Empires, States, and the Making of Power II. Building and Unbuilding the State: Elites, Bureaucracies, and the Foundations of Political Authority

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Brief Overview

How do rulers build - or unravel - the institutional foundations of state capacity? This panel brings together new theoretical and empirical research on the formation, erosion, and reconfiguration of state power across diverse contexts. The papers trace how elites, bureaucracies, and rulers interact to construct and contest the administrative and political underpinnings of authority.

Daniel Lowery examines the long-run legacies of succession conflicts from 1000 to 1800, showing how elite fragmentation undermined bureaucratic expansion and fiscal capacity, leaving lasting imprints on modern state development. Shuyi Yu develops a formal model of bureaucratization in Imperial China, demonstrating how the transition from elite to bureaucratic administration generated an N-shaped trajectory of state capacity over time. Hanna Lee analyzes South Korea under Park Chung Hee, arguing that technocratic institutions functioned as credible commitment devices that stabilized elite cooperation by constraining executive discretion. Finally, Jan Vogler investigates promotions within the German Wehrmacht, revealing how prestige and social networks shaped advancement even within a highly formalized bureaucracy.

Together, these papers illuminate the political and organizational foundations of state capacity, showing how the construction of administrative institutions is continually shaped - and sometimes undone - by the dynamics of elite power, bureaucratic design, and institutional constraint.

Section

• 84. Working Groups (In House)

Chair

• 9:50am |

  Emily A. Sellars, Yale University

Individual Presentations

• 9:55am |

  Unmaking the State: Succession Conflicts, State Building, and Long-Run Political Development - Daniel Lowery, Harvard University

• 10:05am |

  Bureaucratization as a Bumpy Journey: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Chinese State - Shuyi Yu, University of Chicago

• 10:15am |

  Technocrats as Commitment Devices in Authoritarian Politics - Hanna Lee, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• 10:25am |

  Prestige and Personal Connections in a Bureaucracy of Violence: Promotions of High-Level Officers in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War - Jan P. Vogler, Aarhus University

• 10:35am |

  When Do Imperial Legacies Fade? State Capacity, Social Heterogeneity, and Education at the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier - Bogdan Gabriel Popescu, Tecnologico de Monterrey

Discussants

• 10:45am |

  Casey Petroff, University of Rochester

• 10:45am |

  Asli Cansunar, University of Washington

Audience Participation

• 10:55am |

  Audience participation will last for the remainder of the session.