State Crisis Theory: A Unification of Institutional, Socio-ecological, Demographic-structural, World-systems, and Revolutions Research

Tilman Hartley*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Increasing ecological and political instability has stimulated interest in how similar problems have arisen in the past - and how they have been resolved. But this research has long been divided along different research traditions. This paper draws together five broad research strands: institutionalism, socio-ecological systems, demographic-structural theories, world-systems approaches, and revolutions research. It begins by establishing that each of these five traditions proposes to explain state crisis, in the sense of a decisive turning point from which the state might not emerge in its current form. But each of the five strands proposes a slightly different set of central hypotheses, and draws on a slightly different set of cases in support. Systematizing these hypotheses draws attention to a neglected distinction between crises that take place in different ecological-economic conditions. This is because crises that occur in conditions of worsening scarcity are hypothesized to have very different causes and trajectories to crises that occur in conditions of sufficiency. But beyond this fundamental scarcity/sufficiency distinction, there are no outright contradictions between different hypotheses. Unifying these theories of state crisis thus establishes a framework for testing these competing, but compatible, hypotheses.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-60
Number of pages60
JournalCliodynamics
Volume15
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2024 by the author(s).

Funding

This paper has benefited from comments from Emily Alexander, Sam Bliss, Katalin Botos, Josh Busby, Philip G Cerny, Mark Cresswell, Selin Dilli, Mladen Domazet, Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Philip Giurlando, Dan Hoyer, Janne I. Hukkinen, Luke Kemp, Gorgi Krlev, Alla Mostepaniuk, Roc o Ruenes Morales, Victor Petrenko, Robin Philips, Flavia Poinsot, Auke Rijpma, Raymond A. Rogers, Robert Schaeffer, Marten Scheffer, Peter Turchin, Bas van Bavel, Bram van Besouw, Sytze Van Herck, Antonio Velasco, Ronny J. Viales-Hurtado, and seminar participants at the Economic and Social History group and at the Centre for Complex Systems Study, both at Utrecht University. This research was partly funded by the Spinoza Prize and partly by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westfalen.

FundersFunder number
Centre for Complex Systems Study
Universiteit Utrecht
Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westfalen

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