State Formation

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The term state formation is most commonly used to describe the long-term processes which led to the genesis of modern political domination in form of the territorial sovereign state. In a few works, the terms statebuilding, nation-building, or institution-building are used synonymously with state formation. In the 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 of taxation; 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 dominant form of economic reproduction; and the emergence of classes and nations. 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 only be understood through a long-term historical perspective (Braudel’s longue durée). Others have pointed to the often-neglected oriental influences on occidental state formation. Since the mid-1990s, state formation has also been discussed as a concept describing the effects of the politics of statebuilding, 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

In order 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 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 archeological and anthropological research on the “early” or “archaic” state in different world regions, its emergence, functioning, and decline. Blanton and Fargher 2008 looks 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 (two books) 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. Hobson 2004, finally, shows how western Enlightenment has been influenced by oriental thought, questioning some of the general assumptions about the “autonomous” rise and triumph of the modern western state.

Anderson, Perry. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: Verso, 2013.
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These two books 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. Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 2013)
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Blanton, Richard, and Lane Fargher. Collective Action in the Formation of Pre-modern States. New York: Springer, 2008.
DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-73877-2Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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 dominant view that powerful despotic rulers dominated premodern states and suggest that collective forms of rule account for premodern states’ successful establishment.
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Claessen, Henri J. M., and Peter Skalnik, eds. The Early State. New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 1978.
DOI: 10.1515/9783110813326Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Feinman, Gary M., and Joyce Marcus. Archaic States. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1998.
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Collection of essays providing archeological 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.
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Hobson, John M. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511489013Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Important contribution questioning the Eurocentrism of western accounts of world history and exposing the autonomous, internally generated process of modern transformation in and dominance of the West as a politically invented myth. Rather, the author shows how western Enlightenment borrowed from ideas of the non-western world, especially East Asia.
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Hui, Victoria Tin-bor. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511614545Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Lieberman, Victor. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830. Vol. 1, Integration on the Mainland. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
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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. Volume 2, Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
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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

There are a number of classic key texts on state formation that are cited, used, and sometimes expanded in many of the ensuing works on state formation and can therefore be seen as a must-read for anyone interested in the topic. This concerns, first of all, Weber 1978, who not only coined one of the most influential definitions of modern statehood, but more generally described the processes of rationalization and bureaucratization, which 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, finally, 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.
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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 have last judgment within its territory.
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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.
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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.
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Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Rev ed. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000.
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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.
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Giddens, Anthony. The Nation-State and Violence: Volume Two of a Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1985.
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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, 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 state system.
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Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971.
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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.
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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.
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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 part of a four-volume work.
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Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992.
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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.
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Weber, Max. Economy and Society. 2 vols. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978.
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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.
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Monopolies of Violence and Taxation

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 also the works by Elias 2000 and Tilly 1992 (see 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.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198204022.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Explores 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.
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Gerstenberger, Heide. Die subjektlose Gewalt: Theorie der Entstehung bürgerlicher Staatsgewalt. Münster, Germany: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1990.
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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 in order to formulate a theory of modern state formation in Europe. Major work on modern state formation in German.
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Levi, Margaret. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.
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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.
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Spruyt, Hendrik. “The Origins, Development, and Possible Decline of the Modern State.” Annual Review of Political Science 5 (2002): 127–149.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.5.101501.145837Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses security, economic, and institutionalist accounts of modern state formation to shed light on 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.
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Thompson, Janice E. Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
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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’s works on war making and state making (see Classic Reads).
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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.
DOI: 10.1177/0010414099032001001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Tilly, Charles, ed. The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
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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.
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Wimmer, Andreas. Waves of War: Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139198318Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Rationalist-quantitative study exploring relationship between 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.
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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 between territory, authority, and rights in different historical phases. Taken together, these works help understand and at the same time question the centrality of the principle of territoriality in modern state formation. They also hint at the fact that rule can be organized in non-territorial 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, finally, suggests the introduction of different dimensions of sovereignty, some of which are more often violated in international politics than others. What all these works have in common, despite their vast differences in approaches, is that they inspire to question simple conceptualizations of sovereignty in the modern state formation process.

Anderson, Malcolm. Frontiers: Territory and State-Formation in the Modern World. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1997.
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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.
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Bartelson, Jens. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511586385Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Biersteker, Thomas J., and Cynthia Weber, eds. State Sovereignty as Social Construct. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511598685Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Brenner, Neil, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones, and Gordon Macleod, eds. State/Space: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
DOI: 10.1002/9780470755686Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses 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 level. Encompassing overview of the state’s (contested) territoriality.
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Krasner, Stephen D. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
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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.
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Ruggie, John G. “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations.” International Organization 47.1 (1993): 139–167.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020818300004732Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Sassen, Saskia. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
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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.
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Teschke, Benno. The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations. London: Verso, 2003.
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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.
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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 in 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 his discussion of the development of democratic politics in western Europe. Walker 1993, finally, 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.
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Rejecting the evolutionary views of state formation formulated by Weber, Marx, and Durkheim, 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.
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Barkey, Karen, and Sunita Parikh. “Comparative Perspectives on the State.” Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1991): 523–549.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.so.17.080191.002515Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Beetham, David. The Legitimation of Power. 2d ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
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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 for students interested in the legitimacy of rule.
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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.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1351-0487.2004.00359.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Ertman, Thomas. Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511529016Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Referring to Classic Reads on state formation, 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.
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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.
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Perspective on the state as field of action, which is seen as autonomous from other fields (economy, society, law). Although multiply 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.
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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.
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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.
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Walker, R. B. J. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
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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.
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Modern State Formation in the World

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 in how far 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.
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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.
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Ayoob, Mohammed. The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict and the International System. Boulder, CO: Lienne Rienner, 1995.
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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.
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Badie, Bertrand. The Imported State: The Westernization of the Political Order. Translated by Claudia Royal. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
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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.
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Jackson, Robert H. Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
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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.
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Jung, Dietrich. “The Political Sociology of World Society.” European Journal of International Relations 7.4 (2001): 443–474.
DOI: 10.1177/1354066101007004003Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Lawson, Fred H. Constructing International Relations in the Arab World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
DOI: 10.11126/stanford/9780804753722.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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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.
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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.
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Reinhard, Wolfgang, ed. Verstaatlichung der Welt? Europäische Staatsmodelle und außereuropäische Machtprozesse. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999.
DOI: 10.1524/9783486594447Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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 and 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.
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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 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 in the section on 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.
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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.
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Beissinger, Mark R., and Crawford Young, eds. Beyond State Crisis? Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
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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.
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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.
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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”).
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Migdal, Joel S. State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Constitute Each Other. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511613067Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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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.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139174268Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Based on the state-society approach to state theory (see Migdal 2001) the essays in this volume discuss the relationship between states, societies, and politics in the Third World, especially through case studies of Brazil, China, India, postcolonial Africa, and Egypt.
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Schlichte, Klaus. Der Staat in der Weltgesellschaft: Politische Herrschaft in Asien, Afrika und Lateinamerika. Frankfurt: Campus, 2005a.
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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.
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Schlichte, Klaus, ed. The Dynamics of States: The Formation and Crisis of State Domination. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005b.
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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.
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Woo-Cummings, Meredith, ed. The Developmental State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
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Conceptual and case study articles on the “developmental state” as specific type of modern state characterized by governments that intervene in industrial affairs in their wish to promote economic advancement. Contributions explore relationships between political, bureaucratic, and economic developments in Japan, East Asia, France, Brazil, Mexico, and India.
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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 pick up 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 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, by 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.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822392538Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Das, Veena, and Deborah Poole, eds. Anthropology in the Margins of the State. Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2004.
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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 which are remote not geographically but in terms of the agency and reach of the state.
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Hansen, Thomas Blom, and Finn Stepputat, eds. States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822381273Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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).
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Krohn-Hansen, Christian, and Knut G. Nustad. State Formation: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto, 2005.
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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.
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Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
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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 major feature of the modern state formation process.
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Sharma, Aradhana, and Akhil Gupta. The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.
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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.
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Steinmetz, George. State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
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Examines processes of state formation through culturalist perspectives, which understand culture as 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, its role in non-European states and in the modern western state.
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Taussig, Michael T. The Magic of the State. New York and London: Routledge, 1997.
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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 (see Sub-Saharan Africa), whose central argument is similar.
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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 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.
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Drawing on war-related theories of modern western state formation (see especially Tilly 1992 in 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.
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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.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139342667Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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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.
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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.
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Dunkerley, James, ed. Studies in the Formation of the Nation State in Latin America. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 2002.
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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 comprise violence, military conscription, finance, development, and liberalism, among others. Good first overview.
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Holden, Robert H. Armies without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central America 1821–1960. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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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.
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Joseph, Gilbert M., and Daniel Nugent, eds. Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1994.
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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 between power, culture, and resistance in Mexican state formation. It brings together views from social history, anthropology, historical sociology, and cultural studies.
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López-Alves, Fernando. State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810–1900. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2000.
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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.
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Skidmore, Thomas E., Peter H. Smith, and James N. Green. Modern Latin America. 8th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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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.
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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 sub-regions and to guide the reader toward starting points for more in-depth study of single sub-regions 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. In order 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 are also interested in Southeast Asian state formation. Slater 2010 explores the links between state capacity and the regime type of authoritarianism in the sub-region. 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 processes in Pakistan and Malaysia. Rubin 1995, finally, 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.
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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.
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Chong, Ja Ian. External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, and Thailand, 1893–1952. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139005197Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Day, Tony. Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002.
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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.
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Dornboos, Martin, and Sudipta Kaviraj, eds. Dynamics of State Formation: India and Europe Compared. New Delhi: SAGE, 1997.
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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.
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Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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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.
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Rubin, Barnett R. The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
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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.
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Slater, Dan. Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511760891Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Van Klinken, Gerry, and Joshua Barker, eds. State of Authority: The State in Society in Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2009.
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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.
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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. Berman and Lonsdale 1992 looks at the colonial state in Africa and its difficult legacies for postcolonial state formation. Herbst 2000, by contrast, locates the main reasons for African states’ sustained ineffectiveness in providing public goods in the endogenous conditions of population density and war making that differentiated African state formation from the European experience. Mamdani 1996 is a must-read 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 postcolony.

Bach, Daniel C., and Mamodou Gazibo, eds. Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012.
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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.
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Bayart, Jean-François. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. London: Longman, 1996.
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Influential book on distinctly African trajectories of state formation, politics, and power as part of long-term historical developments. Title refers to 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.
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Berman, Bruce, and John Lonsdale. Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa. Vol. 1, State and Class. London: Currey, 1992.
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Discusses the development and political economy of the colonial state in Africa. Definition of state formation as opposed to statebuilding, 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.
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Cooper, Frederick. Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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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.
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Herbst, Jeffrey. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
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Theory of state formation and institution building in Africa, which argues that conditions of population density and war making that drove institution building in modern Europe were absent in Africa, explaining the lack of comparable state institutions. Has been criticized for its downplaying of colonialism’s deep impact on African state trajectories.
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Lund, Christian, ed. Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.
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Bottom-up studies of African public institutions’ attempts at establishing legitimate authority in view of state weakness or failure. Focus 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, public and private realms.
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Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. London: James Currey, 1996.
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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.
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Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001.
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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 in the State in Everyday Practices and Imaginations).
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Middle East and North Africa

The following works offer a broad overview of state formation related themes in the so-called MENA region: the Middle East and North Africa. Owen 2004 is arguably the best book to get a broad overview of state formation, political challenges, and post-9/11 dynamics and thus 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. Anderson 1986 traces two countries, Libya and Tunisia, through their respective state formation processes in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial times; though written in the mid-1980s, the study still offers interesting insights that help explain more recent developments in these two states. The Arab Spring is the point of departure for the essays in Christie and Masad 2013, which are interested in 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 with 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.

Anderson, Lisa. The State and Social Transformation in Libya and Tunisia, 1830–1980. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
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Historical, partly comparative study of state formation trajectories in two North African states prior to, during, and after French/Italian colonial rule, showing how discontinuous state formation affects state-society conflicts. Interesting read also as historical background to the more recent events of the Arab Spring.
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Ayubi, Nazih N. Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008.
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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.
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Bromley, Simon. Rethinking Middle East Politics: State Formation and Development. London: Polity, 1993.
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Introduction of 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.
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Christie, Kenneth, and Mohammad Masad. State Formation and Identity in the Middle East and North Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137369604Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Takes 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, the Gulf countries.
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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.
DOI: 10.1080/19436149.2010.514470Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Outlines framework for a historic-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.
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Jung, Dietrich, with Wolfgango Piccoli. Turkey at the Crossroads: Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East. London: Zed Books, 2001.
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Comprehensive study of modernization in Turkey from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century onwards, 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.
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Migdal, Joel S. Through the Lens of Israel: Explorations in State and Society. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
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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 in State-Society Relations and Types of States).
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Owen, Roger. State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. 3d ed. London: Routledge, 2004.
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Most comprehensive source on the Middle Eastern states since the end of the Ottoman Empire to date, covering states and statebuilding, themes in contemporary Middle Eastern politics, and the impact of September 11 on the Middle East. Great gateway for students into the politics and modern history of the region.
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(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 by 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. Colton and Holmes 2006 and Taylor 2011 focus 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. The contributions in Jones Luong 2004 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 study Central Asian states through their everyday performance by state and nonstate actors.

Colton, Timothy J., and Stephen Holmes, eds. The State after Communism: Governance in the New Russia. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.
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Essay collection on the crisis in post-Soviet Russia’s governance institutions, with contributions on the roots, characteristics, and consequences of post-communist state crisis and on its manifestation in realms ranging from tax collection to bureaucracy and statistics.
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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.
DOI: 10.1016/j.postcomstud.2005.09.008Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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 in order to explain the relative “state weakness” that these states experienced after the collapse of the old regimes.
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Grzymala-Busse, Anna. Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511618819Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Grzymala-Busse, Anna, and Pauline Jones Luong. “Reconceptualizing the State: Lessons from Post-Communism.” Politics and Society 30.4 (2002): 529–554.
DOI: 10.1177/003232902237825Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Jones Luong, Pauline, ed. The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.
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Comprehensive introduction to different aspects of state formation and state-society relations in the post-Soviet states of Central Asia, accounting for the role of state and nonstate actors in these processes. Great first overview for students of state formation in the region.
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Reeves, Madeleine, Johan Rasanayagam, and Judith Beyer. Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.
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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.
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Taylor, Brian D. State Building in Putin’s Russia: Policing and Coercion after Communism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511974144Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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 impacted on state capacity. This is illustrated with specific focus on the ministries that control state coercion and on law enforcement personnel.
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Van Meurs, Wim, and Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, eds. Ottomans into Europeans: State and Institution-Building in South Eastern Europe. London: Hurst, 2011.
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History of institutions and their variations in the Balkans from late Ottoman Empire to post-Ottoman nation-states. Analyzes bureaucracies, judiciaries, elections, media, 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.
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Informal, De Facto, and Unrecognized States

Not all contemporary state formation processes take place in internationally recognized nation-states; in all world regions there are national movements striving 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 non-recognition 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, whose contributions look into themes of interaction between unrecognized states and the international system. Coggins 2014 studies a large dataset, 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. The contributions in Hoehne 2013 study the case of state and society formation processes on the territory of Somalia, which is widely seen to be the prime example of a failed or decayed state. The special issue looks into institutional dynamics taking place in different regions and realms of “stateless” Somalia, which bring about new forms of social order and de facto states such as Somaliland. 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 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. Bakonyi and Stuvøy 2005 and Schlichte 2009, finally, draw 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.
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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.
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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.
DOI: 10.1080/03056240500329379Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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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.
DOI: 10.1080/14683857.2012.686013Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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 variation is not the question of whether independent statehood is the goal.
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Caspersen, Nina, and Gareth Stansfield, eds. Unrecognized States in the International System. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011.
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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 non-recognition on state formation, and strategies for dealing with unrecognized states.
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Coggins, Bridget. Power Politics and State Formation in the Twentieth Century: The Dynamics of Recognition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781107239050Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Hoehne, Markus V., ed. Special Issue: The Effects of “Statelessness”: Dynamics of Somali Politics, Economy and Society since 1991. Journal of Eastern African Studies 7.2 (2013).
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Encompassing special issue focusing on the statelessness in Somalia since 1991 and on the structural transformations and social orders that emerged as an answer to this statelessness and the prolonged mass violence in the country. With contributions from social anthropology, history, political science, and development studies.
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Isachenko, Daria. The Making of Informal States: Statebuilding in Northern Cyprus and Transdniestria. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
DOI: 10.1057/9780230392069Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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.
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Schlichte, Klaus. In the Shadow of Violence: The Politics of Armed Groups. Frankfurt: Campus, 2009.
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Explores the question of why some armed groups in civil wars succeed in seizing and holding power, while others fail. The author’s main argument is that the crucial aspect is armed groups’ ability to transform violence into state-like legitimate domination.
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International Statebuilding 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 statebuilding as a civilian component that has accompanied many of the international military interventions into non-western states. The works discussed in this section are interested not in the politics of statebuilding 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 statebuilding on national state formation. Richmond 2014 discusses statebuilding failure against the background of classic state formation literature and empirical insights from different intervention cases. Heathershaw 2009 and Veit 2010 are in-depth case studies of the intended and unintended effects of intervention on state-society relations. Heathershaw 2009 studies how external peacebuilding in Tajikistan fostered peace, but inadvertently contributed to an authoritarianization of the state. Veit 2010 explores the case of the Congolese district of Ituri and finds that UN peacekeeping inadvertently deepened historical inequalities rather than contributing to liberal state formation. 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. Bliesemann de Guevara and Kühn 2013 explores and compares (the limits of) the economic side of statebuilding in the cases of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan, which mark two poles on a continuum from rentier states to tax states. Lemay-Hébert, et al. 2014 combines constructivist theory of international politics with critical peacebuilding theory to look into the semantics and concepts guiding statebuilding intervention, including Weberian understandings of the state. Jeffrey 2013, finally, provides an alternative critical take on statebuilding 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.
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Studies the intended and unintended dynamics of state de-/institutionalization under the conditions of contemporary international statebuilding interventions. Introduction discusses statebuilding in the light of state formation theories, especially Weber, Elias, Bourdieu (see Classic Reads). Case chapters on Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Georgia, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, and the international community.
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Bliesemann de Guevara, Berit, and Florian P. Kühn. “The Political Economy of Statebuilding: Rents, Taxes, and Perpetual Dependency.” In Routledge Handbook of International Statebuilding. Edited by David Chandler and Timothy D. Sisk, 219–230. London: Routledge, 2013.
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Comparative analysis of international statebuilding’s effects on the state’s economic reproduction in two countries which represent two poles on a continuum from tax-based state financing to rentier state income based on foreign aid: Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan.
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Heathershaw, John. Post-conflict Tajikistan: The Politics of Peacebuilding and the Emergence of Legitimate Order. London: Routledge, 2009.
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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.
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Herring, Eric, and Glen Rangwala. Iraq in Fragments: The Occupation and Its Legacy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.
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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 statebuilding 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.
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Jeffrey, Alex. The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton Bosnia. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
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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.”
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Lemay-Hébert, Nicholas, Nicholas Onuf, Vojin Rakić, and Petar Bojanić. Semantics of Statebuilding: Language, Meanings and Sovereignty. London and New York: Routledge, 2014.
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Departing from the understanding that language is crucial to building social institutions and meanings, contributions explore the conceptualizations of state, state fragility, and statebuilding in the statebuilding literature and their repercussions on statebuilding practice. Contributions discuss, among others, the limits of neo-Weberian state semantics (see Classic Reads).
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Richmond, Oliver P. Failed Statebuilding: Intervention, the State and the Dynamics of Peace Formation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.
DOI: 10.12987/yale/9780300175318.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Explores why statebuilding 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).
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Veit, Alex. Intervention and Indirect Rule: Civil War and Statebuilding in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Frankfurt: Campus, 2010.
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Detailed empirical and historical study of the UN peacekeeping mission in Ituri, a district of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and its effects on state-society relations. The author concludes that international intervention tends to inadvertently replicate political inequality rather than helping liberal state formation.
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