De-centering state making: comparative and international perspectives

Bridging the gap between international relations and comparative politics, this book transposes Eurocentric theories and narratives of state-making to new historical and geographical contexts in order to probe their scope conditions. In doing this, the authors question received explanations of the historical origins and geographical limits of state-making, questioning the unilinear view of the emergence of the modern state and the international system. Theoretically and methodologically eclectic, the volume explores a range of empirical cases not often discussed in the literature.

Front Matter; Copyright; Contents; List of figures; List of tables; List of contributors; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction: de-centering state making; PART I: WHAT MAKES A STATE?; 2 Steppe state making; 3 De-centering federal origins: India and the contested appropriation of federal democracy; 4 The current developing state; PART II: WHAT STATES DOES WAR MAKE?; 5 When does war make states? War, rivalries and fiscal extraction in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; 6 War and variation in the structure of historical international systems: a theoretical model

7 Imagined states and clashing state-building processes in the Bosnian spacePART III: STATE MAKING AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY; 8 Configurations of semi-sovereignty in the long nineteenth century; 9 Acting like a state: non-European membership of international organizations in the nineteenth century; PART IV: CONCLUSION; 10 Concentric circles: aporias of de-centering state making in time and space; 11 After de-centering: a new research agenda for state making; Index