State Making after War: Insights from Nineteenth-century Latin America

• In Event: State and Region Formation

Abstract

Most scholars understand that war makes states while these prepare for war or through the out-selection of weaker states. I uncover a post-war mechanism in classical bellicist theory whereby victory consolidates state building institutions after war. I estimate the effects of war outcomes on long-run state capacity using a panel of Latin America at the height of state building (1860-1913). A comprehensive review of the historiography of these wars supplemented by diplomatic archival material support the assumptions undergirding these models. I use the same material to illustrate my causal mechanisms in the five greater nineteenth-century wars after independence: the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), the Filibuster War (1856-1857), the Franco-Mexican War (1862-1867), the Paraguayan War (1864-1870), and the War of the Pacific (1879-1883). These short case studies show victory in the battlefield immediately tilted the domestic balance toward pro-state elites, institutionalizing their project in the long run. Conversely, surviving losers of these wars were set into a self-reinforcing path of state weakening.

Author

• Luis L Schenoni, University College London