the idea that states come together as a form in which society strives for the provision of certain public goods.
So there are alternative theories out there.
But I would argue that none is as powerful in explaining, you know, early states, or more recent states, the variation in state capacity in different parts of the world and across history as this idea of warfare, right?
But many people have argued more recently in the past 20 years, in particular out of studies of Latin America, that the bellicist theory of state formation is, as you said in introduction, a Europe-centric story – that it doesn't apply to the development of states in other regions that faced less stringent, frequent, severe warfare as Europeans did. And therefore, there should be alternative accounts for the development of states in other places of the world.
[00:07:04] Alan Renwick: I'm just thinking about the description of the theory that you offered there. I mean, it sounded essentially like you were saying: wars require states to do big things and to have capacity to do things, and as a result of that need, they develop their capacity.
And I mean I guess I have two thoughts in response to that.
First, well, maybe there are other things that states sometimes need to do that could lead to the development of state capacity.
And then second, just because you need to do something doesn't mean you can do it necessarily.
So I guess the logic of the theory doesn't sound to me, as a complete outsider from the literature and someone who doesn't know it at all well, doesn't sound obviously correct. And it sounds like there could be alternative stories of what is going on.
[00:07:58] Luis Schenoni: Yes. I think one reason why this story is particularly persuasive to me is that in many instances societies face a choice between, let's say, paying more tribute or tax to get more out of the state or not doing it. And the incentives to pay more tax in general are very low, right?
And these situations of facing an external existential threat put the population many times, it leads in position where, to preserve their survival, you know, they're willing to pay for those taxes and transfer some of the, say, power that they could have in their hands – think of, you know, lords or nobility in earlier periods of European modern history – and transferring those powers to the central state or more recently, you know, landed elites or elites in countries that would be in principle against the state incorporating a lot of functions or centralising power. Well, those elites that would be, in principle, against a larger state could be forced to comply under those circumstances.
So I guess that even if it's true that there are certain functions that we might want the state to have in principle, what is difficult is to break this deadlock and actually make people pay taxes and forfeit the power to make that actually happen.
And that might only happen under certain critical circumstance.
[00:09:31] Alan Renwick: So it sounds like a familiar problem from contemporary politics as well. Sorry, now I've lost my train of thought.
And am I right in thinking that there are also different kinds of accounts of the mechanisms that link war to state formation?
So in your account of the bellicist theory there, you focused particularly on the need for state capacity in order to fight war as being the key mechanism here. But there are other ideas about what might drive the link from war to state formation, aren't there?
[00:10:08] Luis Schenoni: Yes, and you're right. This mechanism that you mentioned is the main one – the one that has been developed the most, let's say, and the one that most people agree on.
There is a different idea out there that wars might also increase the level of state capacity in the international system by killing the weak states, right?
We've seen this perhaps in a bit in modern European history – that, you know, the states that survived perhaps were the ones, say, the Prussia’s, right? The ones that were the more sophisticated in particular in war fighting and the provision of certain public goods.
So there is this alternative idea that actually wars do not develop state capacity, but actually kill the states that are less capable.
There is this... The other idea that you mentioned, the idea that preparation for war or mobilisation develops state capacity for the purposes of fighting war. And the one thing that I add in my book, which is actually what I think the classic bellicist theorists like Hintze and Weber were thinking. But it's a bit more diluted in the scholarship of Tilly. But you mentioned it in the introduction as well, is the idea that the outcome – so victory – plays a role in the formation of states.
And the basic idea here is that while you develop capacity by fighting wars, so you increase the size of your armies, increase the size of your bureaucracies etc. Well, the long term legitimacy of that war effort and also of the political characters or leaders that fostered those initiatives, etc., will be determined by how successful you are in the war.
Whereby if you win these wars, well, potentially, that state that grew during the war with all of those new functions, then will then continue to provide those in the future. Whilst if you lose well, that might lead to what some scholars might call it state weakening or the undoing of many of the reforms that took place during the war period.
[00:12:40] Alan Renwick: So that mechanism, if you lose the war – so essentially the idea that state action is discredited because it leads to loss?
[00:12:51] Luis Schenoni: Yeah. I would say that in cases like – this is the point of the book and of what happened in Latin America – that states that didn't perform certain functions and then you have these leaders fighting this war and asking certain parts of the population to pay taxes and increase the size of the bureaucracy and the size of the armed forces.
Well, if they lost those wars, first, they were mostly ousted from power. But even successors in the roles, they were unable to repose those policies with fiscal, but also, for example, the size of the military was severely reduced, etc., to a point where, you know, states that lost wars historically became weaker, and more and more in time because of the absence of those state building policies.
[00:13:40] Alan Renwick: Great. So that's giving us a overview of the theory that is underpinning the analysis in this book.
Let's go into the empirical material that you're using in order to explore these ideas.
And I guess we should talk a bit about methodology first because methodology is always very important in political science, of course.
And so first of all, you're focusing here on Latin America. And the development of the state and the role of war in the development of the state in Latin America.
I guess the obvious first question is: why Latin America?
And presumably part of the answer is, well, you're from Latin America and you know a huge amount about Latin America. So why wouldn't you do Latin America?
But I mean, there's more to it than that as well. It's also, I guess, it's, as you said earlier, it's a part of the world that has been particularly associated with the idea that the bellicist account does not adequately explain outcomes.
[00:14:30] Luis Schenoni: Exactly. That, yeah, that last point I think is the main reason.
There was this one student of Charles Tilly at Columbia. His name is Miguel Centeno, now a professor at Princeton. And he basically in the 1990s came out with this idea that in certain regions of the world actually wars were not frequent enough or severe enough to have produced this kind of state capacity that we see in Europe. And on top of that, that wars in peripheral regions like Latin America, these wars also could be financed by foreign sources of capital –basically by resort to foreign loans or by resort to custom duties. And therefore the local populations didn't have to pay for these taxes. Thereby, you know, there were no revolts. And all of this European story actually doesn't work because of the lack of those European-specific factors.
And since him, essentially, most people working on the development of state capacity in the Global South – not just in Latin America, but also in Africa, Southeast Asia, etc. – have come up with similar arguments to the point that now we are in a situation where this theory that, as you said, is common-sensical and, you know, intuitively correct, is questioned in half of the globe. And we have several theories apparently explaining the development of a state in different regions, which is kind of a theoretical nightmare if you're interested in the topic.
[00:16:00] Alan Renwick: And the approach that you take is to combine both statistical analysis with deep sort of qualitative case study analysis as well.
Should we look at the quantitative research that you did first? What were the hypotheses that you were bringing to that research? And then we can get onto the findings.
[00:16:24] Luis Schenoni: So, the quantitative part of the book is concentrated in two main chapters, I would say.
There is this one chapter where I try to explore whether it is true that when Latin American states in the 19th century – so essentially from the 1830s until 1913, right before World War I – when they faced an external threat, which in international relations we associate with the idea of a militarised interstate dispute – I can talk a little bit more about what that is, but essentially when they faced a prominent external threat that could have developed into a war – whether they resorted to these foreign sources of finance, or they actually had to tax their local population thereby causing domestic revolt and that they had to repress.
So that's one of the big questions in one empirical chapter.
And the other basically statistical chapter focuses on the long-term impact of war outcomes on the post war phase, essentially, by looking at the development of indicators of what we often call infrastructural state capacity, so state reach and state presence across the territory, such as railroad millage, and indicators of what sociologists call extraction or taxation, such as national revenue.
[00:17:46] Alan Renwick: So I think I'm following clearly the logic of the second of those chapters where essentially we're interested in the idea that victory in war leads on to the development of further state capacity, whereas defeat in war does not. And you’re tracing that essentially.
Do you want to just take us through the logic of the first of those chapters? What exactly is it that you're... Sorry, what exactly is the underlying hypothesis about the mechanism that you're trying to get at there?
[00:18:17] Luis Schenoni: Yeah. So essentially I'm interested in seeing if what conventional wisdom since Centeno has told us is true – that Latin American states when they face external threats, they had an easy time resorting to external sources of finance such as foreign loans or custom taxes to pay for those wars, thereby inhibiting in a way what is often called the ‘extraction-coercion cycle’ or, you know, this incentive to tax and repress the local population and develop capacity for that.
[00:18:48] Alan Renwick: So it's that point about need that we were getting at earlier – that the idea in the alternative literature is that there wasn't the need to develop state capacity through war in Latin America. So you're analysing whether that need did in fact exist.
[00:19:05] Luis Schenoni: Exactly, which put otherwise in my mind is analysing whether mobilisation for war actually took place initially, also in Latin America, or we just didn't mobilise because we paid for these armies by resorting to these foreign sources of finance.
But this is not a very credible idea if you know something about Latin American history, because Latin American countries were basically in a situation of default of their foreign sovereign debt during most of the 19th century. So they didn't have an easy resort to that source of finance.
And also they had... Many of these wars, and I document this in this chapter, so half of the time at war, basically, they had their ports blockaded by some contender. If you know something about the geography of Latin America, you can perhaps readily see it. And, you know, it's very easy to cut this, you know, access to these sources by blockading you know, Valparaiso in Chile, or Buenos Aires or Rio or Santos in Brazil.
So this was an easy way for contenders to block the access to these resources. And therefore in this chapter I kind of analyse whether, in the presence of this militarised interstate dispute, countries actually resorted to these foreign sources of finance.
I find that the impact of those disputes was to decrease, actually, in large amounts, the access to revenue from customs, the probability of countries acquiring a foreign loan, and also countries tending to decrease by around 20 percent foreign tariffs during wars, precisely because they weren't getting access to produce that they needed for the process of fighting wars. So by reducing tariffs, they were also getting less revenue from customs.
And conversely, I find that there is an increase in domestic taxation. There's not a lot of available data about domestic taxation. This is very idiosyncratic. So it varies by country. But you can get at how much, for example, of the cost of wars these countries imposed on the local population by looking at the exchange rate of the local currency with the dollar.
Because if the country in the context of the gold pattern devaluated the currency or devalued the currency or depreciated the currency, that would have immediately resulted in like an increase on local domestic prices denominated in the local currency, which essentially is kind of an inflationary tax on the local population.
And I found that systematically countries tended to finance wars in this manner and also that this caused an increase in the likelihood of rebellions like civil wars and coups, for example.
So all of this coercion extraction actually did take place when these looming threats appeared in the international scene.
[00:21:52] Alan Renwick: So can I summarise that as saying, firstly, there were wars in Latin America during the 19th century.
Second, these wars were big enough to generate that need that we were talking about earlier for the development of state capacity. And there wasn't an opportunity to go abroad in order to kind of get around that issue.
And thirdly, we see evidence that indeed state capacity was being built with the development of taxation systems and so on.
[00:22:30] Luis Schenoni: Exactly. Yeah, that's a good summary.
[00:22:34] Alan Renwick: And then the second piece of statistical analysis that you do takes us through then to the period post war and the impact of the experience of war and victory or defeat in that war on further state development.
[00:23:00] Luis Schenoni: Exactly. Yeah. That piece basically looks at the difference in the capacity of states that won and that lost its wars in the post war period, as I mentioned before, in terms of these indicators like railroad millage or national revenue per capita.
Essentially, it finds that there is a significant difference between these two groups – that they were, in statistical terms, they had like parallel trends before the treatment, which is the defeat, in particular, took place.
So they had similar levels of state capacity until then. The divergence starts then.
And the divergence furthermore increases in time. So it's not like there is a kinetic effect of war that destroys the railroads of the losing country or something like that that generates the difference. But rather the statistical models pick up, by using several lags of that treatment essentially, that defect increases with time.
So that, for example, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia – the big losers of these 19th century wars – find themselves with substantially less railroad millage or revenue than they had at the very end of the war, like 30 years after the wars.
[00:24:02] Alan Renwick: This is already sounding pretty conclusive to me. I mean, the steps of the argument are very clearly laid out there and you've got evidence at each point.
Nevertheless, you wanted to supplement that quantitative analysis with qualitative case studies as well.
What were your purposes in doing those case studies?
[00:24:20] Luis Schenoni: Well, one purpose perhaps is that these quantitative studies, they tend to be too focused on perhaps the effect of one specific treatment.
And then the story that I'm trying to tell is a more overarching story. And I'm trying to engage also with competitive historians and other people in different fields that perhaps are not convinced that the overarching story that I'm telling can be proven by one of those two or even more systematic analyses of that sort.
So that's one thing – that by looking at the individual stories of these countries one can perhaps trace that process by looking at different indicators, by looking at, you know, different assumptions that are built into the theory that I mentioned before and that are not tested in the in these quantitative chapters.
One big assumption – to just mention one of them – is that, for example, the outcome of those wars. So I mentioned that, you know, these wars separated the states in the region into winners and losers.
But some might ask: okay, well, wasn't there in something in Argentina that made them, made Argentina, more likely to win the war against Paraguay. Or something in Chile that made Chile more likely to win the war of the Pacific against, you know, Peru and Bolivia.
So by looking at the wars from close, I can, among other things, basically show what was the perspective of the actors at that moment regarding the chances of winning or losing the war on both sides.
That, as you might imagine, like the Paraguayans and the Peruvians, when they went to war, they thought they could win. Otherwise, they wouldn't have gone to war. But also that there were moments in those wars whereby chance and the luck of one of these contenders shifted tremendously.
So there's a famous story, for example, in the War of the Pacific, where one of the ironclads that Peru had... Peru, at the initial phases of the war, had arguably a superior navy. But it basically runs across a coral reef, and then they had to scuttle the ship. And they lose one of the main battleships. And then the war turns around in favour of Chile.
In the case of Argentina and Paraguay, we also had the famous Battle of Curupayty where all of the allied armies of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay lose. And Argentina is about to sign a peace treaty with Paraguay. Then you know, by chance, basically Brazilian diplomacy is able to convince President Mitre of Argentina to do this. And Argentina was like, you know, hours arguably away from actually signing, you know, a peace that would have resulted in a defeat.
By looking at these events, the argument and many of the assumptions behind the models become much more convincing.
[00:27:18] Alan Renwick: One of the fascinating things I've found about these case studies, just going back to the kind of methodology of all of this, is that a lot of it – a lot of the research here – is based upon British and American archives rather than kind of locally-produced materials, which is quite kind of counter intuitive.
You're expecting, if you're wanting to go really deep into the events on the ground, then you would expect to be deep into the archives in Argentina and in Peru and in Paraguay and so on.
Why is it that the British and American archives were actually more useful here?
[00:27:53] Luis Schenoni: Well, there are many reasons.
One reason is that these histories are tainted by our nationalism in many Latin American cases. And therefore, you cannot quite trust people that are so involved in these processes with their judgement about the chances of winning or losing of different parties, etc., right?
So, if you look into Argentine archives, for example, or historiography, you will be amazed by how optimistic people were about the chances of Argentina winning, but obviously because of the incentives of the actors at the time.
The same happened in Paraguay, so the Paraguayans thought they were actually going to definitely win that war.
And then of course there are different reinterpretations of those conflicts that are, as I said, tainted by nationalism in different historiographical ways.
I think one advantage of looking at British and American archives is that in both cases, you know, they were neutral to most, if not all, of these conflicts.
Well, one of the conflicts in the book is the war between Mexico and the US. Definitely not in that one. But in most conflicts, they were neutral. And they were trying to assess, you know, who will win these wars, and therefore bring in to the, you know, foreign office or to whomever they were reporting a balanced view of events.
Furthermore, you have the same actors evaluating all of this cross section of conflicts, right? So, you know, the same offices that were reporting on the war in Paraguay were probably – perhaps not exactly the same people, but the same kind of people – were reporting on the war in the Pacific.
Therefore, you have a more comparable view by resorting to these extra regional sources of what was going on in all of these conflicts, potentially, here.
[00:29:41] Alan Renwick: I guess it's a lesson for those of our listeners who are students doing research projects that if you're going into the archives, it's always important to think about the perspective of the people who generated that archival material.
So, we've talked there about the find the research and the findings from the research. And you produce pretty conclusive evidence – it certainly seems to be – that the bellicist account of state formation in Latin America has very strong foundations.
Should we expect these findings to travel? Should we expect the story in Latin America also to be mirrored in other parts of the Global South?
[00:30:22] Luis Schenoni: Yes, and I would say beyond.
My hope is that perhaps Latin America can also shed new light on the processes that Tilly couldn't see in Europe itself, and other people studying Europe couldn't see in Europe itself.
In his seminal 1992 book, Coercion, Capital and European States, 990 to 1990, Charles Tilly already mentioned that one of the main features of European history hindering the study of state formation was the fact that the defeated states died many times. And so we don't have many records of what would have happened to those states had they survived.
So we have to just build upon counterfactuals. And then that cannot be really studied or measured because, you know, records of also these states, even of what was happening before they disappeared, often were destroyed, etc. So we don't have much information about the Bavarias or the Burgundys or these other states that disappeared.
So hopefully this study of Latin America can shed light on European history by making people think, okay, how would you know the defeated states look like had they survived those wars as most Latin American defeated states did?
Latin America, we had this specific situation to the region that most, if not all, contenders actually survived. So if one thinks about some examples in European history like the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the German Empire in World War I, etc., this collapse of the state after defeat is perhaps evident. But that could add like a new, let's say, nuance to this European story and makes us think also of how states might have been built after – or legitimised by – victory after as well.
And likewise, I think this could probably travel to other regions of the world. The problem with the rest of the world for the theory in general is that we, after decolonisation in Africa and other places, we live nowadays – at least until very recently – in a world where wars are very infrequent, and a much more stable world than the one we lived in until the 19th century. And therefore the effects of these wars are more difficult to pick up with after World War II, right?
But I do think that you know, this theory, as any good social science theory, should be universal.
[00:33:07] Alan Renwick: And that leads directly onto what was going to be my last question, actually.
Are there lessons for today, and what's happening around the world today?
[00:33:15] Luis Schenoni: Well, definitely one could think of current conflicts, like the war in Ukraine, right, as being like a real life play out of this dynamics, right. And one could imagine what could happen to the Russian state or the Ukrainian state in the scenario of a blowing defeat in terms of the legitimacy of the regime, but also, you know, the state in the long term.
I think there are also implications of this argument for how we think about state building after wars and, in particular, this sometimes called ‘foreign imposed regime change’ or ‘foreign imposed state building’. Clearly it's going to be very difficult to rebuild a state that has been delegitimised by blowing defeat, and that might illuminate also some contradictions in policies of Western powers, etc.
So there are certainly implications that, you know, definitely we could apply to understand current dynamics, I think.
[00:34:18] Alan Renwick: Presumably there are also some lessons for how victors treat defeated neighbours in the aftermath of war.
I mean, it's quite striking that you talk about how defeat in war tends to lead to state weakening. But of course, if we look at the 20th century and we look at the defeat of Germany and Japan then we see quite a different pattern taking place after those defeats.
And we see states becoming hugely strong and effective and developing great capacity. And presumably some of that reflects the decisions taken by neighbouring states and powerful states –states with power over those countries during that period that they didn't want state collapse in those countries because state collapse would create a vacuum in which undesirable elements could come to power as they had done in the pre war period.
And therefore there's an important lesson from this work for how we deal with states that have been defeated in war, and potentially therefore also lessons for, you know, if at some point in the war in Ukraine, Ukraine does prevail, then we ought to be thinking quite carefully about how we behave towards Russia.
[00:35:36] Luis Schenoni: Yes, I think you're completely right. And now I wouldn't perhaps put it in the terms of the voluntarism of the victors and how they treat the losers. Perhaps I would think about it also within the frame of the theory itself.
So if you remember the beginning of our conversation, so you would expect there is state building in a period where pressing external threat exists, therefore leading to mobilisation.
And I think what happened in the case of Germany and Japan in the immediate post-World War II period is that, okay, the states were defeated. But immediately after, they needed to be mobilised as bulwarks against the expansion of the Soviet Union.
And because of this renewed process of mobilisation, while there wasn't enough time for this delegitimisation of the state due to the defeat to actually undo the state in a period of peace, but rather you were – and this happened also with Prussia several times across its history – you're immediately caught on a new process of mobilisation for a new conflict to stand against a new external threat.
I definitely think that if Ukraine is defeated in this war, it could be propped up by the West to stand against Russia and enter this new period of mobilisation and therefore increase state capacity in this way.
But the point of the book is that perhaps in the absence of war – imagine a completely peaceful scenario after this war – if Ukraine loses this war and it's not supported by the West and it's not also pressing a constant and immediate threat from Russia, perhaps incentives will be for Ukrainians to believe less in their state and its capacity to defend them and fund them, and then turn to this kind of state weakening trajectory.
[00:37:33] Alan Renwick: Well what an illuminating conversation. Thank you so much. I've learned a huge amount there.
I have to confess that the prospect of discussing a book on 19th century state formation in Latin America and the role of war in it, I kind of thought, gosh, I have no perspective on this. It's going to be very difficult.
But you've made it really accessible and showed why it's so important as well. And the same applies to the book. It's a really fascinating and readable account of these things.
So thank you, Luis, so much.
We have been discussing Luis Schenoni’s upcoming book, Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. It's due to be released in July by Cambridge University Press and full details, as ever, are in the show notes for this episode.
Next week, in our final episode of the academic year, we'll be asking a question that's very relevant to the current elections taking place in the UK and France: is ideological polarisation by age group growing in Europe?
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I'm Alan Renwick. This episode was researched by Alice Hart and produced by Eleanor Kingwell-Banham. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann.
This has been UCL Uncovering Politics. Thank you for listening.
References
Tilly, C. (1990) Coercion, Capital, and European States: AD 990-1990. Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell