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Essays in the Political Economy of State-Building : = State, Elites and Citizens.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Essays in the Political Economy of State-Building :/
Reminder of title:	State, Elites and Citizens.
Author:	Degrave, Anne.
Description:	1 online resource (162 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-02, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International84-02A.
Subject:	Political science. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798837545054

Essays in the Political Economy of State-Building : = State, Elites and Citizens.
Degrave, Anne.

Essays in the Political Economy of State-Building :State, Elites and Citizens. - 1 online resource (162 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-02, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2022.

Includes bibliographical references

In this dissertation, I investigate the consequences for citizens of two important state-building decisions: centralizing governance as opposed to ruling through local elites; acquiring systematic fiscal information on citizens. I do so in the context of the French state just before and after the 1789 Revolution. I then develop a simple formal model of state-society interactions in the presence of inter-group inequality.The first chapter asks whether citizens benefit from being ruled by local elites as opposed to an authoritarian central state. Local rulers have better information on local conditions than central officials and may be more accountable to citizens, but they can also use their power at the expense of the general population. I analyze the case of provincial institutions in Ancien Regime France, which levied taxation in a third of the territory, and leverage data on living standards, popular rebellions and 1789 grievance lists to measure satisfaction with taxation and local elites. I show that local rule had no clear impact on living standards but improved satisfaction with some limited aspects of taxation. Further, I find evidence of increased levels of rent-seeking by local elites at the expense of peasants. Local representation granted to elites thus made little difference for most citizens.In the second chapter, I focus on the state's ability to access systematic information on citizen's income or wealth for fiscal purposes - "fiscal legibility" - and explore its consequences on state-society relations. I analyze the prominent historical case of the French Napoleonic cadaster, an ambitious top-down land surveying project officially aiming at promoting fairness in the allocation of direct taxation. I build a uniquely detailed data on the timing of the cadaster in more than 2,600 cantons and combine it with information on communal violent resistance to repressive authorities, the gendarmes. Taking advantage of the gradual roll-out of cadastral surveys during the 1800-1821 period, I find that it lowered the use of coercive tax collection and led to a durable decline in resistance to state authorities among the first surveyed cohorts. Investigating mechanisms, I show that the reduction in resistance to the state is most likely explained by the state reinforcing its control over local communities rather than citizens welcoming cadastral reforms.The last chapter takes a broader view of state-society relations, asking when social groups choose to enter distributive conflict with the state as opposed to with each other. I develop a simple model formalizing how the answer to this question depends on intergroup inequality within society and the extent of state demands on society. I consider the strategic interaction between a ruler and a society comprising two resource-unequal groups. Confronted with the ruler's demand over their resources, each group has two options: a) combine resources to resist the state (vertical conflict); b) do not resist the state but compete against each other (horizontal conflict). In equilibrium, social groups ally to fight the ruler (choose vertical conflict) only when inter-group inequality is low, or the ruler's demands are high enough. The ruler thus benefits from inequality to consolidate power, a "divide and conquer" strategy.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798837545054Subjects--Topical Terms:

558774
Political science.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Economic historyIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Essays in the Political Economy of State-Building : = State, Elites and Citizens.
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500 $a Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-02, Section: A.
500 $a Advisor: Stasavage, David.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2022.
504 $a Includes bibliographical references
520 $a In this dissertation, I investigate the consequences for citizens of two important state-building decisions: centralizing governance as opposed to ruling through local elites; acquiring systematic fiscal information on citizens. I do so in the context of the French state just before and after the 1789 Revolution. I then develop a simple formal model of state-society interactions in the presence of inter-group inequality.The first chapter asks whether citizens benefit from being ruled by local elites as opposed to an authoritarian central state. Local rulers have better information on local conditions than central officials and may be more accountable to citizens, but they can also use their power at the expense of the general population. I analyze the case of provincial institutions in Ancien Regime France, which levied taxation in a third of the territory, and leverage data on living standards, popular rebellions and 1789 grievance lists to measure satisfaction with taxation and local elites. I show that local rule had no clear impact on living standards but improved satisfaction with some limited aspects of taxation. Further, I find evidence of increased levels of rent-seeking by local elites at the expense of peasants. Local representation granted to elites thus made little difference for most citizens.In the second chapter, I focus on the state's ability to access systematic information on citizen's income or wealth for fiscal purposes - "fiscal legibility" - and explore its consequences on state-society relations. I analyze the prominent historical case of the French Napoleonic cadaster, an ambitious top-down land surveying project officially aiming at promoting fairness in the allocation of direct taxation. I build a uniquely detailed data on the timing of the cadaster in more than 2,600 cantons and combine it with information on communal violent resistance to repressive authorities, the gendarmes. Taking advantage of the gradual roll-out of cadastral surveys during the 1800-1821 period, I find that it lowered the use of coercive tax collection and led to a durable decline in resistance to state authorities among the first surveyed cohorts. Investigating mechanisms, I show that the reduction in resistance to the state is most likely explained by the state reinforcing its control over local communities rather than citizens welcoming cadastral reforms.The last chapter takes a broader view of state-society relations, asking when social groups choose to enter distributive conflict with the state as opposed to with each other. I develop a simple model formalizing how the answer to this question depends on intergroup inequality within society and the extent of state demands on society. I consider the strategic interaction between a ruler and a society comprising two resource-unequal groups. Confronted with the ruler's demand over their resources, each group has two options: a) combine resources to resist the state (vertical conflict); b) do not resist the state but compete against each other (horizontal conflict). In equilibrium, social groups ally to fight the ruler (choose vertical conflict) only when inter-group inequality is low, or the ruler's demands are high enough. The ruler thus benefits from inequality to consolidate power, a "divide and conquer" strategy.
533 $a Electronic reproduction. $b Ann Arbor, Mich. : $c ProQuest, $d 2024
538 $a Mode of access: World Wide Web
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