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Political Ecology of Nation-States with Examples from Chinese History

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Abstract

States are autonomous political units that unite many communities within their territory, and whose centralized government has the power to collect taxes, draft citizens for work or war, and decree and enforce laws. States attempt to solve the problem of allocating scarce resources because the growth in human needs due to long-term, continuous population increases has always exceeded growth in the environmental carrying capacity. In these self-governed independent territories, people, communities, corporations, and public wealth are protected by complex combinations of individual and collective property rights. However, this stage of social institutional evolution may be forced to change as human populations decline (because many women now reject the option of having children) while improved science, technology, and social institutions solve or mitigate the problem of resource scarcity. In response, the political ecology of states will need to evolve to meet new challenges and develop new institutions that can promote environmentally sustainable social development.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Technology R & D Program (No. 2012BAC08B05). I thank Geoffrey Hart of Montréal, Canada, for his help in writing this paper. I am also grateful for the comments and criticisms of an early version of this manuscript by my colleagues and by the journal’s reviewers.

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The author declares no conflict of interest.

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  1. College of Economic Management, Beijing Forestry University, No. 35, Qinghuadong Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Shixiong Cao

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Correspondence to Shixiong Cao.

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The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the government of China or of any other organization.

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Cao, S. Political Ecology of Nation-States with Examples from Chinese History. Soc Indic Res 124, 445–462 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0800-x

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