Empires, States, and the Making of Power IV. Development and Drivers of Modernization in Localized Outcomes

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Brief Overview

This panel unites five regionally diverse studies - spanning Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Western Europe, and Latin America - that examine how early stages of development and reform in historically under-developed or rapidly transforming states were shaped by local cleavages, elite incentives, and uneven modernization. In Eastern Europe, Yorozuya shows that in the 1921 Upper Silesian plebiscite, divergent sectoral economic interests - rather than ethnicity alone - drove Polish-speaking communities to favor Germany or Poland, revealing how early industrial structures shaped developmental alignments. In the Middle East, Baydar, Beramendi, and Cansunar demonstrate that the Turkish Republic's uniform early nation-building interventions produced sharply contrasting development trajectories depending on local elites' ability to resist or absorb central reforms. From Africa, Ricart-Huguet's Uganda study finds that even amid instability and ethnic heterogeneity, cabinet selection has long reflected underlying distributions of human capital created by colonial-era educational inequality, shaping the developmental capacity of postcolonial governments. Turning to Western Europe's earlier experience with institutional and economic restructuring, Figueroa, Figueiredo, and Salgado show that the suppression of religious orders unfolded as rapid, system-wide seizures that reshaped landholding and state consolidation, illuminating how rulers confronted entrenched obstacles to economic reform. Finally, in Latin America, Sun and Tuñón reveal that early political gains during Brazil's gradual liberalization unintentionally strengthened authoritarian successor parties by fragmenting the opposition, illustrating how transitional elite dynamics shape long-run developmental and democratic outcomes. Taken together, these works show that the early developmental trajectories of under-developed or reforming polities hinge not on formal reforms alone but on the historically situated interaction of local economic interests, elite strategies, and inherited social structures, yielding both striking commonalities and revealing contrasts across world regions.

Section

• 84. Working Groups (In House)

Chair

• 3:20pm |

  Luke Condra, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Campus

Individual Presentations

• 3:25pm |

  Religious Orders and State-Building - Valentin Figueroa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• 3:35pm |

  Capacity, Lords and the Limits of Iron Fist Development - Asli Cansunar, University of Washington

• 3:45pm |

  Competence Amidst Instability: Cabinet Formation in Uganda Since Independence - Joan Ricart-Huguet, Loyola University Maryland

• 3:55pm |

  Who Supported Poland? Sectoral Cleavages in the Upper Silesian Plebiscite - Anna Yorozuya, Yale University

• 4:05pm |

  When Opposition Wins but Authoritarians Endure: How Early Democratic Gains Entrench Authoritarian Successors - Yining Sun, Princeton University

Discussants

• 4:15pm |

  Luke Condra, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Campus

• 4:15pm |

  Aditya Dasgupta, University of California, Merced

Audience Participation

• 4:25pm |

  Audience participation will last for the remainder of the session.