Content area
Full text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
The authors would like to thank David Laitin, the other editors, and the anonymous referees of APSR for many thoughtful comments and insights. Daron Acemoglu, Cihan Artunç, Avner Greif, Philip T. Hoffman, Debin Ma, Patrick O'Brien, Insan Tunali, seminar participants at Bogazici University, London School of Economics and Political Science, Sabanci University, Middle East Technical University, and participants in the Sixth Biannual Meeting of the European Historical Economics Society have also provided invaluable comments. We would also like to thank Carlos Alvarez-Nogal, Luciano Pezzolo, Jaime Reis, and Jan Luiten van Zanden for their generous sharing of data and Gülsah Efe for excellent research assistance. This research was supported by Bogaziçi University Research Fund, project number 5093.
INTRODUCTION
The process through which early modern European states monopolized tax collection and achieved gains in centralized fiscal capacity has been at the center of the study of state formation. What were the drivers of, and mechanisms for the consolidation of the fiscal capacity of states? What roles did changes in domestic economic structure and the stimuli of interstate warfare play in state formation? Was it representative or authoritarian regimes that facilitated gains in fiscal and state capacity? These questions have been central not only to the study of politics,1but also to understanding the economic development process itself.2
The theoretical answers for these questions originate mainly from the experiences of early modern European states, because these states were the first to permanently break cycles of gains and losses in centralized fiscal capacity and build toward the modern state system. There is, however, a void in the literature in terms of quantitative documentation of this process and empirical analysis of its determinants. To fill this void, this study compiles a new and comprehensive tax revenues dataset, reviews the patterns of fiscal capacity across the continent through the early modern era, examines and categorizes various threads in the literature, and empirically investigates alternative hypotheses. Our main finding is that warfare tended to have a greater impact on state-building under representative regimes in more urban economies, and under authoritarian regimes in more rural economies.
The first part of the article reviews the long-term trends in fiscal capacity for 12 major European states between...