Tilly's argument
Tilly (1990) explained European state formation from 990 to 1990 as a combination of coercion and capital. Surviving constant warfare required vast resources to maintain armies, so rulers taxed their populations, bargained with merchant classes and expanded administrative apparatus. Tilly (1985) provocatively compared rulers' provision of protection against external threats, and their extraction of payment for it, to an organized crime protection racket. The process is intertwined with the interstate security dilemma.
Counterexamples beyond Europe
Centeno (1997) argued that nineteenth-century Latin American wars did not produce strong states because wars were limited and rulers relied on borrowing and export duties rather than domestic taxation. Herbst (1990) found that in postcolonial Africa, where borders were internationally guaranteed, weak war pressure left states with little incentive to build fiscal capacity. These arguments connect to rentier state theory and the resource curse, in which states living on resource revenues fail to develop taxation.
Quantitative tests and extensions
Thies (2005) showed that interstate rivalries raised tax revenue in Latin America, partly supporting the theory. Besley and Persson (2009) modeled how common interests such as external war increase incentives to invest in fiscal and legal capacity, and Gennaioli and Voth (2015) found that the military revolution, by raising the cost of war, widened capacity gaps among European states. Scholars stress, however, that war can also destroy states and that its effects depend on existing institutions and elite structures.
FAQ
- What is the bellicist theory in simple terms?
- Fighting wars required money and armies, and raising them by taxing and building bureaucracies is what created the modern state.
- Does war always make strong states?
- No. In Latin America and Africa different kinds of war or fiscal structures did not lead to strong states, and war can also destroy states.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990–1990. Basil Blackwell. Tilly's core work.
- Tilly, C. (1985). War making and state making as organized crime. In P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, & T. Skocpol (Eds.), Bringing the state back in (pp. 169–191). Cambridge University Press. State making as organized crime.
- Centeno, M. A. (1997). Blood and debt: War and taxation in nineteenth-century Latin America. American Journal of Sociology, 102(6), 1565–1605. Latin American exception.
- Herbst, J. (1990). War and the state in Africa. International Security, 14(4), 117–139. Africa without war.
- Thies, C. G. (2005). War, rivalry, and state building in Latin America. American Journal of Political Science, 49(3), 451–465. Rivalry and extraction.
- Besley, T., & Persson, T. (2009). The origins of state capacity: Property rights, taxation, and politics. American Economic Review, 99(4), 1218–1244. A formal model of state capacity.
- Gennaioli, N., & Voth, H.-J. (2015). State capacity and military conflict. The Review of Economic Studies, 82(4), 1409–1448. Military revolution and capacity.