Abstract
This article uses POLITY II, a new dataset on the authority traits of 155 countries, to assess some general historical arguments about the dynamics of political change in Europe and Latin America from 1800 to 1986. The analysis, relying mainly on graphs, focuses first on the shifting balance between democratic and autocratic patterns in each world region and identifies some of the internal and international circumstances underlying the trends, and deviations from them. Trends in three indicators of state power also are examined in the two regions: the state's capacity to direct social and economic life, the coherence of political institutions, and military manpower. The state's capacity has increased steadily in both regions; coherence has increased in the European countries but not Latin America; while military power has fluctuated widley in both regions. The article is foundational to a series of more detailed longitudinal studies of the processes of state growth.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
BANKS, ARTHUR S. 1971Cross-polity time-series data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
0 1972 Correlates of democratic performance. Comparative Politics 4, 1: (January): 217–230.
BENDIX, REINHARD 1978Kings or people: Power and the mandate to rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.
ECKSTEIN, HARRY, and TED ROBERT GURR 1975Patterns of authority: A structural basis for political inquiry. New York: Wiley-Interscience.
EISENSTADT, S. N. 1978Revolution and the transformation of societies: A comparative study of civilizations. New York: Free Press.
GASTIL, RAYMOND D. 1987Freedom in the world: Political rights and civil liberties, 1986–87. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
GURR, TED ROBERT 1974 Persistence and change in political systems 1800–1971.American Political Science Review 68, 4 (December): 1482–1504.
0 1988a The political dimension of national capabilities: Concepts and measurement.International Interactions 14, 2: 133–139.
0 1988b War, revolution, and the growth of the coercive state.Comparative Political Studies 21, 1 (April): 45–65.
GURR, TED ROBERT and ASSOCIATES 1978Comparative studies of political conflict and change: Cross national datasets. Ann Arbor: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.
GURR, TED ROBERT KEITH JAGGERS, and WILL H. MOORE 1989Polity II codebook. Boulder, CO: Center for Comparative Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Colorado.
GURR, TED ROBERT, AND DESMOND S. KING 1987The State and the city. London: Macmillan: Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
HARMEL, ROBERT 1980 Gurr's ‘Persistence and change’ revisited: Some consequences of using different operationalizations of ‘change of polity.’European Journal of Political Research 8 2 (June): 189–214.
JACOBY, HENRY 1973The bureaucratization of the world. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.
JAGGERS, KEITH 1989 War and the three faces of power: War-making and state-making in Europe and North America, 1823–1953. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the International Studies Association. London. March.
LICHBACH, MARK IRVING 1984Regime change and the coherence of European governments Denver: Graduate School of International Studies, Monograph, Series in World Affairs, Vol. 21. Book 1.
LIPSET, SEYMOUR MARTIN 1959 Some social requisites of democracy: Economic development and political legitimacy.American Political Science Review 53, 1 (March): 69–105.
MAOZ, ZEEV 1989 Joining the club of nations: Political development and international conflict. 1816–1976.International Studies Quarterly 33, 2 (June): 198–231.
MAOZ, ZEEV, and NASRIN, ABDOLALI 1989 Regime types and international conflict, 1816–1976.Journal of Conflict Resolution 22, 1 (March): 3–36.
MCNEILL, WILLIAM 1982The pursuit of power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
MOORE, BARRINGTON, JR. 1966Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. Boston: Beacon Press.
PARK, KUN Y., and MICHAEL D. WARD 1988 A research note on the Correlates of War national capability data: Some revised procedures applied to the 1959–1980 era.International Interactions 14 2.
RASLER, KAREN, and WILLIAM THOMPSON 1985a War and the economic growth of major powers.American Journal of Political Science 29, 3: 513–538.
1985b War making and state making: Govemmental expenditures, 0 tex revenues, and global wars.American Political Science Review 79, 2: 491–507.
RUSSETT, BRUCE 1970What price vigilance? The burdens of national defense. New Haven: Yale University Press.
SINGER, J. DAVID, STUART BREMER, and JOHN STUCKEY 1972 Capability distribution, uncertainty, and major power war, 1820–1965. InPeace, war, and numbers, edited by Bruce M. Russett. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
SKOCPOL, THEDA 1979States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
TAYLOR, CHARLES L., and DAVID JODICE 1983World handbook of political and social indicators. 3d ed.. New Haven: Yale University Press.
THIESSEN, HEATHER, and MARTHA BAYS 1986 A survival analysis of polity persistence and change: A reanalysis of “Persistence and change in political systems, 1800–1971.” Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago (April).
TILLY, CHARLES, ed. 1975The formation of national states in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
TRIMBERGER, ELLEN K. 1978Revolution from above. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
WARD, MICHAEL D. 1974 Authority dimensions: A study of the reliability and validity of the polity data. Unpublished research paper, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University.
ZIMMERMANN, EKKART 1980Political violence, crises, and revolutions: Theories and research. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman.
Additional information
Ted Robert Gurr is a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and Distinguished Scholar at the University's Center for International Development and Conflict Management (Mill Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742). Among his 14 books and monographs areWhy Men Rebel (awarded the Woodrow Wilson Prize as best book in political science of 1970).Patterns of Authority: A comparative Basis for Political Inquiry (with Harry Eckstein, 1975), andViolence in America, (3d edition. 1989). He is engaged in a long-term global study of minorities' involvement in conflict and its consequences and resolution.
Keith Jaggers is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics, Campus Box 333, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309. He is co-author with Will H. Moore of “Deprivation, Mobilization, and the State,” recently published in theJournal of Developing Societies, and is currently working on an empirical study of the impact of war on the growth of the state.
Will H. Moore is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics. He is also a co-author with Maro Ellena of a forthcoming article inWestern Political Quarterly on the cross-national determinants of political violence. His current research interests include the resolution of internal wars and the formation of coercive states.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gurr, T.R., Jaggers, K. & Moore, W.H. The Transformation of the Western State: The Growth of Democracy, Autocracy, and State Power Since 1800. St Comp Int Dev 25, 73–108 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02716906
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02716906