state building, the construction of a state apparatus defined by its monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in a given territory. Because of the wide variance between states across history, state building may be best understood not in generic terms but as the result of political dynamics bearing the indelible imprint of their historical moment.

Defining the modern state is a contentious project, but most scholars would recognize a core set of features, including a standing army, a diplomatic corps, a centralized bureaucracy (especially for tax collection), the replacement of ad hoc patrimonial legal procedures with standardized rational ones, the demarcation of national economies, and the incorporation of populations as citizens rather than status groups.

That constellation of features first developed in western Europe in the 16th century through the mutually reinforcing, though analytically separate, processes of making war, raising taxes, and constructing a centralized officialdom to oversee and maximize success in both war and taxation. In western Europe those changes were marked by the transition from feudalism to absolutism to the nation-state. State-building theory tends not to dwell on the differences of political regime that may accompany the state-building process; both democracy and authoritarianism require a state to defend its borders, govern its citizens, and extract resources from them. (An important exception, however, can be found in scholarship on the link between democratization and state building. One influential argument is that the development of professional and effective state bureaucracies is more difficult in areas where democratization precedes the consolidation of core state institutions.)

Decolonization after World War II and later the collapse of the Soviet Union greatly added to the number of states in the international system. The success of those state-building efforts, however, has been highly variable, ranging from failed states to neopatrimonial states to developmental states. Changes in the international system during the 20th and 21st centuries have altered the basic dynamics of state building: the harsh selection mechanism of interstate military competition that characterized the emergence of western Europe’s nation-states in previous centuries ceased to exist. Thus, the drive for rationalization is no longer an imperative of state survival, and from the state-builders’ perspective, it is no longer as crucial that growth in state size be matched by increase in state capacity—especially its capacity to stimulate economic development. Instead, a host of other factors may drive state expansion. A commonly cited factor is the need to maintain a domestic governing coalition, especially in societies with divided political elites. That may lead to rapid state expansion fueled by political patronage; it may also take the more-passive form of surrendering state capacity through insider privatization and the toleration of official corruption. Some have argued that international aid to less-developed countries has also had the unintended effect of diverting resources from state-building capacity.