Is a “borderless world” an approaching fact or simply wishful thinking?1 Borders are often the scene and the source of conflict. Some reason that, as experiments in regional integration and the inexorable forces of globalization blur these traditional lines in the sand, perhaps traditional conflicts will dissipate as well. And so, social scientists longing for a peaceful future rejoice in the malfunction and breakdown of the nation-state and its exclusionary boundaries.2 What comes next is still the stuff of speculation.

Whether these predictions hold true or not, they do make clear that our social science theories are woefully limited. Political Science’s obsession with the nation-state as a fundamental unit of analysis is apparent from international relations to state formation.3 But the state is not the only form of political unit to have existed and, if predictions of borderlessness are even partly accurate, not the only type that ever will.

It is but one of many institutional options.4 This narrow analytic focus on the state hinders us from looking back through history, envisioning the future, and even asking the right questions of the present.5 A theory is needed that can encompass and explain the existence of the nation-state, but that can also look beyond it and explain the existence of other forms of political units.

This research develops a theory to explain the variety of physical forms political units assume. An important characteristic of a unit’s physical form is the boundary that is the furthest extent of its authority. This boundary can be distinct, demarcated, ratified, or even patrolled in order to control the flow of goods, ideas, and people across it.6 Such a defined boundary is needed to fulfill the requirements of the modern nation-state, for example. On the other hand, a boundary can be indistinct, a site where the authority of two (or more) political units overlaps to various degrees, such as is common in feudalism.7

Thus we will next investigate why, the physical form of political units in a system depends on the ideological content of the units. Each unit relies on a “source of transcendent credibility” to generate compliance from the people.

Transcendent credibility is the rarely questioned credibility that the people ascribe to an entity that exists beyond the material world, for example a god or a nation. Authority figures enhance their own credibility by linking their credibility to that of the transcendent source. Rulers are therefore very sensitive to potential threats to these compliance generating ideologies and will act to reduce them. The proposition is that as the number of sources of transcendent credibility in a system increases, the physical form of the political units will change and the distinctiveness of the boundaries between political units will increase.

For example both neo-realism and neo-liberalism are limited to a states system.8 Both of these theories begin with the assumption that the nation-state is the fundamental unit of analysis.9 Thus, international systems for which this is not true are beyond the scope of their explanatory powers. Some systems contain nation-states co-existing with very un-state-like political units.10 Other systems consist of no nation-states at all.11

Further, since the nation-state is a modern intellectual construction, the assumption is not valid beyond the modern era.12 This limits the existence of the states system to 1648 to present, at the most.13 Some have construed this window more narrowly, arguing the states system only begins with the European nationalist movements of the late 1700s.14 When we add place to these time limitations, we reduce the applicability of the dominant theories to strictly Europe for all but the late twentieth century.15 This excludes most of human history. The discipline needs a theory capable of explanation beyond the states system.

This does not mean the states system is irrelevant – far from it. The dominant theories prove relatively useful because they focus on the times in which they are practiced. However, unless the world has truly arrived at the “end of history,” the states system will not endure forever. Further, current theories tell us very little about the interaction of political units prior to the invention of “states.”16

A theory is needed that contains what came before, what may come after, and the states system of the present. A theory narrowly focused on the present sufficiently answers some questions. As a result, there has not been an overwhelming outcry against the paradigms with which we live. However, many questions beg for something more. In fact, the current paradigm of state-centrist theory limits the questions that we think to ask.17 For example, it is probable that the literature of “state failure” in Africa asks the wrong questions. This literature aims at improving the stability and survivability of African states. Yet, if conditions are such that something other than a state is called for, then an artificial superimposition of the state structure may never succeed. “State failure” exists because the ideological foundations required for a territorial nation-state are absent. If this is true then the literature should not be asking how states can succeed in Africa, but what type of political organization the conditions of Africa demand. This can only occur if our theories do not presuppose the state.

Another issue requiring a more fundamental theory is the future direction of the international system. The argument that has emerged pits those who believe the state is withering away against those who insist the state is durable, successfully weathering the current storms.18 The withering/weathering debate is important because the future of international interaction is implicated in it. Unfortunately, neorealism and neo-liberalism shed scant light on this dialogue. If the nation-state is a starting assumption, how can a theory envision anything beyond it? A more fundamental theory would embrace a variety of international systems and discuss the mechanisms and causes of system change. Such a theory would present the conditions necessary for change or stability, postulate the mechanisms of change, and envision likely outcomes of a future system transformation.

A more fundamental theory will also allow us to gain a clearer understanding of why current paradigms and theories are so applicable today. Such a theory will not contradict the basic tenets of current theories. Instead, it will be able to derive the premises and assumptions of current theory from more basic assumptions and premises. Thus, the current states system will be a subset of the total cases a fundamental theory would include.

Going beyond the state as unit demands a better understanding of what a unit is. This research will argue that a unit consists of both form (geographical, physical being) and content (reason for being). Neither aspect of the political unit can be ignored. The two aspects are mutually constitutive as well.19 Getting beyond the state requires a focus on this constitutive interaction between a unit’s form and content. Every political unit must exist in physical space. This begs the question of what exactly it is that exists. To answer this, we must turn to the content of the unit – the reason of the unit’s being. Martin Heidegger is well known for his elaboration of the distinction between two types of “being.”20 A rock exists – meaning it consumes physical space – but a rock does not exist in the same sense that person exists – meaning the person also has a reason for being. A political unit also exists in both senses. This research will look closely at what content means in terms of the political unit, and will then examine the effects that content has on the physical form a political unit assumes.

Realist and Neo-liberal models take the form of the unit as the starting point of analysis: specifically, the State. By contrast, I argue that the content of the unit, existing in a systemic matrix of other units with other contents, affects the physical form the unit will take. The form taken then feeds back and affects the content of the unit in a cyclical pattern. Form and content of a political unit must be seen as mutually constitutive. Beginning the process of analysis with the content rather than the form of political units enables international relations scholars to break out of the theoretical iron cage of the nation-state.

 

The Political Unit Formation Question

It is “state formation” that dominates Comparative Political Science literature. As discussed above, this means that a general process applicable over a wide range of historical and spatial contexts is lacking. For example, Western scholars suggest that the two key mechanisms of state formation in early modern Europe were the spread of citizenship and the formation of bureaucracies to pay for war. However, R Bin Wong argues that these variables were irrelevant in the case of China: European dominance of the discipline of Political Science has shackled the study of China’s history to the Political power is a derivative of compliance.41 Compliance is generated through two uses of political power: physical and ideological.42 As rational actors, rulers of political units, in general, desire political power as a means of maintaining their position. They will expend some of their political power on physical and ideological means of generating more compliance and, hence, more political power. This process with respect to physical power has been looked at extensively in international relations theory, while the ideological aspect has generally been noted and avoided.

In the bargain between ruler and ruled, the ruled will only comply if the ruler’s promise to deliver benefits is credible.43 Standing alone, these promises seem incredible. In order to generate compliance, the ruler must bridge this credibility gap. The threat of physical force does not improve the ruler’s credibility, but it may balance out the costs of non-compliance with the costs of complying with a lying ruler’s commands. Ideology may have a similar impact, but it may also be used to bridge the credibility gap. As we have seen described in “From Belgium To Kosovo” and als Heather Rae has argued before, political elites use religious and national traditions to forge cohesion and build a “state.”44 Thus, some ideological aspects of culture can significantly contribute to uniting a political unit. The question than is how elites are able to appropriate culture for their own ends, in particular, generating credibility?

Cultures possess a source of transcendent credibility: an unseen force (e.g., god(s), a nation, Nature, etc.) that is believed to favor the faithful. Members of the culture see this force as possessing transcendent powers that earthly beings cannot understand. Regardless of the outcome of any particular event, the people will often perceive that outcome as a part of an overall plan to achieve some crucial goal. Because this end is more important than the means to obtain that end and because the means are considered beyond the understanding of the ordinary follower, the faithful usually refrain from questioning the credibility of the force itself. This is exactly the kind of rarely questioned credibility the ruler craves his efforts to generate compliance. Thus, a ruler will bridge his own credibility gap by using ideology to appropriate and link this transcendent credibility to his own promises.45 That rulers use sacred beliefs to legitimate their power is not a new argument.46

Neither is it particularly novel to argue that there is a direct parallel between the usage of transcendent ideas attached to a deity and the transcendent ideas attached to a more secular manifestation, such as a nation.47 What is new here is the idea that the political appropriation of the sacred and transcendent is linked to issues of establishing the credibility of the ruler. The clarification of this link is necessary in order to understand the ramifications at the international level.

As a ruler (or potential ruler) seeks to unite a group under his authority, he enhances his own credibility by linking it with what he believes to be the most efficacious source of transcendent credibility for this particular group. When successful, this linkage increases the perceived costs of disobedience and increases the perceived benefits of compliance for those who believe in the source of transcendent credibility. This enables the potential ruler to generate just enough compliance to gradually increase other means of generating compliance: give priests a share in the system, create symbols of authority, hire persons to compel compliance, return benefits to the people, etc. The ruler begins by leaning on ideological means of generating compliance and, with this, intensifies the ideological link and creates physically coercive means of generating compliance.48 It should not be assumed that the potential ruler does this out of strictly instrumental intentions – he may be as much a believer in the source as any of the people. As Pierre Bourdieu argues, the dominant class does not necessarily dominate overtly.49

This ideological link is fairly sticky: once a link is established, a ruler faces high costs if he chooses to shift the basis of credibility to another source of transcendent credibility, ceterus paribus.50 In addition, a ruler will avoid shifting all means of generating compliance to coercion because this is incredibly costly and cannot be sustained for a long period.51 Although the ideological link is sticky, there will arise a variety of interpretations of how the link is made (i.e. a theological dispute, etc.).52 Groups, individuals, and the ruler himself, will seek to affirm interpretations that benefit them and disparage interpretations that are perceived as counter to their interests.53 Again, this does not require a purely materialistic actor: the actor may believe a particular interpretation is true, not because it is in his material interest, but in addition to it being in his interest.54 Thus, governments will be concerned with how various interpretations of the linkage arise and which interpretations emerge dominant.55 Rulers may also promote alternative interpretations that are more beneficial to their interests as domestic circumstances change.

To further complicate matters, this domestic game takes place in a strategic international environment. Other political units will exploit opportunities to undermine different sources of transcendent credibility and the different ideologies used to link this credibility to rulers. Successful undermining will reduce a rival’s effectiveness in generating compliance and, hence, lead to a deterioration of his overall political power. Where the sources of transcendent credibility or the linking ideologies are similar, however, a rival will be much less willing to attack, since this undermining could boomerang and undermine his own ability to generate compliance efficiently.

The two second-tier variables, geographic position and military capabilities, can magnify the threat a differing source of transcendent credibility poses. In general, geographically closer sources will be perceived as greater threats than more distant ones (taking into account natural barriers and corridors). In addition, the more coercive capabilities a political unit with a differing source has at its disposal, the greater the perceived level of threat from that unit.

Borders are, in large part, a means of controlling the entry of unwanted ideas into a given territory.56 The border’s ability to accomplish this varies with the amount of resources a ruler invests to keep foreign ideas excluded. These costs are weighed against the potential costs that would result from an outside idea penetrating the territory in question and possibly undermining the ruler’s source of transcendent credibility or the ideology that maintains this link.

 

Resulting Hypothesis

It stands to reason that as the perceived threat to a political unit’s source of transcendent credibility or the ideology that links this credibility to the ruler increases, so too will the amount of resources a ruler will be willing to invest in making boundaries more impervious to outside ideas. Overlapping territory would be impermissible when the threat of the ideas from the other political unit is large. The result would be boundaries that are distinct and recognized. On the other hand, when the threat from another political unit is low the ruler has less incentive to invest his scarce resources in maintaining such a barrier. Hence, we arrive at the hypothesis that is the focus of this research: as the number of sources of transcendental credibility within the system increases, the boundaries of political units become more distinct. In part 2 and 3 we will research and examine this hypothesis in two settings: seventh to eighth century China and fifteenth to sixteenth century Persia. Each case experienced a period in which a single source of transcendent credibility monopolized the system and a period in which there were two sources in the system. Political units in the period dominated by a single source had indistinct boundaries between them, while the political units in the period with more than one source invested heavily in creating relatively more distinct boundaries with political units that used different sources of transcendent credibility. The correlation of dependent and explanatory variables demonstrated in these cases suggests the plausibility of the hypothesis.

 

The Choices Available to Rulers

Rulers are rational strategic actors. They seek to obtain compliance from people in their territory at a minimum cost of resources. Compliance can be obtained using coercive tactics and ideological tactics. All things being equal, once established, ideological tactics are less costly than coercive tactics. Because rulers require compliance to access resources, they will invest some of these resources in maintaining ideological bases for compliance and protecting these bases from ideas that threaten to reduce their effectiveness. In addition, there is an investment cost in resources for a ruler to switch his basis of legitimacy from one source of transcendent credibility to another. This means that once a ruler has established an effective source of transcendent credibility, he will tend to resist any alternatives that come along. To the extent that he perceives it to be cost effective, he will invest in controls to quash threats from within and without and will actively work to prevent alternative sources of transcendent credibility from emerging in the area around his territory. This suggests that changes in the number of sources of transcendent credibility in a system will be rare occurrences.

Still, while “ideas do not float freely,” they have the ability and tendency to change as they are passed around through time and space.57 It is clear, for example, that the Christian source of transcendent credibility at the beginning of the middle ages was very different from that of the late middle ages. Rulers have an incentive to provide for some flexibility in the interpretation of a source of transcendent credibility in order to keep up with changing conditions and popular sentiments. Too little flexibility can be as damaging as too much. Therefore, we should expect some evolution in the interpretations of sources of transcendent credibility. In addition, where there is a shared source among political units, we should also expect to see some coordination between rulers to reduce their costs and to prevent the outbreak of costly battles over interpretations. Where this coordination occurs throughout a system (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church), the source of transcendent credibility can change without necessarily increasing or decreasing the total number of sources.

However, this evolution, even when closely controlled, must still be seen as a potential source of systemic change. This model is slanted heavily toward a “top-down” arrangement: changes in a source of transcendent credibility are discussed, made, and enforced by the elites, especially rulers. This demands an apologetic statement, since historical and social science research has been increasingly shifting toward “bottom-up” approaches in which the causes of change are sought among the “people” rather than the elite.58 There are several problems with a “bottom-up” approach, however. First, especially when dealing with ideas, it becomes very difficult to pinpoint what the “people” believed. A common understanding of any issue or idea is often absent among an agglomeration of individuals. Arguments about the “elite” also faces similar obstacles, but these are mitigated thanks to the smaller numbers and self-disciplining mechanisms within the group. This is not an excuse to ignore the non-elite, however.

A top-down model must continuously recognize that the elite are adjusting to changing perceptions among the non-elite, not merely imposing their ideas on a passive populace. Second, historical data preserves much more about the elite than the non-elite. This makes the world of the elite more accessible to the twenty-first century scholar. Again, there is no excuse to completely leave out the non-elite as historical methodology has developed innovative ways to capture the thoughts and actions of the people. Third, it is much easier to capture intentions from the elite than from the people since they are more likely to leave written records. Finally, since the cause and effect under consideration are political policies—obtaining compliance and making political boundaries more or less distinctive—the viewpoints of the elite necessarily predominate.

The dynamic model used in this research will not push the people aside, however. To gain compliance, political elites are compelled to keep their fingers on the pulse of the people and react to or even anticipate any deviations from the norm among the population. Any model that leaves out grassroots changes from below or political adjustments from above ignores a significant piece of the puzzle.

 

The Impact of Ideas

While this website involves itself a lot with  the  sociology of history and its impact on important events today, a secondary theme we often come back to is the history of ideas (ideas have  a history).Furthermore one can observe that people consistently implicate ideas as causes for their actions suggests that ideas have impacts. So even if they are “fooling” themselves or others, it must be asked why a particular idea is perceived to be useful in accomplishing a purpose. More than this, people believe ideas make a difference in their actions and the actions of others and act according to this belief. Thus, even the cynic can appreciate the study of the impact of ideas, even as he or she doubts the reasons why they have the impact they do.

Ideas that we will concern us in the present research are intend to ad credibility which at  the same time need to call for limitations in the ideas that are available for use. A minimal requirement that can be made for someone to use an idea is for that person to have possession of the idea.Reformation historian Heiko Oberman has pointed out that the specific historical conditions in which a person exists vastly limits the ideas that are available or even possible.59 Thus, there is a finite pool of ideas from which any person may draw.

A second limitation is that the idea holds a certain level of efficacy among the society at large or, at least, among a crucial segment of the constituency of the population. In other words, if only one person holds the idea, it will be extremely unlikely that it will be an effective means of generating compliance. While there will be a very large number of possible ideas in existence, they will each have varying levels of efficacy. Since this is a dynamic theory, an idea’s level of efficacy may increase or decrease over time as a result of bottom-up or top-down changes.

Thus, we need not concern ourselves with every possible idea. Rulers were presented with a very finite group of ideas from which to draw and an even smaller set that were seen to possess sufficient efficacy among the population that they could be used to generate compliance. Still, as time passed, this set of ideas could change as well as the level of efficacy of each potential source of transcendent credibility.

 

Why Does the Number of Sources of Transcendent Credibility in a System Change?

For example, a conquering country will often impose its source of transcendent credibility in the new territory through a “colonization of consciousness.”60 At the very least, conquest will bring the real or imagined threat of imposition. Another way a new source may enter the system is along with a migrating group. Many religions proselytize and export missionaries into distant lands to gain converts, with varying levels of success. Finally, new contacts through trade and pilgrimage can increase the possibility of interactions that may result in the introduction of new sources of transcendent credibility into regions. Of course, combinations of these may also occur, increasing the potential of a new source of transcendent credibility taking root. Because it will take some time before the new source of transcendent credibility can effectively generate compliance in the area, the eventual success of the introduction must also depend on the strength of the political unit supporting the expansion.

An internal change in the source of transcendent credibility occurs when a ruler significantly modifies an old source or adopts a new one. Because there are significant costs and risks in changing a source, such changes will be rare. The most likely moment for such a transformation will be when a ruler perceives that the old source is no longer an effective means of generating compliance. There are several reasons why a ruler or a ruling coalition would perceive an old source of transcendent credibility to be losing its effectiveness in generating compliance. If the source loses its legitimacy then it also loses its practical reason of existence. As it loses its legitimacy, the people will be more likely to withhold compliance from a ruler who has linked his own legitimacy to the source. Such declines in legitimacy will often result from the source’s inability to adapt with changing circumstances. Faith movements frequently undergo a process of institutionalization that make it more and more difficult to adjust to conditions.61 If the institutions surrounding a source become too calcified, the people will often begin to lose faith in the legitimacy of the source for pragmatic reasons. The source may also lose its effectiveness if the link between the ruler and source is broken or damaged. For example, the people may not obey a ruler who does not act “virtuously.” If the link between ruler and source is more indirect (e.g., god priests king), a weakened link at any point in the chain can damage the source’s effectiveness. Thus, rampant corruption in the clergy may force a ruler to take some action to restore the credibility of the source.

Once the ruler perceives the old source is losing its effectiveness in generating compliance, the ruler faces a choice. He must measure the costs and benefits of each potential action. Two of his options, a reinvigoration of the old source or a switch to a new source, will each require a short-term investment of resources. A third option, doing nothing, will be relatively costless in the short-term, though there are many other long-term costs associated with it. Benefits will largely be measured in terms of the effectiveness of the source in generating compliance from the populace. Any costbenefit analysis must include (1) the ruler’s perceived costs in resources to pursue one option or another, (2) the ruler’s perceived benefits in resources after pursuing one option or another, (3) the ruler’s perceptions of the success and failure chances of pursuing one option or another, (4) key constituents’ perceptions of their own costs and benefits, and (5) the relative weights of short-term and long-term costs and benefits. Since these are largely perceptions and, thus, difficult to measure, each of these three options will be discussed more thoroughly.

 

Option #1: Do Nothing

Historians who look back at the choices of rulers are quick to point out the dangers of the “do nothing” option. Hindsight allows scholars to separate significant events from the day-to-day events in which historical actors were immersed. However, for the ruler trapped in the moment, there will often be no perceived decline in the effectiveness of the source and, thus, the do nothing option must be considered the overwhelming default. In addition, the ruler may make minor adjustments here and there, but they are rarely of the magnitude that constitutes the introduction of a “new” source.

The more striking question then is when a ruler, who actually perceives the declining effectiveness of a source, will choose to do nothing about it. This may be the case if the ruler is uncertain about his perception.62 The more uncertainty or mixed messages, the more likely that a rational ruler will play it safe and wait for more information. Another possibility is that the ruler lacks the requisite resources necessary to either reinvigorate the old source or switch to a new one. Finally, since any change will create winners and losers, changes may be stymied by persons who would lose from such a switch.63 Such persons may come from inside the society or from outside.

All of these scenarios point to two conditions that are more likely to culminate in the “do nothing” option: uncertainty or a weak ruler.64 Irrationality and uncertainty may prevent the “best” decision from being made and, since the default choice is “do nothing,” this will be the likely choice. But, in other cases, this option will be the result of a weak ruler facing a period of turmoil that, of itself, makes the government less effective. The ruler is forced to ride the waves of change and depend on fate or luck. Machiavelli suggested in The Prince that this was the situation facing the Medici’s in Florence.65 Foreign powers continued to invade Italy, creating new turmoil. Machiavelli advised that the Prince cease doing nothing and tap into the power of religion in generating compliance and obedience.

Thus, three conditions that are necessary for a ruler to do “something” when faced with a source of transcendent credibility that is losing its efficacy are (1) possession of the necessary resources to act, (2) sufficient political and personal strength to be able to act, and (3) a perception of the necessity to act. It is important to note that if a change in the source of transcendent credibility will occur as a result of a change in leadership (peaceful or violent), the new ruler will need to meet these same three conditions. Once these conditions are met, it is increasingly likely that a ruler will either use his resources to reinvigorate the declining source of transcendent credibility or use his resources to adopt a new source. The next question, then, is which of these options the ruler will choose.

 

Option #2: Use Resources to Reinvigorate the Old Source

Given the conditions listed above, a ruler may choose to invest his resources to rejuvenate the traditional source of transcendent credibility. This is not a surprising option since the old source is a known quantity that has shown that it can effectively generate compliance when vital. Thus, it is safest to assume that if the old source of transcendent credibility appears to be fixable to the ruler and that fix appears to be cost-effective, then the ruler will opt to reinvigorate the old source. To this necessary condition, we may also add two sufficient conditions under which this option will be chosen over replacing the source: the ruler is a “true believer” and/or there is a lack of viable alternatives to the old source.

If the ruler is a true believer in the old source of transcendent credibility he will choose reinvigorating the old source over instituting a new source. In fact, he will likely consider it his religious duty or even divine mission to breathe new life into the ideas and institutions surrounding the declining source of transcendent credibility. This does not present a problem to a rational-choice model since, for example, a nationalist leader may place priority on the vigor of the nation over his political career, yet he would also likely see the two as going hand in hand. Whether a ruler is a true believer is a difficult variable to test, however. Past actions may be instructive.

Examples include crusades, investment in invigorating the source during periods when such investment was unnecessary, or inordinate tithes and gifts. Past statements may also be instructive, though it is difficult to distinguish true beliefs in statements from rhetoric aimed at manipulating an audience. However, where one finds a ruler who is a true believer, he will likely act to preserve the old source of transcendent credibility. Another sufficient condition that would result in a reinvigoration of the old source is a lack of viable alternatives. Granted, there are always alternative sources of transcendent credibility, but very few at any time are viable. Competition from other sources can often accelerate an old source’s decline, but there are also times when a source declines on its own merits. It is likely that such periods point towards a future that people perceive as hopeless, full of uncertainty, or chaotic. An example may be the last years of the Roman Empire in the West – the idea of “Rome” was disintegrating and for a time there was no obvious alternative. At such times, a ruler who is able to reinvigorate the old source may receive the added benefit of being considered the “savior” from the pending chaos, thereby enhancing his credibility further. Still, we should not expect to see many periods where there are no alternative sources with significant efficacy vying for dominance.

Aside from these two sufficient conditions, the choice to reinvigorate the old source of transcendent credibility requires that the ruler perceives that the old source is fixable and that this fix is cost-effective, especially given the viable alternatives. Thus, the reason why the old source is declining is crucial. The fact that the old source of transcendent credibility is a “known quantity” means that time is a factor as well. In the short term, the ruler knows that the old source has worked, while the effectiveness of a new source remains unknown. This favors the old source. However, over a longer period of declining efficacy, the old source has demonstrated that it can be both effective and less effective. Since its’ less effective period is the more recent, this tends to color the perception of the ruler, making the fact that the old source is a “known quantity” more a wash in terms of benefits and costs. In short, we should expect that a ruler will more likely attempt to reinvigorate a declining source of transcendent credibility in the earlier years of its’ decline. Likewise, the longer the source demonstrates declining effectiveness, the less likely that the ruler will opt for reinvigoration.

Overall, the default for a ruler who decides to act in the face of a declining source of transcendent credibility is to use his resources to reinvigorate that source. There are several reasons for this. First, a ruler will tend to be a product of the culture he was raised in and will be, at least, a partial believer in the source. Second, newer potential sources of transcendent credibility tend to lack the demonstrated effectiveness that only time can provide. Third, old sources almost always appear fixable, although the costs and potential backfires may make this costly. Finally, there is some level of certainty for a ruler in calculating costs and benefits with respect to the old source, as it is a “known quantity.” Therefore, the more difficult question is why a ruler would opt to invest resources in a new source of transcendent credibility.

 

Option #3: Use Resources to Establish a New Source

The concern of this part is to determine the conditions under which the number of sources of transcendent credibility in a system will increase or decrease. It is only when a ruler chooses to adopt a new source that there is the potential for an internal change in the total number of sources in the system.66 Adopting a new source of transcendent credibility is a traumatic event that sends shock waves throughout every level of society. Processes are often set in motion that quickly spin out of a ruler’s ability to control the effects. Thus, we would expect that the choice of a ruler to use resources to adopt a new source would be a rare event and done only under exceptional circumstances. The fundamental question to explain such a shift is to ask what makes a ruler perceive a new source as a viable, cost-effective alternative.

Several factors are crucial in determining how a ruler will establish a new source of transcendent credibility and what form that source will take. First, such a transition will require a large lump-sum investment. Old ideas and institutions must be replaced with new ones both physically and in the hearts and minds of the people. This will take time, during which compliance will be inefficiently generated, if at all. Some sources will be more costly to implement than others, depending on if they are brand new and/or radically different from the old. Besides costs, a second factor will be which group the ruler expects to pay for the transition period. A ruler may depend on an external basis of resources (i.e. another political unit footing some or all of the bill) or he may depend on an internal basis (i.e. a sufficient segment of the ruler’s constituency).67 A third factor is the perceived short-term benefits from the establishment of a new source.

Finally, a fourth factor that must be considered is the perceived long-term benefits of the switch. Some rulers will be in a better position than others to ignore the time horizon considerations and take a longer view of the effects of the transformation. These factors will help distinguish between four methods of establishing a new source of transcendent credibility: imitation, conversion, adoption, and adaptation.

The first method of establishing a new source is imitation. Imitation consists of a ruler imitating another ruler who has already used the new source of transcendent credibility successfully. For this to be a viable option, the ruler must perceive both territories and cultures as similar enough that the new source could be transplanted to the new realm effectively. This option will also be attractive if a ruler seeks to enhance his relationship with the imitated ruler. For example, a ruler may imitate a source in order to avoid invasion and stay in power as a puppet ruler. A ruler may also recognize a changing power situation in the system and attempt to catch the “rising tide.” The difficulty is that for imitation to be successful, the ruler needs the support of an active segment of the selectorate.68

There are real benefits for a ruler who chooses imitation. For the most part, a ruler that imitates the source of another ruler will seek resource assistance from the imitated political unit to ease the transition as his people adjust to the new source of transcendent credibility. Smaller and poorer political units are thereby not wholly left to wait out the tides of fortune. In addition, the new source is already a tried and true method of generating compliance. Well-known examples of imitation can be found in the spread of Christianity throughout Europe in the early middle ages and throughout the world during sixteenth and seventeenth century colonialism. Smaller political units recognized the benefits of imitating the European Christian source of transcendent credibility. Once accepted by the people, it often effectively generated compliance for the rulers and, strategically, it won the imitators important allies and protected a ruler’s position.

A second method of establishing a new source of transcendent credibility is conversion. There is only a slight difference between this method and imitation. In imitation, a ruler imitates a new source for strategic reasons – if the strategic environment changes, then it is likely the ruler may shift again. In conversion, on the other hand, a ruler converts to the new source and makes the shift even if the outcome is inefficient generation of compliance. Granted, “true belief” and strategic necessity are almost impossible to differentiate. Still, we should not just ignore the distinction because it eludes measurement. According to his own proclamations, Asoka converted to Buddhism in a political environment that did not necessarily support such a “peaceful” ideology.69 He transformed the Mauryan kingdom in third century BC India from an aggressively expansionist political unit into a relatively peaceful empire.

Since conversion is less strategically motivated, we would also expect it to be less durable. This was certainly the case of the Mauryan kingdom, which fell apart soon after Asoka’s death. This does not mean that others with a stake in the new source or later generations of rulers would not be able to effectively generate compliance with the new source, but it does mean that the conversion of the ruler must spread to a critical portion of the constituency for it to be useful in the longer term.

A third method of establishing a new source is adoption. In adoption, a ruler “plucks” one of the many potential sources of transcendent credibility out of the set of potential alternatives and adopts it. Adoption differs from imitation in that the ruler is going it alone, meaning no other rulers in the system are using this particular source of transcendent credibility. Thus, many of the benefits offered by the method of imitation do not exist in adoption. Lacking this external source of assistance, adoption necessarily requires that a key portion of the constituency already find the new source an acceptable alternative to the old source. This likely means that the new source is not “radically different” from the old. For example, although Protestantism is different from Roman Catholicism as a source of transcendent credibility, it still retained many of the same features, institutions, and language (i.e. God, Bible, Heaven, etc.). More “radical” changes (i.e. from ancestor worship to Christianity) would require imitation or conversion, rather than adoption.

In adoption, a new source of transcendent credibility must be perceived as an efficient means of generating compliance given the political position of the ruler. This last clause is important because one would not imagine a ruler investing in a new source that did not support his position at the top of the political hierarchy. Thus, there is a definite strategic element to the choice of adopting a new source. So, for example, the German princes adopted Protestantism, in part, because it supported their position over that of the Emperor’s, as Catholicism did.70 This strategic consideration therefore further reduces the number of viable sources available to the ruler.

Adoption can offer a ruler long-term benefits if successfully applied. Because it must be paid for internally, this guarantees that there is a significant portion of the constituency who will have a vested interest in the source’s durability. Further, since the ruler can choose the source from a menu of viable alternatives, he can select the source that is best fitted for his territory and people – best fitted meaning most effective at generating compliance. Imitators, on the other hand, choose their source based on external factors rather than the conditions within their constituencies. This means a successful adoption should prove more durable and more effective in the long-term than a successful imitation or conversion.

Finally, a fourth method of establishing a new source is adaptation. In adaptation, a ruler takes a source already in existence and consciously adapts it for his particular realm. The adaptation is radical enough that it is clear that the ruler is not merely imitating another ruler’s source. In most cases, the adapted source will be sufficiently different from the original source to count as two sources – if not, this raises a number of questions about why a ruler would want to go to the trouble of adapting the original source at all. The benefit of adaptation is that a ruler can customfit a source for his territory, people, and desired political hierarchy. This manipulability allows a ruler to tailor the source to win the backing of a key portion of the constituency necessary to install the new source.

The flexibility of adaptation is also its’ curse as it is obvious to the other elites and people that the ruler is manipulating the ideas and institutions surrounding the new source that is supposedly “transcendent” and beyond manipulation. This obstacle is not insurmountable, however. As mentioned earlier, the obviousness of the ruler’s actions allows others, who would substantially benefit from the switch, to assist the ruler’s efforts, taking some of the costs off of him. In addition, for a ruler who has the luxury of looking longer term, the investment of additional resources required to mask the manipulations may be perceived as worthwhile because the new source would be tailored to generate compliance extremely effectively and efficiently. Perhaps the most obvious case of adaptation is King Henry VIII’s sixteenth-century Anglican Reformation. Very few disputed the fact that England’s divorce from the Catholic Church was triggered by Henry’s desire for a divorce from his wife. However, despite such obviously self-serving motives, Henry was able to establish an adaptation of the Protestant Reformation that placed him as the head of the Anglican Church. The costs were higher, but once in place, the payoffs were also higher.

Comparison of Different Methods of Establishing New Source of Transcendent Credibility

Each of the four methods of establishing a new source of transcendent credibility varies in terms of costs, short-term and long-term benefits, and the basis of support that would help provide resources for the transition. Imitation has relatively low costs, fairly good short-term benefits, poor long-terms benefits, and is funded primarily from external sources. Conversion ranks extremely low in almost every category, but then it is not a strategic choice. Adoption has high costs, low short-term benefits, good long-term benefits, and is funded internally. Adaptation has extremely high costs, horrible short-term benefits, but the best long-term benefits, and is also funded internally. The rational strategic ruler will take these conditions into account when deciding how to switch sources of transcendent credibility and these variables will also limit the potential sources he may choose from. In sum, the following conditions are necessary for a ruler to use resources to adopt a new source of transcendent credibility:

1.   The ruler possesses the necessary resources to act
2. The ruler possesses sufficient political and personal strength to act
3. The ruler perceives it is necessary to act
4. The ruler is not a “true believer” in the old source
5. There are viable alternatives from which to choose

For the most part, these are “internal” conditions. Thus, an increase in the number of sources of transcendent credibility in the system is either imposed from outside the system or generated from within one or more of the political units in the system. What, then, is the role of the ruler who possesses a stable and effective source of transcendent credibility, but wishes to prevent an increase in the number of sources in the system and the subsequent costs that come along with that increase? A rational strategic ruler will invest resources toward ensuring the necessary conditions listed above do not exist for himself or his neighbors. For example, a ruler may undermine his neighboring ruler’s political strength or his neighbor’s ability to generate resources to pay for such a transformation. A ruler may also provide assistance to his neighbor in order to reduce the perception that action is needed. There may even be systemwide efforts to transform rulers into “true believers,” for example, through a crusade or an inquisition. At the same time, the ruler may be interested in accentuating the conditions listed above in an attempt to get the neighboring ruler to imitate his source.

As has been mentioned earlier, this is a critical reason why rulers invest resources so heavily in controlling their boundaries when there are multiple sources of transcendent credibility in a system. These observations are applied in Part 3 with an examination and research of the hypothesis in Europe from the medieval period to the present day. Europe provides a well-documented and much-discussed laboratory for a study of the effects of a changing number of sources of transcendent credibility on the distinctiveness of boundaries. The continent has seen several changes in the number of sources of transcendent credibility. Thus, a diachronic look at Europe provides additional cases for the research’s central hypothesis. Medieval Europe was a period in which there was primarily one source of transcendent credibility. The indistinctiveness of the boundaries between political units in this period is correctly predicted by the theory. Likewise, there are several exceptions in this period that add support to the overall argument. In the Early Modern period, post-Reformation Europe contained two sources of transcendent credibility, Protestantism and Catholicism. As the theory predicts, this period also saw the establishment of relatively more distinct boundaries, particularly along frontiers that divided these competing sources of transcendent credibility. Finally, the Modern period experienced an explosion in the number of sources of transcendent credibility as each nation established its own source. As is well known, this is also the period of the Westphalian states system with its incredibly distinct borders between political units.

The analysis of Europe also demonstrates that the relationship between dependent and explanatory variables is valid chronologically: the change in the number of sources of transcendent credibility in a system precedes changes in the distinctiveness of boundaries. Rulers made their boundaries between each other more distinct in reaction to an increase in the number of sources of transcendent credibility in the system. This provides more evidence that the relationship between the variable is causal and not merely correlative.

A chronological examination of Europe also allows an examination of the processes that produced the above-mentioned changes in the number of sources of transcendent credibility in the system. Three changes in particular characterized Europe. The first was the split of “Christianity” into Protestant varieties and Catholicism during the Reformation. The second transformation occurred during the seventeenth century as rulers began to shift their source of transcendent credibility away from religious foundations and towards the concept of the “nation.” Finally, during the long eighteenth century, nationalism produced many sources of transcendent credibility in Europe and later the world. These transformations altered the number of sources of transcendent credibility in the European system. This variation is tested in the subsequent parts that  validate the conclusion of our research’s central conclusion : as the number of sources of transcendental credibility within the system increases, the boundaries of political units become more distinct.

 

Measuring the Dependent Variable

Borders are human constructs.71 Thus, the distinctiveness of a particular boundary is as much a perception as it is a measurable entity. Rather than measure this variable directly, this research will turn to five proxy measures that, taken together, will provide inductive evidence for the contemporaneously perceived levels of boundary distinctiveness. According to Weber’s famous definition, the nation state claims a monopoly on legitimate authority in a given territory. This does not mean, however, that individuals do not have multiple loyalties.72 Although a state’s claim of loyalty may be monopolistic, an individual’s reality falls on a continuum that ranges from competing memberships to a hegemonic membership. “Competing membership” is defined as an individual who does not use consistent criteria to negotiate action in the face of conflicting demands. In such cases, none of a person’s competing memberships is more likely to win a face-off with the other loyalties of the individual. On the other hand, “hegemonic membership” ensures that one of the individual’s many loyalties, the hegemonic one, will dominate every critical internal conflict over means and ends.73

Illustrations may help highlight the difference between these two extremes. In the modern nation-state, no loyalty is permitted to have precedence over loyalty to the state. A conscientious objector, for example, may choose not to fight in the military, but this does not absolve him or her of service and paying taxes that fund the military. Although some religious organizations may possess their own “courts,” these are ultimately subject to the judicial system of the state. In contrast, we can turn to Feudal Europe. When an individual’s loyalty to the Church was pitted against his or her loyalty to the ruler or lord, there was not a clear solution. Knights could also be called to battle in the service of a Lord against a ruler to whom they had also sworn allegiance. In such conflicts, there was little to guide the knight’s decision.

Where an authority figure successfully imposes hegemonic authority, this will constitute evidence that the territory is located within distinct boundaries. Such membership can be measured using a variety of means. To whom are regular taxes and tithes paid? To whom does an individual turn to secure legal justice? To whom does an individual pledge allegiance or citizenship? In most cases, individuals will not be shy about pointing out the authorities to whom they defer since there are material and psychological benefits in making sure authority figures know they can count on individuals or that the authority’s claims are thin. Imposed Standardization of Means of Exchange versus Conventional Standardization Standardization of the means of exchange is an important way to improve the economic efficiency within a given area.74 Societies designed coins, for example, as a standardization of value. As such, they simplified the exchange process, improved the efficiency of exchange and, thus, increased the level of trade. The production of coins also enhanced the prestige of the ruler.75 In addition, rulers who standardized currency reaped the benefits to be gained from the mintage of coins. The standardization of weights and measures also simplified the exchange process and increased the level of trade.76

“Conventional” standardization is one means of arriving at such focal points.77 Standardization is usually as beneficial for the people as it is for the rulers. Thus, standardization does not necessarily require a third party to set the focal point and impose it on a population.78 The people of a given territory may have sufficient incentives to overcome their collective action problem in setting commonly accepted standards.79 Standardization may also be “imposed:” a third party imposes a focal point on the population in order to improve economic efficiency.80 The third party must balance the costs of imposition with the potential benefits that may be achieved both in resources and enhanced centralization.

Where an authority figure successfully imposes standardization, this will constitute evidence that the territory is located within distinct boundaries. It is a reasonable hypothesis that a third party would not expend resources to impose a standardization if there were other parties in the territory that could free-ride, capturing portions of the newly created wealth without investing any costs of their own. Thus, it is expected that an authority figure that imposes standardization of the means of exchange either holds a monopoly of authority in the territory or at least has preponderant hegemony.

It should be noted that the antithesis of the above hypothesis is not valid. Distinct borders may very likely surround a territory with conventional standardization. If the third party finds that an already existing conventional standardization is to his advantage, or at least less costly than imposing another focal point of standardization, then he will accept the status quo.

 

Hierarchical Judicial System versus Competing Judicial Systems

As with standardization, judicial power requires a large investment of resources, but the returns on it can be substantial. Authorities that set up successful judicial systems saw two main benefits: the order of the realm and the ability to convert the power of law into political power (i.e. to interpret law and rule in favor of oneself and one’s political allies). Like imposed standardization, an authority figure sought the material benefits that could be gained from controlling the judicial system and the ideological benefits that accrued from the close connection between the legitimacy of the authority figure and order in the realm. The costs of setting up such a system were also both material and ideological (i.e. legitimacy of the courts and their outcomes).

When more than one authority figure set up judicial systems in a given territory, competition reduced the benefits that each authority could realize. In areas of overlapping jurisdiction, litigants could play one judicial system against the other in hopes of obtaining a more favorable settlement. This had the further effect of destabilizing social order as losing litigants sought protection and redress from the other judicial system. 81 For example, the competition between secular courts and ecclesiastical courts destabilized the social order throughout Medieval Europe. There are two ways multiple judicial systems can co-exist: hierarchy and competition. The decisive variable is whether one judicial system recognizes the right and authority of the other to overrule its decisions. If so, there exists a hierarchical judicial system. Although the Constitution is somewhat contradictory on this point, American jurisprudence has evolved in such a way that the federal courts have a veto power over state courts should they choose to exercise that authority.82 Where such a hierarchical relationship does not exist, there are competing judicial systems. Each system asserts its authority in a particular jurisdiction. A judicial system’s ruling can only be overturned if there is sufficient material and moral force to back a veto up.

Where an authority figure successfully sets up a hierarchical judicial system, this will constitute that the territory is located within distinct boundaries. It will require an input of resources, both material and ideological, to eliminate or subordinate competition. Although the people will receive the benefits of greater collective order from a judicial monopoly, each potential litigant has an incentive to keep competing judicial systems in order to take their case to the court that will provide the most favorable deal. The authority figure is the only actor with the resources and incentives to create a monopoly of justice.

 

Efficient Compliance Generation versus Compliance Waste

A market with two or more producers of the same good is subject to competition that forces the price of the good to calibrate with the laws of supply and demand. On the other hand, when there is a monopoly, the price can be largely determined by the producer.83 This same principle is valid in the production of compliance within political units. Authority figures in political units are producers of a variety of public goods, such as security, property rights, judicial authority, and so on. An individual who has a choice of providers of these goods in a single territory will comply with the authority figure that provides the maximum goods for the minimum cost to the individual. This effectively drives authority figures in the same territory to compete for compliance, which reduces the profits each authority can gain from the provision of public goods. On the other hand, when there is only one authority figure within the given territory, an individual has no where else to turn for necessary public goods. The lone provider of public goods can determine, in large part, how much to charge and how much to provide. Authority figures that achieve a monopoly status in providing public goods in a territory can generate more profit and benefits than those who must compete with other authority figures.

When an authority figure is the sole provider of public goods in a territory, he is more likely to generate compliance efficiently – meaning he can achieve a high profit to investment-in-public-good ratio.84 Where there is competition, individuals have the ability to transfer their compliance from one authority to another who is providing more goods or demanding less compliance.85 But competition also creates the opportunity for individuals to withhold their compliance from all authority figures.86 This opportunity arises as individuals wait and see which authority figure presents the most competitive offer. During this “bidding” and “counter-bidding,” the authority figures lose potential compliance that would otherwise have been generated in a monopolistic environment. This is “compliance waste:” compliance that could be generated in a monopoly, but is forfeited due to competition.

The authority figure in a competitive environment must make a trade-off. More efficient compliance (and thus higher profits) can be generated if the authority holds a monopoly of public goods provision. However, the elimination or eviction of rival providers costs resources as well, further reducing the authority figure’s expected profits at least in the short term. Investment in resources designed to eliminate competing authority figures in a territory is another form of compliance waste. If the long-term benefits of monopolizing a territory are seen to outweigh the short-term costs of eliminating the competition, an authority figure is likely to make the attempt. Otherwise, an authority figure will not pursue unchallenged authority and will opt to settle for less-than-efficient compliance generation, not to mention the loss of compliance that is captured by the competition.

Where an authority figure generates compliance efficiently, this will constitute evidence that the territory is located within distinct borders. A monopoly of authority requires clear demarcations of where that authority begins and ends. The primary sources will present the struggles of generating efficient compliance, although where the author is sponsored by an authority figure in the midst of competition, it should also be expected that the primary source will be more interested in propaganda than the recording of events. The amount of taxes collected and the efforts required for collection will also provide useful evidence regarding the level of competition and the identities of the rival authority figures for a given area.

 

Credible Commitment to Defend Borders

A threat to a territory is often more than military in nature. Ideas and persons can enter a territory and undermine a ruler’s ability to generate compliance efficiently. Thus, “defense” means more than opposing force with force. Defending a border means to invest in the control of flows across a boundary. Many goods and ideas may cross a strongly controlled border. Control implies an active agency involved in regulating the goods and ideas that cross the border. For example, the borders of the modern day nation state are very tightly controlled, yet there is still a greater degree of flow across these borders than there ever has been. Control does not obstruct flow in general, but only regulates it in areas that can undermine the authority of the ruler.87

A ruler will desire to control the border flow of troops from other political units. The presence of such troops represents a threat to the ruler’s authority. At the same time, though much less conspicuously, the ruler will also be very wary about ideas that can cross the border and potentially undermine his ability to generate compliance. Such control requires the continuous investment of resources. If this control preserves the compliance-generating mechanisms of a ruler, then these are resources well spent. Investment in border defense is subject to diminishing returns: there comes a point at which additional investment no longer achieves any greater protection of compliance generation. A rational, profit-maximizing ruler will not “throw away” investments once he reaches the point of diminishing returns. The greater the threat (both physical and ideological) from outside the territory, the more a ruler will be willing to invest in border defense and mechanisms of the control of flow. The further the boundary is from the center of the political unit, the more costly such
defense will be.

Where an authority figure credibly commits to defend a territory that is “distant” from the center, this will constitute evidence that the territory is located within distinct boundaries. The variable of “distance” is understandably vague because technology can change what is distant into what is near. Comparisons of distance will be made based on contemporary situations, not diachronically. Thus, what is “distant” for the Roman Empire will probably not be the same as what is distant for the nineteenth-century British. The phrase “credibly commits” is designed to remove from consideration rulers who bombastically claim the right to defend a territory, yet exert no effort short of lip service to control the flow of ideas and people into the area.

It must be stressed again that no single proxy hypothesis listed above is sufficient for determining the level of border distinctiveness. For example, the absence of imposed standardization of the means of exchange does not mean distinct borders are not present, the authority figure may find the conventional standardization already in place very beneficial for his position. The level of border distinctiveness must be inductively measured.

 

Measuring the Explanatory Variable

For example, sixteenthcentury Protestantism and Catholicism conceived of divine authority in very different ways, although they each looked to the same God as the source of transcendent credibility. The governments of Protestant and Catholic political units during this period mirrored these theological differences.88 In other words, it is expected that the theological differences would play out in terms of the perceived threat to the ability to generate compliance and, ultimately, in terms of border distinctiveness. It should be added that, although the term “theology” is etymologically linked to a god or gods, I will also use it to describe the ideologies that link the transcendent credibility of the nation to a ruler’s credibility.89

Thus, measuring the “number of sources of transcendental credibility” in a system requires: (1) the limits of the system in question, (2) a search for the different (and relevant) sources in the system, and (3) a search for different (and relevant) theologies of divine authority within each source. By relevant, I mean sources and theologies that rulers actually use, resist, or reject.

The theory presented in this research thus   relies on a combination of rational choice theory and constructivism.90 The actors make decisions after weighing the costs, benefits, and risks of their actions. Beliefs play a central role in this theory, affecting the perceived values of costs, benefits, and risks, and limiting the range of choices available to the actors. Utility for the actors is not strictly limited to benefits and costs that will accrue on earth. Sources of transcendent credibility are often followed because they are seen to reward and punish both here and in the hereafter. This adds a degree of complexity to a traditional rational choice model. For example, how might one make a rational choice between saving ten dollars and the divine favor that tithing ten dollars could create, especially if we account for time horizons. The model in this research assumes that people can, and often do, care about the rewards and punishments they believe are dispensed by transcendent entities. However, most of these transcendental movements also promise rewards and punishments in the temporal sphere. These beliefs are usually derived from one’s culture. This means that the values individuals assign costs, benefits, and risks will often depend on the cultural context. It is natural for such a theory to combine historical evidence with ahistorical generalizations.

The particularism of History need not be the antithesis of the generalism of the Social Sciences.91 Thomas Kuhn argued that “history, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.”92 Such an image “presents as absolute and timeless its foundations for knowledge.” The ideal is a marriage of the two perspectives: the particularities of each historical context combined with the structural generalities of human existence. To that end, the perceptions of individuals in their particular historical context are examined separately, while the data from each are further analyzed for themes that are historically independent and generalizable.93 This research approaches historical analysis from two different, but complementary perspectives: synchronic and diachronic. First, a variety of historical contexts are analyzed individually. Selection of cases depends on variation of the independent variable, but also covers a variety of times and spaces. In the diachronic approach, space is held constant. Europe will be analyzed from the fall of the Roman Empire to the present day. Taken together, the synchronic and diachronic cases demonstrate that the hypothesis’s validity does not dependent on time or space.

A brief word also must be said regarding the now-derogatory label of “grand theory,” given that the sheer scope of the hypothesis opens this research to such a charge. Grand theory is a necessary, but dangerous, tool of the scholar.94 It is dangerous because it tries to explain a lot with a little and, thereby, vastly oversimplifies reality. It also threatens to eliminate individual free will. An individual (not to mention a society) is far too complex to be reduced to simple if-then statements and deterministic cause-effect relationships. To do so, as grand theory does, is to risk oversimplifying the subject and set up barriers from which neither the subject nor the scholar can escape. Paradigms, as Thomas Kuhn has pointed out, are necessary for human understanding, but also self-limiting.95 Anyone who attempts grand theory must approach it humbly. However, with these caveats in mind, such theory remains a necessity in the advancement of knowledge.

Theory is always a mere shadow of reality. When the finiteness of the human mind encounters the vast complexity of the external world, a compromise must be reached.96 How can that world be explained in a discrete package and how do we know that we have done an adequate job explaining it? First of all, the Social Sciences ought to aspire for “reasonableness” rather than “certainty.”97 The subjects of the Social Sciences (human beings) possess too many motivations to ever say anything about them with a measure of certainty.98 Another criterion of the Social Sciences is parsimony. But, parsimony in and of itself does not necessarily reveal the best explanation.99 Simplicity matters only after many other important criteria of a theory’s value have been judged. For example, Imre Lakatos argues that the comprehensiveness of the explanation and the contribution to theoretical progress are far more crucial than simplicity.100 Theories that begin with the nation-state are certainly parsimonious, but they lack a comprehensiveness that covers the larger range of human interaction and they stifle our ability to see beyond a system dominated by the nation-state.

But if  the age of nationalism passes into an age of fewer sources of transcendent credibility as we have argued so far, the age of the state as dominant political unit may also fade.This masking in fact  allows contemporary IR scholarship to use “military capabilities” as a proxy for threat and security. However, neo-realist and neo-liberal theories can only measure a subset of international systems—systems with multiple sources of transcendent credibility. Their success to date is predicated on the fact that the twentieth century (at least) also resides in that subset. This research does not seek to question the usefulness of these theories in this particular subset, but it does argue that there is more happening than meets the twenty-first-century eye. A new theory allows IR scholarship to look beyond this subset. The European Union presents an excellent test case for this theory. The goal of the EU is to replace the individual nations as sources of transcendent credibility with a single source: Europe. This theory would argue that, to the extent that it is successful at accomplishing this goal, the borders between the individual states would become less distinctive. On the other hand, it also argues that merely passing legislation to make the borders less distinctive will fail without the jettisoning of individual nationhoods. My own best guess is that rulers in these countries still attach their credibility to that of their nation and not Europe. Thus, the EU may attempt to superimpose another source for a while, but will probably fail without a real grassroots ideological shift.

The chaotic political conditions in Africa also represent good evidence of the theory’s validity. Colonialism superimposed borders on African territory that did not and do not correlate with the sources of transcendent credibility there in most cases. Credibility is still largely attached to the tribe and the ethnic group rather than a nation such as “Nigeria” or “Rwanda.” “State failure” exists in this continent because the ideological foundations required for a territorial nation-state do not exist. In fact, the question of “state failure” in Africa is misplaced. It assumes that state success is a desired outcome, when the conditions of Africa necessitate instead a different paradigm of political units living together.

We will next proceed in our historical case examples with  (1) the durability and meaningfulness of current borders; (2) whether the European Union is changing the distinctiveness of boundaries in Europe and what effects this will have; (3) the likelihood of religious sources of transcendent credibility reemerging today; and (4) the potential of “cosmopolitanism” to replace nationalism with a common concept of “humanity” as the dominant, and only, source of transcendent credibility in the world.

We at this point should also ad of course, that nations will continue to serve as the dominant sources of transcendent credibility in the global system in the near future.The two alternative sources of transcendent credibility – religious sources and“humanity” – offered here face the obstacles of time, inexperience at generating compliance in the modern world, and numerous actors who would actively resist any potential transition away from the nation as the dominant source of transcendent credibility. Thus, at least in the near future, the nation will continue to dominate and governments will continue to make large investments of resources to control extremely distinctive borders. At the same time, we have not reached, nor are we likely to reach, the “end of history.” The nation has proven effective as a source of transcendent credibility in the environment of the past two centuries, but its usefulness will likely fade as global transformations occur, and rulers will once again begin to search for more efficient sources of transcendent credibility. In fact, that search has already begun. But first let us test this hypothesises on a number of verifiable historical case examples off a most interesting nature.

 

Bibliography

1 See Kenichi Ohmae (1999), The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy, revised ed. (New York: Collins); Oscar Schachter (1997), “The Decline of the Nation-State and Its Implications for International Law,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 36: 7-23.

2 Zygmunt Bauman (2002), Society Under Siege (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers).

3 Jens Bartelson (2001), The Critique of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

4 See for example, Hendrik Spruyt (1994), The Sovereign States and Its Competitors (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Joyce Marcus and Gary M Feinman (1998), “Introduction,” in Archaic States, Marcus and Feinman, eds. (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press): 3-14; Guillermo Algaze (1993), The Uruk World-System: The Dynamics of Expansion in Early Mesopotamian Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); TK Earle, ed. (1991), Chiefdoms: Power, Economy, and Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); John Gerard Ruggie (1993), “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization 47(1): 139-174.

5 Richard Ashley (1996), “The Achievements of Poststructuralism,” in Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and Marysia Zalewski, eds., International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 240-53; Robert BJ Walker (1993), Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

6 James Sidaway (2002), “Signifying Boundaries: Detours Around the Portuguese-Spanish Borderlands,” Geopolitics 7(1):139-164.

7 Otto Hintze (1929), “The Nature of Feudalism,” in Frederic L Cheyette, ed., Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe: 22-31; John Gerard Ruggie (1986), “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” World Politics 35(2): 261-86; Kathleen Thompson (2002), Power and Border Lordship in Medieval France: The County of Perche, 1000-1226 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer).

8 For example, see John Gerard Ruggie’s review of Kenneth N Waltz’s Theory of International Politics in “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” World Politics 35(2): 261-86.

9 The common state-centric assumptions of neo-realism and neo-liberalism are discussed in David Baldwin, ed. (1993), Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press); Bartelson (2001), The Critique of the State. On neo-realism, see, for example: Kenneth N Waltz (1979), Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley): 94; Robert G. Gilpin (1986), “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” in Neorealism and Its Critics, edited by Robert O Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press): 304-305; Robert Gilpin (1981), War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press): 15-39; Stephen Krasner (1985), Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (Berkeley: University of California Press): 28; Joseph M Grieco (1997), “Realist International Theory and the Study of World Politics,” in New Thinking in International Relations Theory, edited by Michael W Doyle and G John Ikenberry (Boulder, CO: Westview Press): 163-201. On neo-liberalism, see, for example: Robert O Keohane (1984), After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press): 63-67; Francis Fukuyama (1992), The End of History and the Last Man (London: Hamish Hamilton); Richard Rosecrance (1986), The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books); John Gerard Ruggie, ed. (1993), Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of Institutional Form (New York: Columbia University Press).

10 For example, the early modern European system: Hendrik Spruyt (1994), The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

11 Political units in the Ancient world consisted of chiefdoms, “archaic states,” and a variety of transitional forms in between: Gary M Feinman and Joyce Marcus, eds. (1998), Archaic States (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press): 4-7. For the Middle Ages see Janet L Abu-Lughod (1989), Before European Hegemony: The World System, AD 1250-1350 (New York: Oxford University Press).

12 Anthony D Smith (1998), Nationalism and Modernity (London: Routledge).

13 Hans Morgenthau (1978), Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th ed (New York, Alfred A Knopf): 280; Daniel Engster pushes this date to later in the 17th century, because he argues it took time for the ideas put forward at Westphalia to catch on and become practice, Divine Sovereignty: The Origins of Modern State Power (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).

14 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

15 See, for example: Elie Kedourie (1960), Nationalism (London); Julia Adeney Thomas (2001), Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press).

16 This is not to say attempts have not been made. However, in order to use the tools of neorealism or neo-liberalism, many authors must begin by assuming that the units they are examining are state-like. Such a connection is difficult to maintain in most cases. See, for example: Bruce Russett and William Antholis (1993), “The Imperfect Democratic Peace of Ancient Greece,” in Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press): 43-71; Markus Fischer (1992), “Feudal Europe, 800-1300: Communal Discourse and Conflictual Practices,” International Organization 46: 427-466. On criticism of Fischer’s treatment of medieval French barons as state-like units, see: Rodney Bruce Hall and Friedrich V Kratochwil (1993), “Medieval Tales: Neorealist ‘Science’ and the Abuse of History,” International Organization 47: 479-500; John Gerard Ruggie (1993), “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization 47: 139-174. In his model of medieval and early modern Europe, Hendrik Spruyt does not assume that the political units are state-like. In this, his work is superior to other pre-states-system analyses. However, because he looks at a given variety of institutional forms in a single historically-determined context, his model resists generalization to include other networks of institutional forms and contexts. Spruyt (1994), The Sovereign State and Its Competitors.

17 Thomas Kuhn (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); Bartelson (2001), The Critique of the State. “Postmodern” international relations scholar Richard Ashley self-consciously seeks to undermine the dominant theories of neo-realism and neo-liberalism in order that “new ways of thinking and doing global politics might be opened up,” “Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique,” Millennium 17 (1988): 254.

18 On withering: Susan Strange (1996), The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Michael Walzer (1992), “The New Tribalism: Notes on a Difficult Problem,” Dissent 39: 164-171; Michael Mann (1997), “Has Globalization Ended the Rise and Rise of the Nation-State?,” Review of International Political Economy 4: 472-97; Charles Tilly (1992), Futures of European States,” Social Research 59. On weathering: Spruyt (1994), The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: 183-194; Stephan Krasner (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Gregory Gause (1992), “Sovereignty, Statecraft and Stability in the Middle East,” Journal of International Affairs 45: 441-469; Jeffrey Herbst (1990), “The Structural Adjustment of Politics in Africa,” World Development 18: 949-58.

19 Alexander Wendt (1999), Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Mathias Albert, David Jacobson, and Yosef Lapid, eds. (2001), Identities, Borders, and Orders: Rethinking International Relations Today (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

20 Martin Heidegger (1996), Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press).

21 R Bin Wong (1997), China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press): 93-101.

22 On institutional lock-in, see Douglass C North (1991), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

23 Douglass C North and Robert P Thomas (1973), The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Douglass C North (1981), Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton); Margaret Levi (1997), Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 58-66.

24 Richard Tuck (1999), The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press); John Rawls (1971), A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press).

25 Thomas Hobbes (1991 [1651]), Leviathan, Richard Tuck ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

26 John Locke (1988 [1689]), Two Treatises of Government, Richard Ashcraft, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

27 Samuel Pufendorf (1934), De Jure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo (The Law of Nature and Nations), Walter Simons, ed., CH and WA Oldfather, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press); see also Tuck (1999), The Rights of War and Peace: 140-65. A more thorough comparison of the State of Nature arguments of these theorists can be found in Robert Wokler (2001), Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 44-60.

28 Yoram Barzel (2002), A Theory of the State: Economic Rights, Legal Rights, and the Scope of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

29 Russell Hardin (1982), Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).

30 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1973 [1755]), “Discourse on the Origins of Inequality,” in GDH Cole, ed., The Social Contract and Discourses (London: Everyman’s Library).

31 Frederic C Lane (1958), “Economic Consequences of Organized Violence,” Journal of Economic History 18: 401-17; Lane (1966), “The Economic Meaning of War and Protection,” in Venice and History: The Collected Papers of Frederic C Lane (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press); Margaret Levi (1983), “The Predatory Theory of Rule,” in Michael Hechter, ed., The Microfoundations of Macrosociology (Philadelphia: Temple University Press); Charles Tilly (1992), Coercion, Capital, and European States: AD 990-1992 (Cambridge: Blackwell).

32 Antonio Gramsci (1978), Selections from Political Writings 1921-1926 (London: Lawrence and Wishart); Nicos Poulantzas (1973), Political Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books); Poulantzas (1978), State, Power, and Socialism (London: New Left Books); Chantal Mouffe (1979), “Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci,” in Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London: Routledge); Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1982), Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: New Left Books); Bob Jessop (1982), “Hegemony, Force, and State Power,” in The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods (New York: New York University Press): 142-210.

33 Barzel (2002), A Theory of the State: 26-27, 113-54.

34 Spruyt (1994), The Sovereign State and Its Competitors.

35 Michael Doyle (1986), Empires (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press); Mann (1989), The Sources of Social Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

36 This is not the same as saying that all political units are territorially continuous.

37 Albert O Hirschman (1970), Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Harvard: Harvard University Press): 21-29.

38 Max Weber (1978), Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press).

39 Thomas Burger (1976), Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation: History, Laws, and Ideal Types (Durham, NC: Duke University Press): 94-114; Susan Hekman (1983), Weber: The Ideal Type and Contemporary Social Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press): 153-60.

40 James Sidaway (2002), “Signifying Boundaries: Detours Around the Portuguese-Spanish Borderlands,” Geopolitics 7(1): 139-64.

41 Political power depends directly on subjects complying with taxation, thereby producing state revenue, and subjects complying with military conscription, thereby producing military capability. See sources in footnote 29.

42 See Margaret Levi (1988), Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press): 1-70. For an empirical study, see Kristina Murphy (2004), “The Role of Trust in Nurturing Compliance: A Study of Accused Tax Avoiders,” Law and Human Behavior 28(2): 187-210.

43 “The first task of predatory rulers in their efforts to create or maintain quasi-voluntary compliance is to provide reassurance that they will deliver the promised goods and services,” Levi (1988): 60.

44 Heather Rae (2002), State Identities and the Homogenization of Peoples (New York: Cambridge University Press). See also Christian Sartorius (2002), “The Relevance of the Group for the Evolution of Social Norms and Values,” Constitutional Political Economy 13(2): 149-72.

45 HJM Claessen and JG Oosten, eds. (1996), Ideology and the Formation of Early States; P Gose (1996), “The Past is a Lower Moiety: Diarchy, History, and Divine Kingship in the Inka Empire,” History and Anthropology 9(4): 383-84. Marcela Cristi points to ‘civil religion’ as the use of explicitly religious symbols, rituals, and beliefs to ‘sacralize’ a political regime: From Civil to Political Religion: The Intersection of Culture, Religion, and Politics (Waterloo, ON: Willfrid Laurier University Press, 2001).

46 See, for example, Max Weber (1956 [1922]), The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press); Reinhard Bendix (1978), Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press); Daniel Engster (2001), Divine Sovereignty: The Origins of Modern State Power (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press).

47 See, for example, Emile Durkheim (1915), The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (London: Allen and Unwin); Lucian Pye (1962), Politics, Personality and Nation-Building: Burma’s Search for Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press); David Apter (1963), “Political Religion in the New Nations,” in Clifford Geertz, ed., Old Societies and New States (New York: Free Press); Manfred Halpern (1963), The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Leonard Binder (1964), The Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (New York: John Wiley); Shmuel Eisenstadt, ed. (1968), The Protestant Ethic and Modernization (New York: Basic Books); Elie Kedourie, ed. (1971), Nationalism in Asia and Africa (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson); Bruce Kapferer (1988), Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution).

48 N Abercrombie, S Hill, and BS Turner (1980), The Dominate Ideology Thesis; Eric R Wolf (1999), Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press); EM Brumfiel (2001), “Aztec Hearts and Minds: Religion and State in the Aztec Empire,” in Susan Alcock, et. al., eds., Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History: 283-310.

49 Pierre Bourdieu (1990), “From Rules to Strategies,” in In Other Words: Essays Toward a Reflexive Sociology, trans. M Adamson (Cambridge: Polity Press): 59-75.

50 North (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance.

51 Victor V Magagna (1991), Communities of Grain: Rural Rebellion in Comparative Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press): 25-47; Mark Harrison (2002), “Coercion, Compliance, and the Collapse of the Soviet Command Economy,” The Economic History Review 55(3): 397-433.

52 “We should not suppose that religion, even ‘state religion’ is a wholly conservative force; rather, religion is a framework of thought and social organization through which many aspects of life in traditional states may be filtered, including innovative forces and schismatic ones.” Anthony Giddens (1987), The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press): 75. For a specific example see Michael Walzer (1965), The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

53 Terry Eagleton (1991), Ideology: An Introduction (Verso: London): 58. On responses of the non-elites to these interpretations, see Magagna (1991), Communities of Grain; J Comaroff and JL Comaroff (1999), “Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony,” American Ethnologist 26(2): 282-3; Eamon Duffy (2001), The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven: Yale University Press).

54 The parallel here is to the study in American politics led by Angus Campbell that concludes that voters tend to vote for candidates that promote the interests of the groups to which they belong, Campbell, et. al. (1960), The American Voter (New York: Wiley). Supporting candidates that advance a group’s interests can benefit the individual by establishing a sense of group solidarity, Eric A Posner (2001), Law, Cooperation, and Rational Choice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). The result is that groups, in general, “develop ideologies that advance a self-serving conception of the public interest, like the automobile worker who believes that ‘what’s good for General Motors is good for America,’” Robert D Cooter (2000), The Strategic Constitution (Princeton: Princeton University Press): 20.

55 A recently published collection of essays stresses that, in the modern world, the closer a religious tradition comes to exercising state power, the more likely it is that theological differences will undermine the political unity of the movement, Ted Gerard Jelen and Clyde Wilcox, eds. (2002), Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective: The One, The Few, and the Many (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Once a group is in power, groups will rationally pursue strategies that prevent such discord. Alternatively, Anthony Gill argues that religious traditions with a monopoly or near monopoly status may become lazy providers of religious goods, Rendering unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).  Clearly, however, feasible alternatives must be available if religious switching is to occur. Systems that contain only one source of transcendent credibility would lack such alternatives, unless created wholesale.

56 David Cherry (1998), Frontier and Society in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press): 33; Mathias Albert, David Jacobson, and Yosef Lapid, eds. (2001), Identities, Borders, Orders: Rethinking International Relations Today (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

57 Thomas Risse-Kappen (1994), “Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War,” International Organization 48(2): 185-214.

58 To give one example, the ever-expanding literature on social movements led by Ronald Inglehart, Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, among others.

59 Heiko A Oberman (1989), “Die Gelehrten die Verkehrten: Popular Response to Learned Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation,” reprinted in The Impact of the Reformation: Essays by Heiko A Oberman (1994) (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company): 202-204.

60 Jean Comaroff and John L Comaroff (1991), Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago).

61 William James (1999 [1902]), The Varieties of Religious Experience (Modern Library); Charles Taylor (2003), Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Harvard University Press).

62 For example, he does not trust his sources or different advisors are providing conflicting information on the status of the source or the people’s attitude.

63 On the “stickiness” of institutions, see Douglass C North (1991), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). That winners will have better access to political power and will use that position to protect the system that has made them winners, see Ronald Rogowski (1989), Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments (Princeton: Princeton University Press): 3-20.

64 A weak ruler is one who can not respond to a threat to the dominant source of credibility despite a reasonable level of certainty that it is under threat. This may be the case if the ruler is irrational (e.g., mentally deficient or insane) or if the ruler lacks sufficient resources and/or compliance from the elite and the people to be able to respond.

65 Nicolo Machiavelli, “Chapter XXVI: Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians,” The Prince.

66 This includes instances of coup d’etat. The new ruler who has grabbed power may choose to adopt a new source, possibly increasing the total number of sources in the system.

67 That a ruler is concerned with maintaining the support of a sufficient segment of his population rather than all or even a majority, see Stephen D Krasner (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

68 In the modern era, imitation requires acceptance by an active portion of “civil society,” Wade Jacoby (2001), Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press): 12. In other eras, if imitation is to be effective at generating compliance, a good portion of the population must adhere to the new source of transcendent credibility. In short, it is not just a question of elite acceptance.

69 Romila Thapur (1997 [1961]), Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Oxford: Oxford University Press); NA Nikam and Richard McKeon, eds. (1978 [1959]), The Edicts of Asoka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

70 Guy E Swanson (1967), Religion and Regime: A Sociological Account of the Reformation (University of Michigan Press).

71 Walter Pohl (2001), “Conclusion: The Transformation of Frontiers,” in Walter Pohl, Ian Wood, and Helmut Reimitz, eds., The Transformation of Frontiers: From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians (The Transformation of the Roman World 10) (Leiden: Brill): 247-60.

72 Charles Taylor (1989), Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

73 There is a parallel here with Charles Taylor’s notion of “strong evaluation,” in which an individual will rank-order and build a hierarchy of her moral values and preferences according to a deeper layer of meta-values. This enables an individual to choose between competing values in a given situation. See Charles Taylor (1989), Sources of the Self; Taylor (1985), Philosophical Papers I: Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). See also David Laitin (1986), Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Change among the Yoruba (Chicago: University of Chicago Press): 109-35.

74 North (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance: 120-22.

75 Georges Duby (1974), The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press): 66-67.

76 Barzel (2002), A Theory of the State: 202-205.

77 Groups are often able to overcome the free-rider problem and cooperate without the intervention of a more powerful third-party (like a state): Elinor Ostrom (1990), Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

78 The people may overcome their collective action problem through the creation of a third party who then facilitates the solution of the problem in the future. The classic article discussing such an outcome is Paul R Milgrom, Douglass C North, and Barry Weingast (1990), “The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private Judges and Champagne Fairs,” Economics and Politics 2(1): 1-24.

79 For a discussion of how enforcement of collective action mechanisms can be achieved in a society without the use of a third party that imposes its will, see Michael Taylor (1982), Community, Anarchy, and Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

80 See Mancur Olson’s discussion on “entrepreneurs.”

81 Hirschman (1970), Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: 1-29.

82 “The government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action,” McCulloch v Maryland 4 Wheat. (17 US) 316 (1819).

83 James M Buchanan (1980), “Rent Seeking and Profit Seeking,” in James M Buchanan, Robert D Tollison, and Gordon Tullock, eds., Toward a Theory of a Rent-Seeking Society (College States: Texas A&M University Press): 3-15; Richard A Posner (1975), “The Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation,” Journal of Political Economy 83: 807-27.

84 On the ruler as profit-maximizer, see Charles Tilly (1985), “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Lane (1958), “Economic Consequences of Organized Violence”; Margaret Levi and Douglass C North (1982), “Toward a Property Rights Theory of Exploitation,” Politics and Society 11(3): 315-20.
A possible complaint about the statement above is that it does not necessarily follow that a monopoly provider of public goods can generate efficient compliance. A monopoly provider may attempt to extract more rents than the people are willing to give. If the provider demands too much, the people may opt to revolt or reduce their own production to limit the amount that can be given or seized.  Gordon Tullock (1974), The Social Dilemma (Blacksburg, VA: University Publications): 17; Magagna (1991), Communities of Grain. Rational choice theory predicts that a ruler will make a demand that maximizes the amount of compliance that can possibly be generated if there is complete information.  However, even in the absence of complete information, the ruler is strategic and will try to devise strategies to maximize compliance output, Robert H Bates and Da-Hsiang Donald Lien (1985), “A Note on Taxation, Development, and Representative Government,” Politics and Society 14(1): 53-70.

85 Hirschman (1970), Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: 1-29.

86 This idea is derived from the discussion in Yoram Barzel (1997), Economic Analysis of Property Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 16-32.

87 M Millett, when discussing the frontier of the Roman Empire, uses the term “information barrier,” “Romanization: Historical Issues and Archaeological Interpretations,” in TFC Blagg and M Millett, eds. (1990), The Early Roman Empire in the West: 38-39. The term “barrier,” however, does not imply the sense of active regulation that borders (even very distinctive ones) use. A better analogy is found in cell biology. Proteins in cell walls allow only specific molecules into the cell and only in specific amounts. Everything else is excluded.

88 Mann (1989), Sources of Social Power II: 463-72.

89 This is along the lines of nationalism as a “civic religion;” see part 1.

90 See Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink (1998), “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52(4): 887-917.

91 “[T]heory linked to data is more powerful than either data or theory alone,” Robert H Bates, et al (1998), Analytic Narratives (Princeton: Princeton University Press): 3.

92 Quoted in Margaret R Somers (1996), “Where Is Sociology After the Historic Turn? Knowledge, Cultures, Narativity, and Historical Epistemologies,” in Terrance J McDonald, ed., The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press): 59.

93 Melvin Richter (2002), “Montesquieu’s Theory and Practice of the Comparative Method,” History of the Human Sciences 15(2): 21-33.

94 Quentin Skinner, ed. (1985), The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

95 Thomas Kuhn (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

96 Michel Foucault (1970), The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London).

97 Stephen Toulmin (2001), Return to Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press); Peter Achinstein (2001), The Book of Evidence (New York: Oxford University Press).

98 Charles Taylor (1964), The Explanation of Behavior (London: Routledge).

99 Ironically, “Ockham’s Razor” itself has been oversimplified. The “simplest explanation is best” only after the other criteria of validity are met. John Losee (1972), A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 37-38; Sharon M Kaye and Robert M Martin (2001), On Ockham (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Thomson Learning).

100 Imre Lakatos (1970), “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,” in Imre Lakatos and A Musgrove, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Lakatos (1978), The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 35.

 

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