Talk:State-building

Yes to merge
This article should be merged with Nation-building; it's basically another term used for the same concept, and the other article is woefully short.--Gloriamarie 07:53, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Oppose. The content of the two articles is so different, it's hard to understand how they can be merged. "State-building" is only "another term used for the same concept" if you were born since the start of the Bush Administration and have no idea of any other possible or previous worlds. Yes, language changes, but this use of "nation building" to mean "state building" is designed to blur a useful distinction, with the intention of obfuscating, not enlightening.
 * Bathrobe 10:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I totally agree with Bathrobe! State building is about constructing the organization of a state. Nation-buiding is about creating a feeling of a national unity. Nation-building has to do with culture, something state-building do not. The two processes are connected, but by no means the same. --Oddeivind (talk) 08:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Additions of Approaches to State Building and some Examples
I added the section called Approaches to State Building because I felt it was important to look at how countries were approaching state building in a theoretical sense. This information comes for the most part from the most recent 2010 UNRISD article, which had these three main theoretical approaches and many interesting examples. I also added a few examples of state building, highlighting a few strategies or proposed strategies for successful state building in three countries. I feel that the best way to study successful state building is to compare policies enacted by countries, both developing and developed. Sbh2 (talk) 19:32, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I am not quite sure about that. i currently am working on a project about state building, so i got the UNRISD article and read it. turned out that those approaches are "three types of governance reforms" that can be described as "market enhancing". that is actually not what state building is about (nevertheless, it is an aspect, but not the whole thing). i added the "expert needed" sign.
 * 136.199.201.139 (talk) 10:41, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Addition to Several Sections and Creation of new sections
I have added to several sections of the article. I have included the characteristics the UNRISD deemed as important for a state to perform. This compliments the previous entry that used the same article as a reference.

Furthermore, I have added a section on predatory theory which has been studied in the development of European countries and which scholars have tried to apply to developing countries in both Latin America and Africa. It ties into Tilly's work mentioned at the very beginning of a previous entry. Furthermore it expands into some of the characteristic problems that can prevent a state from building capacity, i.e. ethnic divides.

Furthermore, I have expanded upon the different type of government regimes and added to the entries on Good Governance, New Public Management, and Decentralization. I have kept the majority of the previous entry. Any deletion was replaced with a more detailed sentence and citations. I have added a section with that deals with the different paradigm shifts to aide without deviating from the main article.

Lastly, I have provided examples of how predatory theory is relevant to the development of Latin American and African countries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Josue.j.lopez (talk • contribs) 11:13, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Examples of Statebuilding Section
If this section is going to be of any merit to the article, it should be expanded quite a bit. I made some changes to the sections on Latin America, as it was a little unclear. Two different terms were used: predatory theory and external threat theory. To make the section more clear, I eliminated references to the former. I am not entirely sure whether the section was meant as an exposition of different theories on statebuilding, or a section to give examples of forms of statebuilding that have taken place in the past. Therefore, I have made some changes to make it more of the latter. However, I am aware that this may result in an incredibly long list of different examples. Therefore, I am not yet convinced by the merit of this section. Mozzarellab (talk) 15:38, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello! I am a student editor that is thinking of starting a new page for Fiscal Capacity. I am posting a bibliography on this page, as State-building and Tax are perhaps the best pages to ask for feedback. I plan on approaching Fiscal Capacity in within the arguments of two strains of literature: One is about state capacity (Tilly, Herbst, Schumpeter) and the other is from the more recent and emerging public finance literature. I would appreciate any feedback! Thanks. Vivianliu94 (talk) 18:47, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Bibliography: What I'll read first: Gordon, Roger; Wei, Li. 2005. "Tax Structures in Developing Countries: Many Puzzles and a Possible Explanation". Besley, Tim. Persson, Torsten. "Public Finance and Development" 2011. WORKING PAPER Besley, Timothy and Torsten Persson. 2007. The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation and Politics. NBER working paper No. 13028 Johnson, Noel D.; Koyama, Mark. 2015. States and Economic Growth: Capacity and Constraints. Cukierman, Alex, Sebastian Edwards and Guido Tabellini. 1992. "Seignorage and political Instability". American Economic Review, vol 82, 537-555. Herbst, Jeffrey I. 2000. "State and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control" Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Levi, Margaret. 1988. "Of Rule and Revenue", Berkeley: University of California Press. Migdal, Joel S. 1998. "Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World". Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1918. "The Crisis of the Tax State" International Economic Papers, vol. 4, 5-38. Tilly, Charles. 1985. "Warmaking and State Making as Organized Crime" in Evans Peter, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds.), "Bringing the State Back In". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Then: Besley, Timothy and Torsten Persson, 2013, “Taxation and development”, Chapter 2 in Auerbach, A, R. Chetty, M. Feldstein, and E. Saez (eds.) Handbook of Public Economics. Besley, Timothy and Torsten Persson, 2014, “The causes and consequences of development clusters: State capacity, peace and income”, Annual Review of Economics 6, 927-949. Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson. 2014. “Why Do Developing Countries Tax So Little?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (4): 99–120. doi:10.1257/jep.28.4.99. Gennaioli, Nicola, and Hans-Joachim Voth. 2015. “State Capacity and Military Conflict.” The Review of Economic Studies 82 (4): 1409–48. doi:10.1093/restud/rdv019. Gordon, Roger, and Wei Li. 2009. “Tax Structures in Developing Countries: Many Puzzles and a Possible Explanation.” Journal of Public Economics 93 (7–8): 855–66. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2009.04.001. Fisman, Raymond, and Shang‐Jin Wei. 2004. “Tax Rates and Tax Evasion: Evidence from ‘Missing Imports’ in China.” Journal of Political Economy 112 (2): 471–96. doi:10.1086/381476. Olken, Benjamin A, and Monica Singhal. 2011. “Informal Taxation.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3 (4): 1–28. doi:10.1257/app.3.4.1. Best, Michael Carlos, Anne Brockmeyer, Henrik Jacobsen Kleven, Johannes Spinnewijn, and Mazhar Waseem. 2015. “Production versus Revenue Efficiency with Limited Tax Capacity: Theory and Evidence from Pakistan.” Journal of Political Economy 123 (6): 1311–55. doi:10.1086/683849. Piketty, Thomas, and Nancy Qian. 2009. “Income Inequality and Progressive Income Taxation in China and India, 1986–2015.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1 (2): 53–63. doi:10.1257/app.1.2.53. Pomeranz, Dina. 2015. “No Taxation without Information: Deterrence and Self-Enforcement in the Value Added Tax †.” American Economic Review 105 (8): 2539–69. doi:10.1257/aer.20130393.