Rise of the Modern State and China in a Democratic World

Rick Chelton

1). What is the relationship between war and state building in Western Europe? Why might state-building follow a different path in the post-colonial world?

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When considering the rise of the modern State many political scientists and historians consider Western Europe to be an exceptional case for a variety of different reasons. These reasons tend to be connected to each other and can be traced back to the dominion of the Roman Empire around 2,000 years ago. The Roman Empire connected thousands of miles of land with infrastructure and governed them under a single political machine. After the Roman Empire was effectively destroyed by invaders and left to crumble, most of the lands that it had previously governed fell into a dark age of anarchy. Eventually this anarchy would settle into the system we call feudalism. This happened because warlords would gather groups of men and declared lordship over small areas of land that they could defend easily. The lords would demand payment from the peasants that resided on their land in return for protection from rival warlords. The constant threat of rival warlords created a highly competitive environment in which the organizational structure of these groups was forced to rapidly evolve. Because of the volatile environment the strongest groups survived and absorbed the weaker ones. No one state was ever able to conquer the entire continent as the Romans had before, partly due to the numerous barriers that exist on the continent both geographic and ethnic in nature that limited the ability of any group to become too powerful in comparison to its rivals.

The development of the State as an organizational structure led Europe to eventually have the highest concentration of politically powerful states on the globe, because of this the states of Europe would go on to colonize the rest of the world. When the Europeans took over these colonies they would impose the organizational structure of the state by force onto the native populations. Though Europe’s control of their colonies would gradually deteriorate, the institution of the state remained strong. People all around the world accepted the structure of the state as a necessary was to govern themselves. Over the course of a few hundred years the entire world became totally covered in modern states. The reason that the emergence of states in the postcolonial world happened so quickly and with such a relatively small amount of conflict was because the State was forcefully introduced to these areas. This is in contrast to Europe where it developed naturally without outside interference.

2) How do developed authoritarian regimes such as China challenge the liberal theory of democracy? Does Moore’s structural theory provide a better explanation for developed authoritarian states? Explain.

China is the biggest challenge for the Liberal Theory of Democracy to explain because of its high level of development. Liberal theory would predict that as a society goes through economic development it would experience a cultural change that would shift its culture gradually towards democracy. Eventually the existing regime would have no choice but to transition to democracy or be overthrown. China goes against this theory because it has undergone a massive amount of economic change over the past couple of decades and shows no signs of slowing down. Unfortunately for this theory China has one of the strongest authoritarian regimes in the world and does not seem to be transitioning towards democracy. There are multiple authoritarian regimes similar to China, like Malaysia, which have experienced large amount of economic growth but have formed strong authoritarian regimes instead of moving towards democracy. This is problematic for the Liberal Theory of Democracy, luckily we have the structural theory to turn to for cases like this. Moore’s structural theory of democracy and authoritarianism states that as a society experiences large levels of economic growth it will solidify the regime if it is either authoritarian or democratic. In other words a democracy that experiences rapid economic growth will become a more stable. The same is true for authoritarian regimes like China, where rapid economic growth will lead to a strengthening of the authoritarian regime. This turns out to be a much better theory when considering powerful authoritarian regimes like China and Malaysia.